22 October - 22 October 2024
Press Release
Catalogue Essay
Images
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GRANTPIRRIE presents an exciting array of new works by seven young contemporary artists who reflect upon the anxieties and fluctuations of what it is to be here now. These ‘momentary disturbances’ seek to interrupt the incessant pace of contemporary culture, providing a pause in which one can reflect on who we are and what we are becoming.
Eleanor Avery creates uneasy dichotomies of artifice and nature, implying a toxic ecology through her glittering mountains, ornamented trees and suspension bridges. There is a melancholic futility to the scenarios she creates, a Wonderland now fallen, a bridge leading nowhere. She questions both the direction of our path and the level of our control in her incisive works.
Chris Bond paints, amongst other things, the graphic covers of 1960s Penguin books. His canvases efface the titles, author and any other hallmarks of a book but include in painstaking detail the wrinkles, discolouration, creases and dog-ears accrued over the passage of time. These super-real canvases could be seen as an archaeological investigation into an extinct culture both in terms of the original artefact and the brand of modernism they purport.
Using paper and a scalpel, Kate Cotching crafts elaborate dioramas by slicing away minute areas of detail, creating shadowy impressions of the structures that define us. These forms attempt to penetrate the faceless construct of urban living. The effect is haunting, her chaotic edifices defy habitation, suggesting a fragmented, suffocating interconnectivity.
Tackling the anonymity of electronic space is a concern close to the heart of Léa Donnan. Her video piece conversely portrays a Kubrickean ‘starchild’ shimmering in the arms of the Virgin Mary. As an infinite symbol of adulation and renewal, the child emerges as the successor of all moral codes and cultural systems. It seems the spectacle of predicted technologies contains the nucleus of belief.
As part of Brainstorms, Zina Kaye exhibits ‘The Line Ahead’ for the first time to Sydney audiences. The installation sees the transmission of a continuous broadcast of data in real-time from Sydney Airport into the gallery. Such abstracted redirections of information are a disconcerting reminder of our inadvertent but absolute belief in systems.
Adam Norton’s beguiling, brooding works toy with the fallacy of progress by focusing on the outmoded but recurring ‘futuristic’ visions of previous generations. With works like ‘Radiation Suit’, constructed entirely from lead, Norton offers homespun responses to the overwhelming pace and menace of today, emphasising that nostalgia is not merely the longing for the past, but a response to the conditions of the present.
In the world of multi-media artist, Sam Smith, the cold-hearted spectacle of digitalia is laid bare. Smith engineers elaborate sentient structures, orchestrated by abstract forces. Corporeal, electronic and physical exchanges animate a dissonant virtual network, constructing a bleak sensory journey. Time and perspective loop, jump and distort, continuously assaulting our sense of scale and linearity.
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