Exhibition 23

Ambiguousity
The art of writing one's art

Opening Launch, Readings and Artist Statement Silent Auction
Thursday 26th June 6.00pm - 9.00pm

Participating Artists:

Stop the Press: Artists poke fun at themselves in the name of charity - a revolution on the edges of Sydney Biennale madness.

"Ahhgh the artist statement ... huh?" - Many anonymous artists and art viewers in unison.

In Ambiguousity 24 intrepid artists have stripped bare the framework of indecipherability and wanton ambiguity found in capital 'A' - Artist Statements, in an exhibition where art and text morph.

Ambiguousity is an innocuous display of artist's playing with words. From the sublime to the ridiculous methodologies such as humour, dry seriousness, philosophic gibberish, nonsensical or sensible ranting, appropriation and manipulated language have been employed.

The participating artists have all responded to the following;

Ambiguousity
Am-big-u-ous-ity [ am- big-yoo-o -si-tee ]
-noun
1. The act of an Artist whereby one's artist's statement about one's artwork justifies one's existence and vice versa.

And what's more, a selection of artist statements are going under a silent hammer at the exhibition opening - a silent auction - to raise money for Our Place Support Centre, based in Enmore. All funds raised through the auction being donated to this important organisation.

( Our Place is a support centre in the inner western suburbs of Sydney, providing food, care, counselling, advocacy and outreach services to some of Sydney's most disadvantaged and marginalised citizens, many of them either literally or technically "homeless". www.ourplace.org.au )

If you would like to make a donation to Our Place Support Centre please enquire at the reception counter.

List of works:

Idiot-ologically Unsound
Alyx Guidi,2008
coat hanger, polyester binding, acetate, paper / 180 x 40 x 18 cm

"Idiot-ologically Unsound"

Ideologically Sound (POSITIVE - earnest praise) to Politically Correct (NEGATIVE - derogatory)

The History of Value to Devalue - Absorption & Appropriation

STRING OF LABELS

I am a ...

Agnostic Christian,
Non-Practicing Roman Catholic,
Born-again Pagan, Freegan, Bohemian,
Tri-sexual Post-Punk/Hippy, Glam-feral Doofer,
Trans-continental Ethno, CyperPunk Riot Grrl,
Anarcho-Feminist for Peace, militant non-smoker,
Who is also strongly anti-tobacconist but loves ...!

I am ...
"More PC so I run a MAC & I have a PC but run LINUX"
"As good as the next s.o.b, & I'll cry if I want to!"

STRING OF LABELS is about how we all use labels as stereotypes. How far can I go to justify my lifestyle, with all the confusion & the contradictions of living in the inner city?

Using the Coat-hanger represents the fact that labels are like clothes, hung, "hung up", something th one puts on, "wearing it on one's own sleeve", or takes off or just leaves "in the closet".

Changes in terminology occur frequently and many may believe we should abandon the use of labels altogether. Labels are what other people can put on me, so will declaring this statement lead others to assume, objectify, and commodify myself? How does the Artwork then label me in turn?

So, peculiar to myself ...

Artist Statement - Alyx Guidi

My Lukewarm Antisocial

The girded chairs wave aimlessly
White demons stop and stare,
A single thread marks emptiness
In a quiet mocking glare.

They burrow deep inside me
With diamond cotton ravages,
My lukewarm antisocial-
Breeds these unmerciful savages.

Artist Statement - Danielle Leonello

Untitled
Danielle Leonello, 2008
digital photographs / 20 x 25 cm

Whatever happened to an artist saying of his work "if only I could
have explained it to you in a few short words, I wouldn't have gone
to the very great trouble of painting it for you." ?

Artist Statement - Dee Johnson

LOVE STORY

Ashek,aysha,yavasha!
dwao sue svieytha ue boustaune raislai,
plavai zuembuel ie zeileinea kaedae.
Ashek,aysha,Yavasha!
Plavai zuembuel oudei nai poulyainei,
ousae kaedae ue boustaune saemae.
Ashek,aysha,yavasha!
pouruochuye zuembuel sae poulyainei:
kaokou tie yae ue boustaune saemouy?
Ashek,aysha,yavasha!
Oudgouvaerae iea boustaune kaedae:
Shtou yei gourae,dae sue kaeleimouvie,
shtou yei moure , dae yei crnue mueriechief,
pae dae pishem trie goudinie daenae,
nei bieh mouieh ispishalae yadae.
Ashek,aysha,yavasha!

Artist Statement - Diana Sedlarevic

Love Story

Diana Sedlarevic, 2008

acrylic on canvas / 29 x 33 cm

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(images, left to right; Diana Sedlarevic, Love Story / Donna Page, Flower of my secret 8 )

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Flower of my secret 8

Donna Page, 2007

fabric, plaster / 14 x 35 cm

'If I wished to communicate with words I would have become a novelist, a poet.'

Artist Statement - Donna Page

Twinkle, twinkle little bat
How I wonder where you're at ...

This bat lives in Marrickville Park and represents my embedded sense of place and encoded retreat from a globalised community. He/she soars transcendentally above postmodern and existentialist dilemmas and transculturally at once avian and mammalian she/he occupies that liminal linguistic Latvian space between terrestrial and cosmic cosmopolitan possibilities.

The bat in motion is in a state of becoming, a creature common and mistaken, a source of dialectic and polarized debate. Much mythologised, the bat challenges our anthropocentric view of the world and the natural rhythms. The bat interrogates artistic practice in its representation of its visceral self by holding a mirror to the fluidity of the gendered identity. Mimetic of realism the bat nevertheless is metonymn, synecdoche of metropolis implicitly signing back to the centre from the margins resistant to hegemonic discourse.

The bat shortens its vision to those things nearest to it - the body, nervous system, nutritition digestion and the energies in his/her feminised country acknowledging the chunification of the past.

The Bat... is the most beautiful thing about me... the object of my delight, delicious, capricious, ritualistic-part of a connectedness of community, a working family caught in stage fright, scapegoat. The further I am from the bat the more nearly I approach it.

I have used vivid colours and quick brushstrokes to capture the bats motion and sat perilously en plein air beneath the date palm to sight its gestural movement, the intricacies of flesh and bone beneath the peel of stretched, fragile, leathered, veined and volumous draperies of conjectured narratives of flesh and skin.

The Bat is simultaneously both separate and consumed within its multicultural complicities and negotiations and contemplations of its spiritual and metaphysical alterations and levels of consciousness. Its image haunts our anime, an archetypal ancestral questionings finely balanced and valid only in performance but ultimately ephemeral in its presence and most powerful in its whimsical absence forever devolving in tactile organic forms and yet urban, urbane, undulating, utterly udder, the orientalised udder, the counterfeited psyche.

The Bat is parody rather than pastiche a vital distinction since the pastiche of cultural forms inherently cannibalizes and commodifies relying on ,suggestive of both surfaced and submerged simulacras privileged mode of formal self reflexivity because of its incorporation of the past into its structures.

The Bat represents the ex-centric-black, ethnic, gay and feminist artists trying to respond to the predominantly white, male, heterosexual culture, it works at a distance but sets up a dialogical relation with identification, never fully articulated to the specific politics of either and indebted to both.

An earlier work Mapping the Bat traced the movement of the bat across the palms but was abandoned because of the difficulties of bat distinction in its metafictional aspects although the collection of bat droppings disperses the notion of the individual .Bat droppings thematize and enact spectacle and are suspect, secretive, solitary and epistolary. On the other hand bat urine has unexpected transformative qualities, luminous in its possibilities as acknowledged in the controversial Piss Bat that so offended Judeo-Christian values.

The Bat used for this work professed no religious leanings or beliefs and was to the best of my knowledge an adult not pubescent bat though the latter cannot nor ought to be excluded.

The bat negotiates its course by sonar and senses above all else that painters are stupid.

I must acknowledge I was influenced by the batty works of other artists particularly Goya's The Sleep of Reason Breeds Bats, Blake's Etchings of Nebatnezzah, the pointillist Island of the Grand Bat and Picasso's Crying Bat.

The Bat is part of a series of humble works - the Synchophansy - or What the body may become - Smaller Sights to Obscurity.

Artist Statement - Elizabeth Rankin

The Bat

Elizabeth Rankin, 2008

acrylic on canvas / 20 x 20 cm

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(images, left to right; Elizabeth Rankin, The Bat / Jacqueline Salvatore, 8-ball )

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8-ball

Jacqueline Salvatore, 2007

board, acrylic paint, fish bones, glue, oyster shells, bitumen

100 x 40 cm

Riddance of the forth-coming conception

- Destruction
of the yester-year
the prize that's here
the now; it's here

Cancel the open-aided revolt
Smoldering smolt
death-reviving,
revitalising,
sly-devising
tote.

Wear it half-hearted Oh!
How it learns to glow,
permit the growth
of the unspoke
And wait the round for the next revoke .

Conversation had by the audience overheard in a gallery one day

1: (**Spotting a small sculpture on a plinth**) Oh now this is interesting! What do you think?

2: Ergh, yuck! Doesn't look like much to me.

1: Doesn't look like much? What d'ya mean?

2: Well, it's a turd isn't it?

1: Err... yes... but...

2: Well there you go, what do you expect me to think of a turd, be it in a gallery or not?!

1: Perhaps you could appreciate it as a subversion of the commonly accepted construct of aesthetic? It represents the organic, the cycle of renewal and decay, it is a necessary part of sustaining life; you could therefore argue that it is beautiful in many ways.

2: Beautiful? Are we talking about the same thing?

1: Doesn't it make you question your preconceived ideologies of what art is? Doesn't the context of our humble ablution sitting here in such a space give it a new life and a new voice?

2: No. I'd be sending myself for a straight jacket if a pile of (**fake cough**) "ablutions" started speaking to me.

1: So the genius of the artist in bringing to light new ideas and ways of thinking is lost on you?

2: I think that anyone who reckons a turd in an art show will be a hoot is well and truly deluded.

1: Then what about Duchamp? Made famous for shattering the conventions of art when he exhibited a used urinal at the Salon. His rebellious concepts were a spring board from which some of the greatest art of the last century has come. Are we not better off from thinking outside of hard edged psycho-semantic boxes?

2: The truth is that that is a turd.

1: (Sigh) The irony here is that every opinion is valid. To argue is to deny your freedom.

2: But then nothing will be agreed upon!

1: Oh but I do agree with you, I just believe in an open mind. No one could disagree that this is a piece of crap, Its plain to see... and smell. It’s not pleasant, no, but it is inspiring.

2: It should be flushed.

1: Ah! The joy of art!

Artist Statement - Jessica Hodgkinson

Breathe In, and, Parched Earth

The Hensonian Ontology, Fame and an SMS to Derrida

We began the process of creating this artwork as a response to the attempt by the moralists and neochristian fundamentalists, masquerading as post-constructivist guardians of the pre-actualisatised logic, to engage the sociojournalistic organisms against the established detachment of artistic thought from the control of the actuators. This pseudo-analytical discourse has actualised an attempt to embody the freedom of cultural workers within a state-sponsored extropy. The objective of this process is to effectively constrain the approach to exploration of the the human body as the site of resistance. All eventualities from this event-horizon will, in time, transform itself into an expansive cultural embodiment developed from empirical acts of intentionality that will transform all of the current states of the discourse into a transcendental whole. This new intentionality will signify the creation of a new discourse whose purpose it is to uphold the hegemony of the institutionalised other.

The synergy of the aforementioned sites of resistance will induce disharmony within the supplanted-self and outside of the external negative sensory consciousness, which will be formed as a composite of the electro-organic synthetic hybrids. The hegemony will be subverted and counter-weighed by the individualised undertakings of the "autonomous subconscious units" of the psycho-analytical being. Utilising a system of cybernetic cognition, it is possible to develop this further into a semblance of the phenomenological other-worldliness that is typical of the inter-connectedness of the existentialist ego.

The confirmation of non-conforming formalist formation, highlights the need for creative-thinkers to abandon all forms of ideologically misinformed formalism. This informs formative formulation of their substantive practices, which should be based upon the discoveries within the fundamentally theoretical investigations of the culture of forward-moving vectors. To further explain this phenomenon, we have to be prepared to juxtapose the coordinates of the formerly subjective character of the liberated consciousness, with that of the parallelistic chasm within the now disrupted linguistic discourse.

Challenging the pre-existing dichotomy of the ritualistic artifacts of the meme and the multi-facetedness of the Hegelian dialectic manifestations, can only be carried out with a thorough instantiation of the polymorphic characteristics of the primary semblances. In short, the metaphysical consequences of the didactic epistemology of the singular cosmology of self, is nothing more than the dialectic logic of the universal intentionality embodied within a continuously-shifting intersection of the invisible and idea-systems within the nanophysical realm.

The initialisation of a site for the oppositionarily advancing exo-specific hyper-manipulations of the inter-consciousness dialogue, will, by implication, involve interdisciplinary "aboutness" and multi-locative interstitial references to generate a social framework for distributed interfaces. This will, through an indirect universal causality, generate a pseudo-angular relativity to what Derrida refered to as the "tax" in the sending of the "postcards". In a sense the Hensonian ontological body of knowledge, the Hegelian disambiguation and the vicissitudes of Merleau-Ponty's "discoveries" will be united in a confabulation of substance and meaning that attains all the superfluidity of a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In its superfluidity, meaning can shift in a multi-directional sense, at once engaging the medium, its variants and the receiver, leaving a red-shift in its wake, that appears as the delay of the original. This delay in the original can be understood as a philosophical engagement of the fleeting nature of meaning that is attained by the parsing of messages through an array of inter-connected and regulated systemic rules which in turn affect its appearance and disappearance in the inbox of the deconstructed Neo-Hegelian contexts.

In this way we would like to inspire other artists to instantiate a claim in the land of the republic to construct a new path through which meaning can be seen as a postive aspect of a step toward a post-deconstructive, neo-Popper reality.

Artist Statement - Pamela Lee Brenner and Johannes Muljana
Performed by Peter Sommerville

Journey towards infinity

Time isn't linear, it moves in cycles,
History reflects but does it really repeat?
Spiraling through life and snagged by details along the way,
The momentum of a roller coaster considered at a snail's pace.
Fighting fate whilst following destiny's predetermined path,
One inconsequential individual shaking her fist against the universe.

Artist Statement - Kath Fries

Journey towards infinity

No mermaid princess
under the sea
in palace of mother-of-pearl.
I am water-sprite, nixie, spirit of stream
living with frogs in a meadow beneath trees
Tree-climber, clamberer on rocks

A star, sheathed in brightness and heat,
spinning
and from me fly sparks which flare in the void.
Fragments of colour, light and flagrance
Which are all that are seen.

I am a dragon, asleep in a mountain.
Emanates from me a wreath of charm
like smoke;
it coils through crannies and out into the world.
The dragon stirs, uncertain of waking.

Provocateur
I find the flaws
see in shadows
show my fangs
a guided missile for mistakes.
Ideas are my food, and colour
(Texture, shape, dimension),
real and unreal, live, ideal.

I inhere within a sphere
Of music and green silk.
I am fay, younger than my age
having lived so long
among Arwen, Eowyn, Galadriel.

Filter feeder, fugitive from time
The constellations figure my wavering way
as I pirate through shoals of CRN TFN ABN PMD.

Spirit cavalier, writing on walls
leaping through rainbow bridges
speaking with tongues

I tread in dreams
squinting in daylight
scuttling among crevices
stepping on cracks.

I am a companion to the sorrowful.
My vision refracts, crinkling, through seeing
crystal shards
trinkling in patterns, in rainbows
showers of bright sound.

tallula murphy, 2008

Artist Statement - Lilly Tallula

green melted glass, fine silver, pink enamel, plastic, clear glass, 24k gold, silicone / 3x3x1cm (each)

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(images, left to right; Lilly Tallula, Transformers / Lou Steer, Can of Worms )

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Can of Worms

CAN OF WORMS ARTIST STATEMENT

Can of Worms is my metaphor for artistic practice. Usually, opening a can of worms means finding a whole lot of trouble. An artist opens a can filled with worms, just for fun - or looking for trouble. "Look at them go!" Instead of putting the lid back on, the artist tosses the can aside to play with the worms, show the worms to friends, give the worms names, dress the worms up in costumes, try to teach them to dance, and perhaps try to become a worm (the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, perhaps?) Instead of putting them back in the can, the artist knows that worms need room to twine, tangle and make more worms.

So the artist sets about sorting out the worms for her big idea - big ones, fat ones, skinny ones, juicy ones. The worms won't co-operate. A bunch of them slither all over the benchtop, down the sides, and squirm along the floor, looking for some cool damp earth to burrow in. Randy worms start copulating in huge squishy balls (worms are hermaphrodites, that's twice the fun!) Some feel hungry so they slide over to the old coffee cup in the corner and slurp at the grounds in the cup. One of them gets literate and hides inside a massive book on sculpture - it's a bookworm (it's OK, paper's organic.) Another gets into the speakers of the stereo - it's an earworm, the catchy pop tune in her head that won't go away. A couple of worms crawl through the vents in the computer and start replicating inside it; it’s a matter of time before the viral worms crash the hard drive.

Plans thrown awry, the artist has to work with what she's got - a bunch of worms, a pile of castings, an empty can. She opens the door - the escaping worms first recoil at the light and then slink into the undergrowth, where they'll break down old dead shit to enrich the soil for new life. A kookaburra picks off a few slower worms, as they crawl away. Most life on earth lies beneath our feet, waiting to pop up when we least expect it. Just like the artist’s ideas. She’ll dig for those worms another day. Or charm them out of the ground when she needs them, by stomping a rhythm on the earth in gum-booted feet, near their burrows.

With a stick of charcoal, she starts sketching the copulating worms - look at the shapes they make when they twine around each other, look at the way their segments ripple, look at the smoothness of their skins. A curious worm crawls over the page, trailing tracks like little rivers through the charcoal.

She pulls out some flexible wire and starts patterning it to mimic the shapes made by the worms. That way looks pretty good - but what if she bends the wire spools this way, that way, inside out, upside down - now that’s interesting. Stick it to the wall and see how it looks - see those shadows where the light hits the wall through the wire worm loops. Get the camera and take a picture of the shadow play.

As for the empty can, it's impossible to put those worms back in the old can, now they've been allowed to stretch and flex to their full extent. So the artist recycles it into something more interesting - a vase, a sculpture, a piece of jewellery.

Let the worms crawl free.

Artist Statement - Lou Steer

oils, acrylic, plastic, steel / 8 x 50 cm

Too Many Thoughts In A Day.

Uni is shit. My hair is pink. The hot guy's gay. Or so it would seem... The tattoo is alive. The gnome is evil. I ate a cow. Whole. You're not thinking messily. Swans are hung. What? The moon sunk. Into my heart. You will die. Your hair pink. Lets beat the bush. Lets cry a river. Lets smoke our lungs out. Jack, Jimmy and Johnny. Lenny Kravits is great to have sex to. With an animal. So is Kurt Koubaine. I will be asthmatic. And an astronaut. The Japanese bombed us. In our yellow submarine. Till they found the sea of green. Harbor of Sydney. I need Panadene fort. Suck My big fat toe. I am the walrus. But remember, you can't keep a good dog down. You CANT keep a good dog down. Meow. Lets murder all civilians under the age of 1000. Burn mother fucker-burn. When I think about you I cut myself... ooh aah. I hate chairs. Chairs are trying to dominate. Toothbrushes too. Sexual abuse of my keyboard! Hows your placenta today? Mines a bit under the weather. I found it! Hiding behind my curtain... it grew feet. Nicolee! Mine tried to stab me in my sleep with a butcher knife. It saw me wake up and flew out the window. Spastic penguins. Gypsy whore. Zingora! Lets steal from the rich and steal from the poor. Cockroaches will take over the world. So will whiskers. Bathe in morning fresh for a very FRESH morning. Radioactive fingernail. Lets bomb the land, lets bomb the sea, lets bomb ourselves and lets bomb the bomb. Get out of my life, get out of my mind. Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney. Blue doves. Yellow diamonds. Red Clovers. Pink play stations. It's a mad mad mad mad mad world. Its boiling frost. I don't care if the sun don't shine. My momma always said life is like a box of sex toys. You never know who or what's gonna fuck you up, so eat your chcolates and shut the fuck up. If I was on fire would you notice me then? Yes, Id light my Cigarette. I have mad human disease. And so do you and all the political bastards in the black hole. Tickle me terrorist. I broke my wing bone and dislocated my beak. I'm high on life. And horse tranquilizers. Elvis never died. Nor did 2 Pac. Ronald Mc Donald is a pedophile rapist. So is PRIME possum. Goodnight boys and girls... Aladdin is hot. I want to do Aladdin. MY COCK IS MUCH BIGGER THAN YOURS! Thumb war is a vicious, serious game. This game is rigged. I live with a scat player. Bored as a candle. Shut up you rotten queer, I'm getting out of here. She lost her virginity. To a vacuum cleaner. The fish drowned. Cinderella is a skanky crack whore bitch. With testicles. I have lesbian tendencies. In my Penis. Put the lime in the coconut... nip nip. Take a sip. Blacks will be sold on the black market. Here it goes... Don't jump! Into safety! Elasticized thighs. The naked female body looks like a frog. Or a paperclip. Biblical gun. Holy KFC. I ate him. And my own head. But I'm not dead. The sea is red through my contact lens. I will be a fire hydrant in my next life. Beer increases your ability to write complete shit like this. I wish I still had my umbilical cord. And an umbrella inside my head to stop bullshit falling into my brain. Smiling is over rated. Frowning is not. Orange is a useless colour. Or so I was told. Licking envelopes makes my tongue melt.

One things for sure...

I NEED A ROOT

Artist Statement - Melissa Angius / Salvatore

(images, left to right; Melissa Angius-Salvatore, Squeak
/ Mitra Jovanovic, I am an artist )

I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
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I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.
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I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist. I am an artist.

untitled 2
coat hangers on a blank wall

In this work, the project of the artist is to explore the confronting notion of the project as conceptional coat hanger and its potential for interaction with an 'us' as conceptual organisation, in, with or for which we work.

Viewed ontologically, this arrangement provides a dialectic for exploring the behavioural phenomenon whereby those identifying as being outside the project, an emergent or emerging other, choose, either consciously or by mechanisms not in immediate or perceivable awareness, to hang qua hang their projections qua projections on the project qua project.

By starkly focussing attention on the hanger rather than the hung, the work, which paradoxically was hung by a hanger working so that it may be observed in the state identified by convention as hung as a work, illuminates the latent contrasts between the organisation as subject, the project as object, and the other (emergent or emerging) as a priori source of action, creating a semiotic matrix of dynamic expression in which the scope of observation is signified and therefore comes into awareness, establishing a polarising conflict that undermines the 'us' even while deploying itself through an amplification of the potential for affect.

Placing subject as object without scope against the bare wall serves to impose a subliminally signified alienation by locating the wall as signifier in the proto-landscape of void as void in memory, with a consequent redefining of the habitual epistemological impact of affect in the context of unconscious but subjective observation recalibrated to a normalised experience, one too often dwarfed by the presence of an organisational convention hung on the perception of project as object.

Peter Fyfe, 2008

Artist Statement - Peter Fyfe

"SNAIL-O-METRES"

"Snail-o-metres" is an inquiry into the natural existence of the life-form found in almost everyone's backyard. This slippery, shelled, plant eating, one-footed friend leaves its transparent slimy tracks everywhere.

"Snail-o-metres" is a measuring system to determine the distanced traveled by the snails within a day/night or another time period.

For too long animals, insects and other life-forms have been measured by human sized measurement standards, and it is time that different species that share the planet we all live on together to have their own capacity.

Each "Snail-o-metre", is 10cm squared, and are in rows of 9 per "Snail-o-metre" ruler.

There is also "Snail-o-metre, m3", the cube is constructed out of 6 "Snail-o-metre" squares that can be folded out flat to calculate distance over different obstacles .

The average adult snail foot is 5cm long and by the time it reaches from head to end of tail it is roughly 10cm.

As snails have not invented the numeral zero all their calculations go to 9, such as 9 days of the week, 9 months of the year and 9 "Snail-o-metres" on the ruler.

Artist Statement - Shane Brazier

"Many many years ago

There was a girl i once knew.

Sometimes i see her in my dreams...

That is when i am the happiest.

This is why i paint."

Artist Statement - Thomas C Chung

(images, left to right; Thomas C. Chung, Writings in Wire ... (detail) / Thomas Guichard, Alexander McIver and Fraser McDonald, Ambiguousity )

Ambiguousity

Thomas Guichard and Alex MacIver - A collaboration exploring the ambiguous nature of ambiguity.

Text by Fraser MacDonald. Text to be read by the artists in third, or fourth, person, in a theatrical tone.

Guichard's magnum opus is perhaps fatefully lingering 'mongst the vortex of pre-production. Both MacIver and he seem to skiff both the post and crossbar of contemporary art, respectively, in this perplexing offering. MacIver has altered Guichard's - who has dexterously avoided 'the meticulous' - drawings with colours synonymous with retinal aggravation, exploring collaborative projects simply with a 'next step' attitude. Guichard's avoidance of 'the meticulous' comes down to the old adage of "you can take the artist out of France... and then place/find him in either Japan or Dundee, or surrounding areas (or perhaps dis-place?- Noun), and this goes for 'artist' plural, irrespective of how many the plural denotes, ... but you can't take the France out of artist. We ask ourselves 'is this because the letters F,N,C and E aren't in the make-up of the term 'artist', and we respond 'I'm really not sure?'

It is amidst Guichard's portraits that the viewer must first ponder any 'meaning'. His faux-realist offerings depict the collaboratee, MacIver, in a flux of contentment. MacIver, it seems, is enjoying himself. Why not, he was on holiday at the time. As product of a joke perhaps, or other humorous moment, MacIver has offered illuminating poses that may chart or reference a narrative, best understood at the time. It is within this vacuum of dialogue we ponder MacIver's effervescent conversational traits, and here we find references to humour, but they are so subtle they have all but evaporated.

This collaboration is synonymous with the way in which artists collaborate. With either two, three or advancing numbers working together on a show - a marvelous insight into the successes of cross continental conversa-trons leading to such collaborations. Here's to the digital age! ...

... Or not? Guichard's humble renderings pursue annals foreign to that of the new successfulists. MacIver also turns his back on successfulism, with ill-orchestrated 'alterations' or 'interventions' directed to embarrass the composition of Guichard's apparently ambiguous poses - although I think we can all see that MacIver is blatantly squeezing his right tit in one? MacIver's additions to the portraits house comment directed at Guichards' drawings, but it's really hard to tell what he's trying to say? The 2D installations linger around a parody of another artist, I can't remember his name, but I'm assured this is correct.

Already seen in a text for Gallery, A New Contemporary Space
Eona McCallum

What precisely is the difference between desire and necessity? The answer, of course, is 23.45 degrees.

This also happens to be the angle between a right angle to the plane in which the planets of the solar system sit and Earth's axis.

The rotation of the Moon, the precession of the planet, its orbit about the Sun contribute to the climatic events of the Earth; it tides, weather patterns, winds, currents and so on, all of which set out the conditions under which life can exist on Earth, in particular, human life. This is the angle of physical necessity for our existence.

Maps of Earth are mostly shown in what can be called the "vertical" position, which is to say the map is presented as if the Earth were vertical. One can grasp verticality as a "natural" vertical in relation to the "natural" horizontal plane in which the planets of the solar system sit.

This position matches the relationship between a vertical standing person and the horizon line at the limit of visual landscape and upon which has been built a philosophical notion of identity called the "vertical subject."

Almost all notions of "being," especially before the 20^th century, rely upon the concept of the vertical subject against the horizontal field. The concept of self, inner life and outer world, the use of visual metaphors, objects and objectivity, action at a distance, transcendence and immanence all rely upon or react against this conceptual arrangement. Indeed, human existence, as we understand it, depends upon the use of the 90 degree angle as if it were an essential figure for human life. It is no wonder then that maps of Earth present this same arrangement; it simply reflects our desire that Earth is our home.

The vertical subject is at its most abstracted when grasped as the vertical line against the horizontal plane, a figure that forms one of the key features of modernism, especially in all the many forms of creative practice. The cross, multiplied as the grid and made spatial with the cube, has become the space of the 20th century. Even the notion of democracy is formed according the equality of individuals, or what might be thought of as the brotherhood of the endless grid of psycho-biological egalite. This brotherhood may well have freed us from slavery of people by shifting it to animals and the World itself, but democracy has concealed this enslavement so that when the World's rebellion occurs, we react with more oppression rather than liberation.

The desire of the people of the world is completely encased in the figure of the vertical subject against the horizon. And yet we know as clear as day follows night that this is not the relationship of the Earth to vertical line to the plane in which the planets of the solar system sit. What makes the Earth our home is not a pure and perfect 90 degree figure, but the ambiguous and imprecise 23.45 degree tilt. The actual relationship between vertical and axis, an angle of 23.45 degrees, is part of the necessary system of natural truth that makes our existence possible; what in fact makes our home, even with its walls with sides that are "straight and true."

The difference between desire and necessity is therefore 23.45 degrees.

Another word for desire is freedom and yet it can also be slavery. Likewise, necessity is both slavery and freedom. Thus, 23.45 degrees is the difference between freedom and slavery. But which is slavery and which is freedom? These are words bound to the configurations of empires and exploitation, master narratives and discourses, industrialisation and power that continue their corrupting influence over humanity. Perhaps all we really need is freedom from geometry or a small tilt to the left.

Artist Statement - Tomas Liebetag

A short polemic

Tomas Liebetag, 2008

acrylic, assemblage, plastic bottle, level on canvas / 25x25cm

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