WALL WORKS AND OTHER PROJECTS - 6 February - 20 February 2010
Colin Batrouney, Heather Shimmen, Judy Holding, Karen Ward, Peter James Smith, Rhett D’Costa
Curated by Martina Copley
WALL WORKS and other projects profiles six diverse artistic practices in a way that allows for playfulness and experimentation. It is an unusual opportunity to engage directly with the viewing possibilities the gallery space offers and to create work that is less constrained by the commercial system. Not exactly interventionists, these artists were invited to loosen the bounds of their practice and create work that comments on the gallery context and the expectations and habits of its audience.
Many of the works are constructed entirely in the gallery prior to exhibition and cross traditional boundaries of drawing, sculpture and performance to encompass art as practice, material and site. Rather than floating isolated saleable objects on a 'neutral' wall or plinth, the perception of the gallery space is transformed with temporary large scale installations incorporating constructed work and found objects. Some artists choose to inhabit dormant spaces, or work in direct response to the modernist architecture of the gallery space. Together, these collected wall works fracture the familiar into a new artistic geography or landscape.
RHETT D’COSTA‘s floor drawing, created in situ, maps the play of chance and the ways in which the process intersects with the space around it. D'Costa's nomadic stitched and drawn abstract geometries reference textiles, architecture, mathematics, and the phenomenal world. His work appears to oscillate between harmony and discordance, uniformity and randomness, flatness and plasticity. In slowness, the viewer is encouraged to find an intuitive, experiential approach to the works.
END OF AN ERA - Gallery 101 to close in March 2010.
About GALLERY 101
Established in 1992, and ideally situated in one of Melbourne’s major landmark buildings, 101 Collins Street, Gallery 101 is a major commercial gallery that supports a diversity of contemporary Australian art practice. Selected works by represented artists may be viewed in the gallery stockroom by appointment.
