Of everything that disappears there remain traces

Dan Arps
Samantha Barrow
Jeremy Eaton
Kate Hill
Georgia Kaw
Seala Lokollo-Evans
Kate Newby
Charlie Sofo
curated by Lauren Ravi

Friday 7 April - Saturday 29 April 2017

The Honeymoon Suite

L1, 60 Sydney Rd., 

Brunswick, Victoria 3056

I am fascinated by the premise of Lauren Ravi's curated show for Honeymoon Suite. The show is supported by an eloquent essay, parts of which are included at the end of the artwork images. Her training as a conservator stimulated her conceptual idea.When presented with a object for conservation, a conservator must decide what is the 'ideal state' to return an object to. This freezing of a moment in time for the relative material of an object is food for thought. 

Ravi brings together artists whose, ...handling, methods of production, interaction with their environments, and the alchemical processes’ of transformation that a material undergoes,is ...not as pure matter but rather as holding congealed moments in a broader social trajectory that is subject to change. 

Kate Hill's wall piece, After, is a Rothco-esque canvas presenting the grubby, earnest labour of the ceramic process. Sometime studio, tools,  equipment or environment has a story to tell.

Seala Lokolla-Evans, figurative groups of clay & lava glaze, recall the sinuous movement of the human body in material that resembles the ancient geological folding and layering of mineral & earth.

Samantha Barrow's work reminds us of greed for clay and building lime required for the colonising of the land around Port Phillip Bay and the environment effect this has had on natural resources.  

Main Gallery

Charlie Sofo, Season Work, figs, 2017 dimensions variable.

Site specific Seasonal Work offers the last figs of the season, picked from neighbourhood trees around Brunswick and surrounding Northern Suburbs, to be replenished throughout the course of the exhibition.  Lauren Ravi

Seala Lokolla-Evans, Untitled (Group), 2016. clay & lava glaze

(detail)

Dan Arp, Tree Study (Evil Olive), 2016 polyurethane, paint

Georgia Kaw, How Do I Walk With Warm Regards?, 2017 digital preint on paper, cardboard TV box.

Objects that play a supporting role, or usually exist in relation to another object of more importance, inform Georgia Kaw’s practice... In merging these different representations of surfaces and support objects, Kaw’s work can be seen to balance out original hierarchies of viewing. Lauren Ravi

Kate Hill, After, 2013-2017, dropsheet, Eltham clay, Bogong Village clay, Brunswick clay

Kate Hill, Mend 11 (pottery shards collected over a year of walks on the Merri Creek), 2017, assorted found ceramics

Jeremy Eaton, Consort (bamboo), 2016, bronze

Jeremy Eaton, Consort (awkward curtain), 2017,silk, sun exposure dye, suede, bronze.

Kate Newby, Who did I see? Neighbourhood people, a bank president and a couple of entrepreneurs, bronze and Let me be the wind that pulls your hair consists of clusters of small ceramic sculptures, positioned on an adjacent windowsill, outside of the gallery, and also huddled on the gallery’s exterior windowsill.

Samantha Barrow, This Building is made of clay and shells, 2017, terracotta clay & salt

Samantha Barrow, Element from To unsolved a sum by dissecting a whole, through paying attention to the weather, 2016, salt terracotta clay, beach detritus.

Samantha Barrow, Element from To unsolved a sum by dissecting a whole, through paying attention to the weather, 2016, salt terracotta clay, beach detritus.

Samantha Barrow

~

‘At any rate, nothing just vanishes; of everything that disappears there remain traces.’ (1)

When looking at an ancient artefact, or relic, often one may see the material as holding traces of their human makers. The gestures held within materials contribute to a distinctive, yet intangible, eminence – something of an ‘auratic quality.’ Of everything that disappears there remain traces presents a range of artistic practices that highlight the social life of materials in relation to the human gesture.

My training in conservation practices of cultural materials has encouraged the exhibition. When determining conservation treatment methodologies, one must consider the history of values and social transactions associated with an artefact. It is often necessary to determine the ‘ideal state’ (2) in which to treat an object or material for conservation. However this ‘ideal state’ does not always imbue an object with its histories, and can rather freeze an object in time and space, when it will always be subject to change.

Focusing on the artists’ handling, methods of production, interaction with their environments, and the alchemical processes’ of transformation that a material undergoes, this exhibition presents material not as pure matter but rather as holding congealed moments in a broader social trajectory that is subject to change. In “The Social Life of Things” Arjun Appadurai reflects upon the value transactions that become imprinted into an object(s) and material(s) through the rapid circulation of contemporary life, asserting that ‘…today’s gift is tomorrow’s commodity. Yesterday’s commodity is tomorrow’s found art object. Todays art object is tomorrow’s junk. And yesterday’s junk is tomorrow’s heirloom.’ (3) Through Appadurai’s acknowledgement, and our own understanding of a material’s vulnerability and susceptibility to change, we may see how material’s become infused with a myriad of social and personal transactions.'

Lauren Ravi

1 Baudrillard, Jean. Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared. Chicago: Seagull Books, 2009.

2 Applebaum, B. Conservation Treatment Methodology.  Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007.

3 Appadurai, A ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’ in Appadurai, A, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural perspective.