ARRIVE AND LIKEWISE DEPART
John Chiara | Kevin Cooley | Victoria Jenkins | Gemma Levine
Colin Patrick Smith | Material Conjectures | Curated by Ann Harezlak
Victoria Jenkins, As If It Were, Fig. 11, 2013
Opening: August 16, 2014 | 6pm—8pm | Performance by Material Conjectures at 7pm (performed by Jay Grant)
Open from: August 16 – September 1, 2014 | Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm
In photography, the appreciation of sculptural form encourages repetition and isolation of form with consideration for detail and environment. A single photographic frame can offer a concentrated analysis of structure and surface material: the opportunity to revisit angles, depth of shadow and gradients of light. Accentuated scale, monumentality and exaggerated viewpoints reveal the photographer’s artistic inscription while exposing the collapse of sculptural perception within a two-dimensional visual field and medium.
Photographers such as Gemma Levine, a renowned portraiture photographer mentored by the Modernist sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), sought to examine three-dimensional form within a methodology that retained the sculptor’s intended expression. Catalytically cited for exploring object documentation and perception in film, Levine’s recorded observations of Moore’s sculptures from 1978 align with the contemporary practices of John Chiara, Kevin Cooley, Victoria Jenkins, Colin Patrick Smith and Material Conjectures – offering potential for alternative classifications of ‘anonymous sculptures’ and topographies.
Arrive and Likewise Depart adopts a critical vantage point for accessing the intersections of sculpture in photography, considering manifestations and gestures of form framed within a two-dimensional space negotiating sculptural rhetoric.
John Chiara actions an exploration of the ‘object making’ process within the photographic medium. Foregoing current reproduction techniques, Chiara highlights the principle hand of the artist in the creative act. Observed vantage points, manipulated through process, reveal subtle imperfections and unexpected details imparting a ‘photographic event’.
Kevin Cooley exposes subtle abstractions in the common object, where materiality and physicality is located then challenged in the repeated rendering of its nature. Classifications of expression form saturated structures, Cooley considers how these responses are activated, disseminated and fail within the shifting advances of technology.
Victoria Jenkins investigates the framework of visual representation, restaging and constructing ideas through the plane of the camera lens. Jenkins formulates metaphors and narratives through the photographic medium. By appropriating abstract phenomena echoing archival and scientific theory, she produces pathways for sculptural methodology.
Colin Patrick Smith objectifies urban and rural architecture, seeking multiplicity and deconstruction through formal sensitivities. Smith frames personal experiences and native landscapes with isolation, regarding the environment as a primary commodity and prompting the consistent treatment of all elemental subjects as objects.
Material Conjectures, a co-authored project by Curator Kirsten Cooke and Artist Dr Dale Holmes, explores the materiality and ontological nature of the image. Projected images are screened onto a temporary constructed stage, as an actor reads out a poem.