…shaped by a vision that is always structured through his own multiple horizons of experience...
Andrew Atchison

What does a ‘queer aesthetic’ look like in 2021? Specifically, one that excludes images of the body, didactic text, expository self-documentary, or agitprop signifiers characteristically associated with queer art.

What occurs when a queer artist’s legacy is translated into text—which biographical elements are promoted and which neglected? In what unruly ways do multiple essences dilute and tint one another to inform an oeuvre? 

Andrew Atchison’s exhibition …shaped by a vision that is always structured through his own multiple horizons of experience… at Gertrude Glasshouse addresses a series of questions on the relationship of language and history to queer art and artists. The exhibition proposes that the complexity inherent to queer can be reclaimed through a retranslation from text into visual language—a re-sublimation toward entwined co-efficiencies, measured illegibility, and opacity accented by connotation.

This two-part exhibition is comprised of a constellation of stained-glass elements that shift and recombine continuously relative to the viewer’s position. The second work proposes a cool, calm and calculated resistance to legibility. A redacted text, halted at the moment of publication to remain on the horizon of definition. 

Biography: 

Andrew Atchison is an artist who works across sculpture, drawing, curation, writing and education. He completed a Master of Fine Arts (research) at MADA, Monash University in 2018. He has exhibited extensively, including at Incinerator Gallery, Linden New Art, Testing Grounds, Greenwood Street Projects, Light Projects, First Draft, West Space, Kings ARI, TCB Art Inc, Seventh Gallery, First Site Gallery, and Next Wave and Midsumma Festivals. In 2019 he curated the exhibition ...(illegible)... at MADA Faculty Gallery. He is currently undertaking a two-year residency at Gertrude Contemporary, and later in 2021 will a commence collaborative residency with artist Mathew Jones at the Boyd Studio through the City of Melbourne.