2010 EXHIBITIONs

“My work revolves around ideas of memory, preservation and both the psychological and physical aspects of the human condition.

In the process of laying down memory, signals move through individual nerve cells as tiny electrical charges. These electrical charges form the basis of our memories, thoughts and feelings. They are repeated when one recalls an event, image, emotion or even a scent. As we age or sustain trauma, this procedure can fail but frequently accessed memories can last indefinitely.

Through exploring these processes of memory and the intricate and complex networks involved in allowing us to retain, make and remember memories, I have become aware of how miraculous our minds really are.

Emily McIntosh 2010

The works in “Souvenirs from the Natural World” continue a thread which goes back over thirty years of practice. The natural environment and our place in it have been an enduring subject in my work since the late seventies and culminated recently in a PhD, which examined the cultural dimension of the environmental responsibilities we need to address.

This current exhibition looks at the way Western culture perceives and often commodifies nature in a way that presents it as just another item amongst others, rather than the denominator that determines how a workable future is even possible.

Each work divides itself into a dialogue between culture and nature. At this time in history, a still to be reconciled conundrum.

Hadyn Wilson 2010

I continue to focus my art practice on the way that technology mediates between experience and understanding and also creates the codes with which we represent ourselves and our environment. Scientific imaging technologies have allowed for visual interpretations of the interface between the visible and invisible.

In this new body of work, edges and boundaries are presented as permeable, allowing the inside out and the outside in and suggesting interconnections that exist between and across bodies of knowledge. Environmental textures and forms become the material of the body and the body has become transparent. The meaning of these works is found in the spaces within the steel structure. Shadows are created as light passes through the interlaced metal form and give as much material presence to the body as the structure itself. The interplay of positive and negative spaces metaphorically balances the dichotomies that are part of the human condition.

This exhibition is a continuation of themes developed in a small impromptu show called Precusor held in 2009. For many years I have explored traditional women’s craftwork such as weaving, knitting and patchwork, albeit often using traditionally male materials like steel strapping, timber architrave and the inner tubes of tyres.

From this intensive exploration, the square format evolved and this new body of work will again consist of a series of small square canvases, all identical in size. When installed, however, they will be more like a single kaleidoscope of abstracted shapes and colours.
I am interested in creating paintings that work on a number of levels: as individual entities and as elements within a much larger framework.

I want to wake up one day and find magicool beams sparkling from my finger tips; nails painted in rainbow colours.

I want to walk to work, ride the crowded train and get my everyday mocha with a bigger than huge green grass bear leaving footprints of daisies, grass and dirt.

I want every Friday to be dress up day, every second day of the month will be musical day and every fifth day will be a special day where the ants that visit my house are invited to visit my office; making everyone in their suits and heels crouch on the floor, to watch their famous silent carnival act.

I want one day to be brave enough to stand up in front of a packed out train carriage and show everyone the magicoolness that hides in the vent between the fluoro light and the window; sharing a piece for every cupped hand, shirt pocket or pant cuff.

After my last exhibition there was time to pause and reflect on the level of risk and excitement that was created by the process. The ambition of the work created many logistical problems which
were only solved after some real effort.

The resulting exhibition, in hindsight, was really almost one piece. It occupied a small space physically but because the pieces were few in number it felt to me like I was looking at a cohesive whole.

This show will be very different in that each work will clearly have its own identity but will obviously be linked by my approach to sculpture and sensitivity to materials, space, weight, light, form, line, shape, volume, mass etc. A lot of decision making has and is going on in order to make this work. I trust the quality is there because, as Clement Greenberg said in Homemade Esthetics, “quality in
art appears to be directly proportionate to the density or weight of decision that’s gone into its making.”* In regards to the density of decision making, this show is very weighty.

* Clement Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics: observations on art and taste, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.48

My artwork explores issues of identity and transience through a sense of play.

I use everyday images and objects, often collected on my travels, to explore emotional associations within our immediate environment and memories – real and invented. I am interested in focusing on the micro
and bringing our attention to the small details which are often overlooked and ignored. This microcosmos, at times humorous and bizarre, highlights the transformation and personification of such images as a means of making sense of our surroundings, our environment and ultimately ourselves.

Working with modules and components allows me to develop
relationships between forms and in turn investigate the life of an
object outside of its original intent and purpose. The work takes on
deep personal symbolism as it personifies imaginary dialogues and relationships, drifting in and out of an augmented reality. Different
characters and personalities are captured in a fleeting moment to reveal a network of masked identities, fragmented conversations and hidden emotions.

I have always found sanity a wonderfully elusive mist that continually fails to hide the far more interesting things experience can suggest.

In my last exhibition the fairy theme began as a tribute to my mother and the demented Victorian fairy painter Richard Dadd. In my new work, the visions of Dadd’s insanity combine with the poetic logic of fairy tales and mythology to provide another way of seeing the world around us. This is the irrational world of strange forces and passions
our contemporary culture has no place for. We dismiss such quaint experiences as imperfections left over from our primitive beginnings. They are fit only for anthropology or the pathology of psychosis.

In the geology of experience, there are many layers... some apparent and some quite hidden from the normal view. We look, yet often miss the laminated nature of things and activities surrounding us. Simple routines are not what they seem. I begin to see that the simple tableau we take for reality is, in fact, “peopled” by a much richer and stranger crowd of others.