exhibitions
DANICA CHAPPELL (MELB) JOAN JONAS (USA), KITTY KRAUS (DE), DANE MITCHELL (NZ), VIRGINIA OVERELL (MELB), DANAE VALENZA AND SIMON MCGUINNESS (MELB). CURATED BY EMILY CORMACK
EVERYDAY REBELLIONS
10.05.13 –
07.06.13
Exhibition Dates: 11 May – 8 June 2013
Opening: Friday 10 May 2013, 6 - 8pm
Everyday Rebellions presents work by six artists who investigate the inherent rebellion in their chosen media. Drawing on Newton’s ‘Laws of Motion’ the exhibition highlights the agitated, activated and constantly moving nature of all things.
Whilst this movement is mostly invisible, it is always rebellious, powered by its own volition and abiding by its own particular code of behaviour. Everyday Rebellions exemplifies this willfulness, bringing together artists who attempt to control and manipulate the energy and activity of their unruly media.
Focusing on the limits of their control Everyday Rebellions explores the innate alchemical and physical dynamics that occur when active materials are contained, moulded, corralled, stilled or released. All of the works are situated at the maximum point of exertion, highlighting the pressure exerted by artists on their materials and charting the seepage and resistance, as well as the release and collapse that occurs as artists wrestle reactions into shapes and spillage into form.
Everyday Rebellions reveals how it is only when we attempt to restrain or pause the errant energy in our materials that we become aware of its true character. Frozen ice will melt despite our urgings; light sensitive paper will always colour under daylight, and copper sulfide will taint with its decolourising stain.
Everyday Rebellions covers a range of responses to the innate activity of matter. Dane Mitchell pauses the photographic process by presenting a suite of unfixed photographs that must be presented under red safe lights, whereas Kitty Kraus enables entropy through allowing a block of ice and ink to melt onto the floor. Virginia Overell’s works contaminate quietly, with copper sulphide staining fabric slowly and sea salt corroding across the gallery spaces.
Everyday Rebellions will also feature Joan Jonas’ seminal 1972 video work Vertical Roll which channels the expressive rebellion of television’s vertical hold function as a means to frustrate and deconstruct representations of female identity.
This exhibition has been made possible with assistance from The Chartwell Trust, the Video Data Bank, Chicago and Armstrong Industries.
Image credit: Jake Walker
STUDIO 12: VERONICA KENT AND SEAN PEOPLES, DREAM PAINTINGS
09.05.13 –
07.06.13
Exhibition Dates: 11 May – 8 June 2013
Opening: Friday 10 May 2013, 6-8pm
The ‘Natural Philosophy’ of the Atomist Democritus, fifth century BC Greek thinker, suggests that images or idols make an impression on our senses from which sensation and thought emerge. He proposed that these emanations could enter the pores of a sleeping person, creating dreams. These images are objects in and of the world, not coded messages from the unconscious as Freud would have it.
During a recent Australia Council residency in Barcelona, Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples performed 20 days of Dream Telepathy to test this idea that images and ideas are tangible things. Every evening before they went to sleep (at opposite ends of the apartment) they would put something in an envelope and place it under the other’s pillow. After dreaming on this all night they would meet in the morning and recount the nights remembered dreams to see if the image inside had seeped into or influenced the dream. Sean and Veronica’s favourite dreams became the subjects of the collaborative paintings exhibited in Dream Paintings.
Veronica Kent is a Melbourne-based artist who studied at the Victorian College of the Arts and holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her practice incorporates painting, installation, digital imaging, and performance. A recurring theme across her work is the visual representation of invisible forces such as telepathy, love, and wonder, and her practice incorporates wide research and investigation into myriad periods of art history and visual culture. Kent is also one half of The Telepathy Project, an ongoing collaboration with Sean Peoples exploring telepathy as both metaphor and method. Their work has been exhibited and performed in Australia, India, France, Spain, Germany and the USA.
Recent group exhibitions include Dreaming the Arabian Sea, 2013, (en)counters Festival, Mumbai, India; Speech Objects, 2011, Musée de l'Objet, Blois, France; Telepathy and Love: The Spanish Apartment, 2011, OZCO Barcelona Studio, Spain and West Space, Melbourne; Material Conversion, 2011, Grimmuseum, Berlin; andTableLampChairBigPainting, 2010, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne; Recent solo presentations of her work includeFold Me, 2012, Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne, Funny Face, 2012, Ryan Renshaw, Brisbane andHeadhunters, 2010, Fehily Temporary, Melbourne 2010.
Kent has been the recipient of numerous awards, grants and residencies including the Australia Council for the Arts 2011 Barcelona Residency and ArtStart grants, 2011 Melbourne University travelling scholarships to research at the Freud Museums in London and Vienna, the Dowd Foundation travelling scholarship in Athens, The Australian Post Graduate Award and Arts Victoria and City of Melbourne Presentation grants. Her work is held in private collections in Australia, the United States and Europe.
Imagec credit: Jake Walker