12 July – 20 July 2007
A group exhibition curated by Clare Cochrane
Artists: Stephanie Amos, Didier Balez, Catherine Carr, Clare Cochrane, Diane Epoff, Penny Harris and Juilee Pryor.
Opened on 12 July, 12.30pm.
Curator, Clare Cochrane is currently completing her DCA in Visual Arts with the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. Her thesis entitled Wonder: The Collection, The Cabinet, The Container and The Trace is exploring historical collections belonging to Wunderkammers and Cabinets of Curiosity and examining them within the contemporary framework of her art making processes and that of the artists Fiona Hall and Patrick Hall.
From the artists…
Stephanie Amos
“We stared at each other. Mule, it seemed, was cast in lead and draped in falling red veils. Dread crawled over Mule and sat like a king in all the places of his face…He frothed. He foamed. His demented eyes egged in their orbits as if they were being laid. And all the while he goggled horribly, over mah shoulder, at it coming.”…Nick Cave
Didier Balez
The work I will show is about the cruelty of bull fighting and the gross reality of violent death be it animal or human. It is a follow up work from a previous exhibition where I show the "fun" side of Bull fighting. This is about a very graphic different reality.
Catherine Carr
Outside my window is the sea. It is just a glimpse between buildings. But it is there. Constantly moving and changing. Light dances on the surface of the water. Sand and rocks are covered then revealed. Patterns are revealed. I am captured and fascinated.
This is a series of digital photographs that encapsulates the many moods and textures of the sea where it touches the land. These photographs document the intersection point of land and water.
Clare Cochrane
This piece is a response to the traditional cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammers into which were placed exotic, rare and wonderous objects and were crafted as universes-in-a-box. The alternate faces of the piece are treated very differently even though their form, dimensions and contents are identical. The labels upon the drawers are of specimens identified from original engravings and catalogues of these early modern collections using common names whilst the alternate face of the cabinet is engraved with their scientific names.
The piece negotiates the threefold aim of the early collections; accumulation, definition and classification, whilst visually stating the impossibility of this desire to contain everything for the actuality of containing any of the specimens within these drawers would require an unprecedented leap of the imagination. While the cabinet and drawers model what Guston Bachelard refers to as intimate spaces, they are places that are not open to just anybody. In omitting and handles in which to access these drawers I am denying the language of gesture which is fundamental to such objects of intimacy. So whilst the labelling of the drawers insinuates a discourse to be negotiated we are left to wonder at the curious nature of collection, storage and the objects within. Text and form become the curiosity that draws our attention as our imagination is enticed by wonder.
Diane Epoff
“There is no simple Now: every present is nonsynchronous, a mix of different times”. The past and present exists in parallax (Hal Foster 1963).
The multiplicity of place at Bundanon is reflected in a network of intricately layered digital photographs, fragments of material culture, systematically mapped through circumambulation of site. Like an archaeological site, the shape of a digital image is always shifting as pixels are reinterpreted and recontextualised to reconstruct what was past, in the present. Wonder catches the attention, curiosity begs the question: is site/image a fragment, a labyrinth, a mosaic or a montage?
Penny Harris
This work is a homage to Cavion's scrap yard and my grandmother. Cavions was a scrap yard which recycled industrial waste part of which was obsolete equipment whether it be from submarines or in this particular case electrical testing and to my grandmother who gave me a piano I never played but modified to speak to switches. I would tell you and myself I do not collect. I store industrial.
Juilee Pryor
I have always been fascinated by toy cameras and alternative photographic techniques. This image was captured with a tiny and very ancient Instamatic camera using a cartridge of black and white film that had expired in 1983. It was then printed onto heavy double weight fibre paper that was similarly out of date. The image was then handcoloured with translucent oil paint to further enhance the degraded and aged effect of the image.
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