Whitney Fire Suppression System
Sculpture by Glen Hayward
Located in the foyer of 1 Constitution Avenue
About the work
I am at the Whitney Museum moving from one floor to another. One floor has Helio Oiticica and the other floor an Alexander Calder Retrospectives. Between floors is this mostly red pipework. Calder and Oiticica work with colour, geometry and the body in relation to these structures. The unnamed artist who made the hall installation does the same. I am never quite sure where the brackets open or close in the world of art. If art is what makes life better than art, it is a looping, some sort of minimal separation, at least this is what your countryman Terry Smith proposes with his exhibit as a holding forth premise. Not all indigenous scholars would agree and I am sure some of the exotic ones as well. And you kinda have to be a partisan of one or the other pure difference oneness or the not one,
Where to make the cut, the world not one, I take bad photos, that is because I am not taking photos, that is not the criteria, I am making sculpture. We see the world and its people through photos, that is our habit, to see the world through sculpture is anachronistic, To see it as full of monuments takes time and it is not sight that is our metaphor for seeing, the blind can see, our metaphor is intelligence and intelligence requires listening, To see oneself listening gets at a minimal paradox of sense making; tries to introduce a little gap of unknowing in our knowing and I like that.
About the artist
Glen Hayward works with the idea that the infinite is parasitic on the finite, from his limited research into the phenomenon, he can attest that although carving is not infinite, the potentiality of the introduction of space into matter is some cause for hope, where there is none. Art and its hysterical relationship to the world remains one of the few spaces that can testify productively to the point that ‘anxiety is not without an object; indeed it is the primary object.’
Hayward lives and works on the West Coast of Aotearoa, the fools that predate him and must have loved each other enough at some point to have mixed genetic material were of Irish, English and Indian origin. I am also X gen so I assume solidarity way too quickly betraying my particularity. I am like Norman Bates demonstrating I wouldn’t hurt a fly by not swatting it while in Police custody.
Following on from Lacan’s earlier quote I also steal, ‘Sublimation is the elevation of the ordinary object to the dignity of Das Ding.
you’ll make me cry when it comes to an end
Sculpture by Louis Grant
Located at Legislative Assembly Plaza
About the work
The newly commissioned work is the first large scale public art work for Louis Grant. Expanding on Grant’s glass practice, creating compositions of related, mobile, and modular forms that find both connection and attrition in the pairings.
Staged on the raised lawn bed of the Legislative Plaza, the forms bleed and blend from sculpture, urban furniture and signage, developing as an installation of a unique colour palette (in powder coating and lighting) creating a whole space environment. The range of weights, forms, and scales used in the work creates flirtation, provocation, unease, and speculation.
About the artist
Louis Grant is a queer early career artist whose work seamlessly crosses between studio glass and inter-disciplinary practice. He recognises the importance of traditional craft skills and uses them to push the boundaries of both glass making and contemporary sculpture.
Graduating in 2018 with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) from the Australian National University School of Art and Design, Grant works professionally within the Canberra arts community and as an independent studio artist.
Exhibiting nationally and internationally, having been selected in Hatched National Graduate Show 2019 at PICA, the Klaus Moje Glass Award 2019 at Canberra Glassworks, National Emerging Art Glass Prize (Highly Commended) 2020 at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, and Talente 2022 at Internationale Handwerkmesse Munich.
Grant has had his work featured in publications such as Art Monthly Australasia, Art Collector Magazine, Frankie magazine, The Design Files and most recently Assemblage: the art of the room.
Tribute to street fighters
Sculpture by Soni Irawan
Located in Lyric Lane
About the work
Inspired by the fighting spirit of sellers of goods and services on the sidewalks of the streets in the city of Jogja. I have great admiration towards their forthright candor and naivete, as they never thought about the standard of advertising design. Solely with the enthusiasm to fight for a living, they made placards to advertise the products they made. The meeting of great enthusiasm for making a living and low advertising skills produces unexpected folk art compositions: so pure, raw, and honest. An art brut at its best. I got all the plaques from bartering through sellers on the street; some asked for new plaques to be replaced, some asked to buy them straight away, and many didn’t want to give me their plaques for many reasons — mostly historical reasons. By making a composition from hundreds of plaques that I collected with a fairly large size of 3×16, I wanted the audience to feel the enormous enthusiasm for ‘fighting for life’ — transmitting the aura of the streets of Jogja to the exhibition venue.
About the artist
Soni Irawan is an artist and musician (guitarist) who founded the band Seek Six Sick (1999), one of the pioneer noise rock bands in Indonesia. Has made 4 studio albums, 2 live albums, 1 collaboration EP. Apart from painting on canvas, his visual works also include installation, three-dimensional and printmaking works. His educational background in printmaking during college greatly influenced his creative process Before painting on canvas, Soni is more comfortable making murals on street walls because he feels carefree and can be freer to work in large sizes and everyone can more easily access his work. Besides his educational background in printmaking and his experience of making murals on the street when he was young, the biggest influence in his work is the music he plays, noise rock, sometimes it’s full of spontaneous jam sessions, it’s like planning the unplanned. Painting is like playing the guitar in his band and seeing the canvas as a street wall.
CrownLand
Sculpture by Karla Dickens
Located at 220 London Circuit
About the work
In her series of table top sculptures made for CrownLand Dickens reclaims ‘Australiana’ – the laughing kookaburra, the souvenir teaspoon sporting miniaturised fauna and the carved emu egg – to create dioramas of death and dispossession. ‘Deadly’ humour is never far away for Dickens who reminds us that ‘she is not happy Jan’. Dickens’ belongs to a lineage of Feminist and First Nations political artists and through her assemblages she draws upon the carnivalesque, both literal as a series of miniatures theatres or carnivals, and philosophical, best understood by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin who described the carnivalesque as a subversive power that mobilises the folkloric to subvert dominant power. Words by Lisa Slade from the essay, A New Royal Domain.
About the artist
Karla Dickens is a multidisciplinary artist of Wiradjuri, Irish and German descent. Since graduating from the National Art School (Sydney) in 2000, Karla has made Bundjalung country in Northern New South Wales her home. Her artwork unfurls the cross-cultural experiences that have shaped her identity. A self-described visual storyteller, Dickens believes artists’ propensity to respond to the world around them brings them into contact with the political and social issues of the day and allows them to break the silence, to carve out spaces for truth telling and confront issues others won’t, like systemic sexual violence against Indigenous women. She fights for radical change by weaving historically symbolic yet also personal accounts of transgenerational trauma, sounding a call to arms to the younger generation to learn how to protect themselves from the toxicity of the lingering effects of colonialism and entrenched
racism.
Dickens uses recycled everyday items to explore notions of persistence amidst inherent violence and misunderstanding. Made with uncommon rawness and daring, her meticulously fabricated works emanate a rare truthfulness and honesty. Edgy and hard to confine, Karla often cannibalises existing works to create new ones. She presents a wide ranging and unique interpretation of the real world; where past and present collide in a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of her own making.
She has held annual solo exhibitions and participated in countless group exhibitions and community based projects between 1994 and now, celebrated at Campbelltown Arts Centre 2022 – 23 with 30 year survey exhibition 2023 Karla has worked in Shadow Spirit for Rising Festival that will tour for National and International for the next 2 years. 2020 has seen Dickens work at AGSA Adelaide Biennial – Monster Theatres, Sydney Biennale NIRIN showing at the AGNSW. 2017 at Carriageworks as a part of The National, Defying Empire Triennial shown at The National Gallery in Canberra, along with the inclusion in Grounded at The National Art School in Sydney. In 2016, paintings of Karla’s were projected onto the sails of Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE. Australian Indigenous Art Awards 2015 at Art Gallery of Western Australia, TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask at TarraWarra Museum of Art and Wiradjuri Ngurambanggu at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA).
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