9 – 31 July 2010
Opening Friday July 9th, 6-8pm
FRONT GALLERY
Golden World (the Wall and the Door)
Benedict Ernst
MIDDLE GALLERY
Annal Beads
Chantal Fraser
SIDE GALLERY
Psychopompistic
Marcel Feillafe
ARTIST FLOOR TALK
Saturday July 10th, 4pm
Benedict Ernst
Golden World (the Wall and the Door) is a single artwork made up of five panels. These panels, each the size of a large door, placed together span the entire wall of the gallery. They are part picture, part documentation of performance, part sculpture, and part immersive installation. They contain the artist’s life’s collection of gold foil chocolate wrappers (carefully framed). Each of these panels is methodically divided into an intricate matrix that allows a subtle pattern of gold upon gold to be observed. This pattern could mirror the gold leaf patterns on traditional Japanese screens or the compulsive discipline of a scientific display. Within the matrix a horizon line may be seen. A landscape is perhaps discernible, if not as pictorial representation then as behavioural documentation of the compulsive and repetitious behaviour that belies a worldview.
Golden World (the Wall and the Door) sets out to explore the interface between behaviour, psychology and landscape carrying a backpack full of Desire and two saddlebags of Repulsion and Seduction. If time permits we might make rendezvous with an understanding of the inherent separation located within our current cultural understanding of our ‘Environment’.
Bio
Benedict Ernst is a Sydney born, Melbourne based artist.
He has exhibited widely in a range of galleries on Australia’s eastern seaboard over the last ten years.
In 2011 he will undertake a Masters of Fine Art at Monash University exploring sculptural representations of landscape and research into historical philosophies of garden design. www.benedicternst.com.
Chantal Fraser
Conjoining the annals of travel and tourism, this series shapes the parochial views of the tourist as subject.
A series of performative frames, presented as photographic stills, showcase a collection of neckpieces (Ula) from the artist’s Samoan family – gifts of significance, ceremony and value – alongside a collection of metallic beads thrown from the balconies of Bourbon St, New Orleans during Mardi Gras– an herogenous ritual that rewards the female tourist more beads on the exposing of breasts. The work explores the creation of cross-cutlural connotations and representations through silhouette and the embodiment of adornment, and more significantly cultural adornment.
Reinterpreting the significance of adornment the work presents and plays with the disparate meanings of what it means to receive such objects from these heavily tourist promoted regions through flamboyancy, titillation and parody.
A series of 6 large performance stills sit contrast to a suspended and heavily embellished headdress. The metallic embellishment attracting the audience in a similar vein to that of a tourist’s memento. Small pockets with contain disposable cameras and ‘token keepsakes’. The audience is invited to ‘take a piece’ of the exhibition with them I providing, in exchange, the audience leaves a ‘holiday snap’ taken on the camera.
The developed ‘holiday snaps’ will be produced as postcards.
Bio
Chantal Fraser is a Brisbane based multi-media artist with a BFA (Honours) from QUT. Fraser has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as La Cité internationale des Arts, Paris and Les Brassuers in Belgium. This year Fraser was a finalist in the Churchie Emerging and Moreton Bay Regional Art Awards.
Marcel Feillafe
The Psychopomp is a figure from history whose role is to act as a guide from one realm to another; from life to death, or consciousness to sub-consciousness. You will be accompanied by this figure through space, and transcend banality.
It will unfold in the meeting ground between an installation, a performance and a sound piece. Similar in form to that of temporary quarantine tents erected in emergency situations, these structures are seen at times following catastrophic events or natural disasters. This image is a base, a fertile ground from which to explore the changing, transient states in human life and consciousness.
Liminality is a central theme in this work; a threshold between states. The enclosed structure is a vehicle to create a ritual-like state where transformation occurs, and divisions can be broken down. By extending the entrance of the gallery space to the exit, Feillafe metaphorically extends a moment normally passed over, given little or no thought. Once suspended in this moment, the intention is for the mechanics of liminality to be revealed.
Bio
Marcel completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in 2008 at the VCA, Melbourne. His work is primarily installation. Mediums have evolved from, ready-made and found objects, to more elaborate constructions made from domestic and industrial materials as well as performing experimental compositions. He draws inspiration from a variety of artists such as Jason Rhoads, El Lissitsky, and Robert Smithson.
