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Final Composite Four

Wonder: The Collection, The Cabinet, The Container &The Trace.

Clare Cochrane
10 - 25 July 2008

The Faculty of Creative Arts is pleased to present an exhibition by Doctoral candidate in Visual Arts, Clare Cochrane.

Clare completed her Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) at the University of Wollongong in 2003 and followed her degree with Honours in 2004.

Since then she has been working towards her Doctorate with the Faculty of Creative Arts while continuing her pursuits as a practising artist. During this time she has exhibited in several exhibitions including: Slipping Between in 2006 and Wonder Caught The Attention; Curiosity Riveted It in 2007. Both exhibitions, curated by Ms Cochrane, included paintings, sculpture photography, installation and digital sound by staff and doctoral candidates of the Faculty of Creative Arts at UOW.

Her thesis entitled Wonder: The Collection, The Cabinet, The Container & The Trace explores historical collections belonging to Wunderkammers and Cabinets of Curiosity, examining them within the contemporary framework of her art making processes and that of the artists Fiona Hall and Patrick Hall.

From the Artist

This exhibition is a culmination of my practical work undertaken during my Doctoral program 2005-2008. I have worked in a range of materials and medium and the show is made up of several pieces which encompass installation, photography and sculptural work.

The exhibition shares the title of my exegesis and illustrates the close alignment between my theoretical research and my practical methodologies and conclusions. As such the work entails a close relationship to themes and examinations which articulate concepts which have remained critical throughout my program. These include the articulation of collection, containment, codification (both textual and visual), memory, self and object.

The notion of wonder is reiterated throughout my examinations and arguments and appears in relation to amongst a variety of themes; site, origin, materiality, systems, containment and the articulation of subjective construct. These ruminations on wonder culminate in my argument that it is through examining systems and processes of containment that the critical narratives of my art-making process develop into traces of memory, methodologies of classification and the curiosity of the object collected and contained.

I am drawn to objects that recall private lives in the landscape and the stories of others as much as the self. These are complex and multi-layered objects that exist as projections of our own truths, understandings and experiences. They reveal both of the artist and viewer an autobiographical narrative that is imprinted with a perfume of history.