CURATED BY NINA DODD, HELEN WALLER & THE VERGE GALLERY VOLUNTEER COMMITTEE
PARASKEVY BEGETIS, CIARAN BEGLEY, SIMONE DARCY, CLARE HOOPER, NICOLE EASTERBROOK, AKIRA LASKER, NATHAN LASKER, TOM MALEK & YIRGO YIANNOPOULOS
’TRACES’
4 FEBRUARY – 27 FEBRUARY, 2016
Paraskevy Begetis, The Novelty of Seeing, 2015. Acrylic, waxed cotton and silver, dimensions variable. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There are 6 cylindrical acrylic objects with square acrylic attached to them, hung from a variety of string and silver chains from a white wall. The acrylic objects are various colours of blue, clear, transparent yellow, black and red.
CURATORS STATEMENT
Traces examines the various relationships to artistic practice, as documentation or residue of an performance or action, the image or object reimaged through appropriation, the familiar made uncanny and the blurring of the definition between image and object. Paraskevy Begetis’ jewellery pieces are created in response to her personal memories. The small periscope pieces are tools for looking and playful observational devices. Ciaran Begley looks at the relationship between image and object, arranging found objects to examine traces of scientific concepts in aesthetic projects driven by aesthetic concerns. Similarly, Nicole Easterbrook examines the potential of the everyday to be re-defined, her photographic work presents playful manipulations of household objects, transformed in a studio environment.
Simone Darcy looks at the nature of the photographic image as a purveyor of memory and its relationship to documentary practice. Tom Malek appropriates found images, splicing and overlapping incongruous subjects to create hybrid landscapes, promoting the unfamiliar and the uncanny. He examines the photographic medium and its relationship to memory and identity. Clare Hooper is currently studying at the University of Sydney, producing a series of etchings under the Developmental Disabilities Studies program. Yirogio Yanniopolous looks at traces of events in relationship to theories of memory and temporality. The works act as personal records of private, hidden behaviours in public spaces, examining the relationship between the mundane and the covert, the public and private self. Akira and Nathan Lasker’s work looks at the slippage of everyday rituals and gestures into absurd performance. Their video performance interrogates our relationship to public and private space, subjectivity, and the trace of the self in the other.
Akira and Nathan Lasker, Oedipals, 2015, installation view, 4 minute HD video performance. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: This is a black circular cocktail table to the left of the image, with a red barricade strap around one side of it. To the centre-right of the image, there is a television screen with two men on the screen. One has slightly shorter brown-orange hair than the other, but both are wearing black t-shirts with cream smeared across their face.
A trace can be understood as, “a mark, object, or other indication of the existence or passing by of something”. This expansion of this definition as a curatorial concept looks at the temporality of objects and experiences. These things, whether objects and/or experiences, become remains that are remembered and reimagined. Approaching the concept of traces from disparate artistic practices, the works document, appropriate, and re-construct materials. Thus lending new life to images, objects, spaces and stories. This exhibition highlights the relationship between image and object, and investigates the role of memory in investigating and reinventing histories and identities.
Ciaran Begley and Nina Dodd, collaborative sculpture, 2015, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There is a grey and black camera on a tripod, sitting on a white plinth. Projecting a warm light parallel to it with a a light globe in the middle of the projection.
Tom Malek’s collages appropriate images from the Life Nature Library series, using the books as ‘ready-mades.’ Each collage adopts the content and context of the original images to assemble poetic landscapes. Referring to surrealism, DADA and found art, the constructed landscapes look at the contrast between the represented and the real. Adjusting, inverting and slicing separate images together, the works ask us to look at the construction of our own identities in a contemporary landscape.
Simone Darcy’s photographs are the result of her recent project in the Icelandic fishing village, Skagaströnd. The photographs are products of her discovery and close study of the town’s history and cultural heritage; documenting people, objects, and the landscape. Looking at the landscape and subject as defined and informed by each other the works comment on photography as an important documentary device. Traces of the tangible and intangible are brought to our attention through the capturing of these moments in time.
Traces, Installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: In the gallery there is a white wall with a framed image of a person holding a fish over their shoulder, next to that is seven colourful acrylic object hung off the white wall.
Paraskevy Begetis’ series of periscope objects embody the imagery, colour, and memories of places she has visited around the world. The visitor is encouraged to view their world in a different way using the periscope hanging from the wall. Accompanying the objects is a poem which is reflective and acknowledges her connection with the place and objects of inspiration. Begetis’ recollection of her trip becomes tangible in the creation of these keepsakes.
A ladybird crossing a cavern. Half eaten muffins in a newly wed kombi van. A fish’s view of a frozen lake. A discarded broken mirror in the shape of Pac man. Windows bursting with bric a brac. My eyes wander like curious intrepid travellers. They want to ramble freely in the wild; they seek the unfamiliar for the secret it holds. Stopping to partake in a quiet exchange. Pausing momentarily. A souvenir is taken. A small part of me is left behind.
Nicole Easterbrook’s photographic work looks at the fluid transformation between image and object, presenting an image of a ball of string as a trace across a minimal photograph. The work looks at nature of the photographic image as documentation of truth and as purveyor of memory, quietly and playfully subverting these traditional conceptions.
Traces, Installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: In the gallery, there is two white walls, the first one has seven colourful acrylic object hung off the white wall, the other has 3 light brown wooden frames with lightly cream coloured abstract prints. In between the walls there is a round black cocktail table with a red strap wrapped around the leg that is pulled off the image.
Ciaran Begley’s installation focuses on the potential of using light and projection to investigate the relationship between image and object. The passing of light through a found-object assemblage projects a doubling of the object into the room as both a trace and a second representation of the assemblage. Inverting the gallery’s storage space, the displaced contents of the store room are re-imagined in a sculptural installation. As a collaboration between artist and curator, the secondary installation looks humorously at applying dysfunctionality and impermanence to everyday objects.
Performing daily rituals, Akira and Nathan Lasker’s video performance poses as absurd theatre. The doubling of each familiar action highlights the absurdity of the performance, as the performers each leave traces on the other, acting as metaphor for the transference between twins and the trace of the self in the other. Slippages in the intimate and ritualized actions highlight the tension between public and private and the impossibility of sharing subjectivity.
Similarly recording evidence of intimacy, Yiorgo Yiannopoulos records personal encounters and experiences through the interaction and observation of sex in men’s public toilets. Love Shack reveals the tension between their two uses: one of mundane necessity and the other of the need for covert and convenient homosexual gratification. Extracting samples from his subjects to create portraits, traces of an intimate moment are employed to represent the precarious balance between the public and private self-inherent in impersonal sex in public places. Each sample is taken from its porcelain context and scanned; speaking to the ways we negotiate our desires and reveal both the pragmatism, as well as the meticulously choreographed seduction, at play.