Exhibition floor talk | Nexus
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Output Type
Other
Publication Title
Exhibition floor talk | Nexus
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
School
School of Arts and Humanities; ECU Galleries
Description
Artist | Ben WATERS | Clive BARSTOW | Denise PEPPER | Gregory PRYOR | Justine
MCKNIGHT | Louise GAN | Lyndall ADAMS | Nicola KAYE & Stephen TERRY | Paul
UHLMANN | Stuart ELLIOTT | Sue STARCKEN | NEXUS
Exhibition Statement | Nexus Staff is not driven by a single theme, rather it showcases the diverse range of practices, processes, and materiality from the visual arts staff in the School of Arts & Humanities. Common to all, is the commitment to transformative experiences through embodied engagement, with diverse publics. The exhibition is symptomatic of contemporary visual art practice, offering relational insights into current concerns—political, social, temporal, historical, environmental, personal, hybrid—shared narratives. All the works on show, can be loosely contextualised as confronting uncomfortable realities, giving voice to silenced narratives, with the intent of developing criticality through experiential and immersive artworks.
The plethora of individual conceptual concerns however, link with each other, through process and philosophical meanings. Some deal specifically with ideas of cultural hybridity, and hybrid forms, and processes, such as Sue Starcken’s layered etchings making up new, hybridised, worlds. Clive Barstow’s political engagement through sardonic sculptural iconography, scrutinises the imposing of western dogma through the colonisation of Aboriginal land. Paul Uhlmann addresses misunderstandings and misconceptions between European and Aboriginal Australian encounters, folding time between the mega-fires of 2019- 2020 and Cook’s first contact with Aboriginal Australia in 1770. Also confronting the environment, Denise Pepper’s glass work raises pertinent questions on how we transition from fossil fuels to renewables within the epoch of the Anthropocene. This epoch with all its contradictions, is the space Stuart Elliott’s sculptural works inhabit, and brings to mind, the term pharmakon—the obsessive need to develop and progress, but at what cost? Greg Pryor’s painting, considers the unstable early period of the Swan Colony, and the subsequent impact those early decisions continue to have on the present. Keeping with history, and the local, Stephen Terry and I project everyday stories of people caught in an archive of which they are unaware, questioning what is included, and excluded, within cultural institutional collections. Similarly, navigating institutional paradigms, Ben Waters’s sculptural works raise concerns of the role of contemporary art education and history—reflexively shining light into the system of which he is both critic and complicit.
Moving from the institutional to the domestic, Louise Gan, challenges traditional tropes of photography, such as landscape, and portraiture, in favour of making domestic still life inspired wall art. Justine McKnight, fuses memory and lifeworld experience, through arranging collections on hangers, of found material, garments and such, in a respectful and embodied manner that takes inspiration from her mother’s own collections. Also, with the familial, Lyndall Adams through a series of intimate drawings, installed in a way that implies an embrace, deals with the myriad emotions experienced as a parent, as a mother, when confronted with their child’s actions and decisions. A work that is deeply personal but importantly shared.
Through a multitude of forms and questions this exhibition is testament to the important role of art, to the poetics of experience, and to the curious, the critical, and the ethical. Art offers alternatives to dominant narratives, art is transformational, art creates belonging, and art holds a lens to society in making sense of the world. These aspects are vital in a world in which AI is continuously transforming, a world that is in crises— environmentally, politically—and in how the human and the non-human worlds engage for the betterment of all.
Additional Information
Exhibition dates: 22 November to 14 December | Floor talk: Wednesday 29 November 12:30pm–1:30pm