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Curator's Statement
A visual invitation to ask questions.
An opportunity to take a very personal look into the kinds
of relationships that artists have with their imaginations,
with ideas, identity, gender, community, family, culture,
institutions, environment, politics, religion, history . .
.
The
Oxford dictionary’s definition of relationship
is “a kind of connection or correspondence
or contrast or feeling that prevails between persons
or things”. |
Artists respond to the myriad of experiences, observations
and stimuli that our world offers. Their creative process
may take any number of routes. It is a journey of discovery
that may sometimes result in the making of an object –
an object which we may call ART.
What we see is what we get? The works in an exhibition
may or may not be obvious to the viewer. The content of a
work of art may sometimes be indecipherable to the naked eye.
In this case, the naked eye is that which is not trained
to decipher the meaning behind the work. Training evolves
surely, as we look, not once over, but deeply and repeatedly,
to gain what we call visual literacy!
The literate eye can peel back the layers of ingredients that
the artist has employed in the artwork – the materials
and methods, the colours, lines, light, perspectives and compositional
devices. The literate eye takes chances, makes wild
assumptions, questions and digs for the content/context (the
ideas contained of the work). The literate eye does not take
the safe road. It gazes into both the work, and into the mind
and heart of the viewer, and knows that through a process
of investigation, that answers will appear. There are
no right or wrong answers in looking. The object of
looking is discovery.
The works in the exhibition Relationships were chosen for
two reasons: first, they are diverse in their approaches and
their contexts, thereby offering us a broad perspective into
the viewing experience. They transverse the great number
of experiences and concerns that artists respond to.
Second, they all have a commonality that speaks about relationships.
Alan Clarke’s small work “Mother Soup-erior”
speaks about the very big relationship of two cultures crossing
paths. Molly Lenhardt’s work may speak of the same
cultural relationship? Brenda Pelkey’s photograph
panoramically captures not only Maxine Coleman’s very
private relationship with a space she has created, but also
the eye of the artist in identifying and capturing this space.
Invisible/Stranger/Mine, by Elizabeth MacKenzie, looks
inside a deep frame and into the body where a new relationship
is growing. “Relic”, by Debbie Wosniak-Bonk, celebrates
the primal energy of the land on which she grew up.
Each work in this exhibition has been chosen, to stimulate
the viewer, to not only decipher the relationships that prompted
the artist, but to look beyond this show into the relationships
that surround us and emanate from us.
Which relationships would you, the viewer, identify - to celebrate,
to investigate, to question, and to commit to paper, paint,
dance, music, text – to further enrich your legacy -
and our cultural heritage?
- CURATOR'S STATEMENT - Donna
Kriekle
- LIST
OF WORKS
- EXHIBITION
SCHEDULE
- ABOUT
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