Cavity: 8 January - 10 March 2009 @ Horsham Regional Art Gallery
Cavity, a new body of photographic based artworks that explore the sensory and psychological experience of caves, will be exhibited at Horsham Regional Art Gallery 8 January – 10 March 2009.
For a number of years now, my practice has focused on the experience of interiority and inhabitation. In this new body of work, I propose to explore these themes through the subject of caves, many of which have a subtle layer of colonial occupation: bushrangers, escaped convicts and shipwreck survivors.
I am particularly inspired by the Nettle Cave images produced by 19th century Australian photographer Charles Bayliss. Bayliss is also significant in his expert use of the overlapping panoramic image making technique, first employed by Fox Talbot in 1842 (Hyde 1988). Examples include Bayliss’ panorama of Middle Head Defences.
My practice has been driven by a search for spaces that produce a shudder, that collapse the space between materiality and consciousness. ‘Interiority’ (McCarthy 2005) is a term that traverses a number of relevant fields. In architecture it is used to describe the experience of being in an interior space; it is used in psychology to describe one’s interior life, what it feels like inside your head. I am interested in the shudder, the collapse between ‘what it feels like inside this space’ and ‘what it feel like inside my head’. I am interested in the physical experience and construction of interior spaces (Tuan 1979; Grosz 2001; Pringle 2004; Pallasmaa 2005).
Caves have been extensively theorised and utilised as a subject in visual art and permeate culture generally. An obvious example is Plato’s cave allegory. A number of theorists draw a direct analogy between Plato’s cave and the camera obscura. The cave encapsulates the dialectic between interior and exterior, between materiality and transcendence, between seen and unseen, between darkness and light. Luce Iragaray troubles Plato’s formulation of metaphysical order in her reinterpretation of the myth of the cave in Speculum of the Other Woman and describes the metaphor as ‘inner space, of the den, of the womb or hystera’ (Cheetham and Harvey 2002). The cave has also been a subject for cultural geography and phenomenology, the heightening of the senses and the embodiment of space through the restriction or indeed absence of light and sound (Cant 2003; Aitken 1986). At this stage I simply want to indicate the depth of theoretical possibilities for this subject. I do not want to predetermine the theoretical framework that will evolve out of the process of studio practice. This theorisation will also be informed by my personal experience of caving.
Verticalism reviewed in issue #24 of Artichoke magazine by Marcus Baumgart
To Occupy: 4-15 August 2008 ANU School of Art Photospace Gallery, ACT
part of the VIVID National Photography Festival
http://www.nla.gov.au/vivid/exhibitions.html#ANU_Photospace and installed in the Melbourne studio 21-23 August 1-6pm 130A Stewart St Brunswick East. Reviewed in Un Magazine 2.2 and November issue of Indesign.
landscape site lines - 5 ways: a didactic exhibition of landscape by five artists showcasing source material, concept development and ideation. alison bennett, robbie harmsworth, graeme galloway, victoria howlett, tomiko miyazawa. clement meadmore gallery, 220 ingles street, port melbourne exhibition closes Friday 22 June - gallery hours Mon-Fri 9-5 Click here to download this file
Making Hay is in the Phee Broadway Theatre foyer Mechanics Lane Castlemaine Victoria April 25 - June 6 2007 This touring exhibition was reviewed by Robert Nelson in the Age 15 November 2006 pp.19 Click here to download this file See also Australian Geographic http://editorial.australiangeographic.com/journal/index_journal.aspx?ID=111
To Occupy (Pt Impossible) 2006. Stitched digital photograph, Hahnemuehle Photo Rag 60x100cm Click here to download this file Runner up in the 2007 Julie Millowick Photography Prize Castlemaine State Festival 31 March ~ 8 April 2007 ABC online story at http://www.abc.net.au/centralvic/stories/s1886585.htm
Five images from In Ruins and To Occupy series published in antiTHESIS journal Vol.17 Click here to download this file antiTHESIS is a fully refereed journal of contemporary theory, criticism and culture, and Australia's longest-running interdisciplinary postgraduate journal. It is produced by postgraduates in the Department of English with Cultural Studies and Creative Writing at The University of Melbourne. www.english.unimelb.edu.au/antithesis/new2005/