Emerging artists “dial a performance artist”, create works of science, build ritualistic headwear and kinetic sound sculptures in four new exhibitions opening at Firstdraft in April.
Exhibition opens: Wednesday 14 April 2010, 6-8pm
Exhibition continues: to 2 May 2010
Artist talks: Sunday 2 May 2010 at 4pm
Gallery 1 – With Feathers
Alice Williams
Crossing the western distributor one afternoon Williams photographed women employed to count traffic on the road. The company name on their hi-vis. vests was r.o.a.r. data. With Feathers is a performance and video show made from raw data: a sign that reads, “dial a painter”, figures painted on a concrete path, a feather. In this show concrete objects take flight on deviant paths. No job too small is a video work performing situations in which it might be necessary to dial a performance artist. The man on the street is a photo animation with live voice over. It is a hyperbolic narrative dramatizing the romantic exchange of two figures painted on concrete. The unifying theme of the two works is redemption. Irreverent play redeems mundane objects from banality. Underpinning this laughter, With Feathers is a quiet celebration of the everyday.
Live performances of the man on the street will be held on Sundays during the exhibition period.
Gallery 2 – Acts of Science
Justin Cooper
Acts of Science engages in a critical examination of the techniques used to create works of science. The varied objects encompass, what is generally called – problematic process conception to incompletion – Scientific imagination. Not scientific prediction. This general expression means that new techniques extend beyond old techniques. To varying degrees, the new opposing technologies and ceramic sciences continue to offer my geo-science experiments, with a philosophical means of not controlling any specific outcome which is understood by the tradition of ceramics.
Gallery 3 – 4
Emma Ramsay
Ramsay’s work in 4 references ritualistic wear worn across many spiritual traditions. As a by-product of an obsession with the function of divination in gaining higher insight into ones past, present and future, her new obsession with mutating patterns of traditional ritual wear has forged a new direction in her practice. Ramsay hopes to encourage an intuitive response to the pieces as wearable items and art objects. There is a sculptural energy that is animated by the audience gaze even when the works are not being tried on.
Ramsay has designed a new kind of ‘sack’ hat. A mutation on the snood, traditionally worn by women, is now a type of unisex headgear, appropriate for all occasions. Why not try on a contemporary art stole or trick your friends with a take on the humble hoodie?
Gallery 4 – The Virtue of Scissors
Vinessa Trikeriotis and Ash Cooper
The Virtue of Scissors is a collaborative work by Trikeriotis and Cooper. The title of this work is borrowed from the poem, Life Stories by Margaret Atwood. It speaks of a forging of the artist’s identity through narrative. This is a story developed and defined through subtraction rather than through addition. The idea that what is edited, discarded, forgotten or lost is as significant as what we choose to hold onto – the elements of self reinforced through archiving, remembering, ritual and repetition.
f i r s t d r a f t
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116-118 Chalmers St.
Surry Hills NSW 2010
t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665
mail@firstdraftgallery.com
www.firstdraftgallery.com
open: Wed to Sun, 12-6pm
