Statics
05 Feb - 02 Mar 2013
STATICS
Suzanne Dery, Ashanti Harris, Ash Reid, Joe Sloan, Urara Tsuchiya
5 February – 2 March 2013
Transmission Gallery is delighted to present Statics, a group exhibition of work by Ashanti Harris, Ash Reid, Joe Sloan, Suzanne Dery and Urara Tsuchiya. Occupying both floors of the gallery the work ranges from video, text and sculptural objects to participatory workshops and performances.
The artists are diverse in their use of medium, artistic process and intentions but some thematic parallels are evident within their practices.
Joe adopts present-day mythologies, exploiting extended metaphors related to the institutional formation and dissemination of ‘factual’ narratives, and the establishment of accepted ‘norms of thought’. His work draws on symbolism formed within the collective consciousness of late capitalist consumerism, interrogating the various ideological imperatives at play in the construction, distribution and manifestation of contemporary meaning.
Suzanne also draws upon the mythical through symbolism and sculpture, asking us to suspend our disbelief to ask deeper questions about how much we know and are sure of. Her work simultaneously sits between the seemingly rational and irrational forms of knowledge production.
Although there is humour in her practice, she is engaged in a sincere spiritual search for the commonalities in ritual experience or understanding we as human beings, share.
Virtual contradictions of stereotyped gender representations are displaced, examined offline and embodied within Ash’s installation. Performed selves are constructed and enacted, received and regurgitated in a transhumanist search for self-assurance. Ash interrogates the economic and social structures of desire and our engagement with the internet and each other.
Urara’s work on the other hand embraces material with hand made costumes within highly constructed participatory experiences. Urara's practice is concerned with the disconnect between the personal and the social. She questions what people do in private and in public, often through use of sub-cultural phenomena as a kind of metaphorical prop. The work manipulates subjectivities through an extended anthropomorphism, applying invisible, imagined, distinctly human characteristics to non-human beings.
Ashanti’s work is in the form of a dance/movement workshop and series of performances where the participants are restricted in their ability to move within the gallery space. Her work strips itself of extraneous material to allow simplistic experience both outside the object and as subjective object. Ashanti arrives at meditative alternative languages through reduced movement often highlighting the disparity between experiencing and watching movement or stillness – making us forget our bodies and become acutely aware of them once again.
The works within Statics all deal with “the performative” in the way that they are made or experienced. They sit on a spectrum between conscious and unconscious / the embodied and the metaphysical, and through performance or sculpture embrace ritual and subcultures. Within all the artists’ practices there seems to be a quest to identify systems of meaning or understanding, even if the objective is ultimately to deconstruct or even destroy them.
Suzanne Dery, Ashanti Harris, Ash Reid, Joe Sloan, Urara Tsuchiya
5 February – 2 March 2013
Transmission Gallery is delighted to present Statics, a group exhibition of work by Ashanti Harris, Ash Reid, Joe Sloan, Suzanne Dery and Urara Tsuchiya. Occupying both floors of the gallery the work ranges from video, text and sculptural objects to participatory workshops and performances.
The artists are diverse in their use of medium, artistic process and intentions but some thematic parallels are evident within their practices.
Joe adopts present-day mythologies, exploiting extended metaphors related to the institutional formation and dissemination of ‘factual’ narratives, and the establishment of accepted ‘norms of thought’. His work draws on symbolism formed within the collective consciousness of late capitalist consumerism, interrogating the various ideological imperatives at play in the construction, distribution and manifestation of contemporary meaning.
Suzanne also draws upon the mythical through symbolism and sculpture, asking us to suspend our disbelief to ask deeper questions about how much we know and are sure of. Her work simultaneously sits between the seemingly rational and irrational forms of knowledge production.
Although there is humour in her practice, she is engaged in a sincere spiritual search for the commonalities in ritual experience or understanding we as human beings, share.
Virtual contradictions of stereotyped gender representations are displaced, examined offline and embodied within Ash’s installation. Performed selves are constructed and enacted, received and regurgitated in a transhumanist search for self-assurance. Ash interrogates the economic and social structures of desire and our engagement with the internet and each other.
Urara’s work on the other hand embraces material with hand made costumes within highly constructed participatory experiences. Urara's practice is concerned with the disconnect between the personal and the social. She questions what people do in private and in public, often through use of sub-cultural phenomena as a kind of metaphorical prop. The work manipulates subjectivities through an extended anthropomorphism, applying invisible, imagined, distinctly human characteristics to non-human beings.
Ashanti’s work is in the form of a dance/movement workshop and series of performances where the participants are restricted in their ability to move within the gallery space. Her work strips itself of extraneous material to allow simplistic experience both outside the object and as subjective object. Ashanti arrives at meditative alternative languages through reduced movement often highlighting the disparity between experiencing and watching movement or stillness – making us forget our bodies and become acutely aware of them once again.
The works within Statics all deal with “the performative” in the way that they are made or experienced. They sit on a spectrum between conscious and unconscious / the embodied and the metaphysical, and through performance or sculpture embrace ritual and subcultures. Within all the artists’ practices there seems to be a quest to identify systems of meaning or understanding, even if the objective is ultimately to deconstruct or even destroy them.