From Carrie Miller…
If anyone could make science sexy, it would be one of Australia’s most remarkable multi-media art duos, David Haines and Joyce Hinterding. In their latest exhibition, Orgasm, they investigate this most fundamental of human experiences – one which is now simultaneously ubiquitous to the point of banality in a sexualised culture and still entirely beyond language.
Haines and Hinterding take a curious and fascinating path into the pulsing heart of this exquisitely private singularity that’s common to all of us via the work of radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, practitioner of ‘orgasm therapy’. Reich developed devices in order to harness a primordial cosmic energy he had ‘discovered’ for the purpose of restoring the natural balance in things. In Orgasm, Reich’s ‘Cloudbusters’ have been faithfully recreated by the artists. These technological objects – which are supposedly able to blast holes in clouds to create environmental balance – are transformed by the duo into beautiful sculptural pieces which, along with the other works in the show, combine to creatively capture something of the elusive nature of the exhibition’s subject matter. In a sometimes repetitive art scene, witnessing Haines and Hinterding’s highly original and inspired work is like getting to catch lightning in a bottle.
Until 7 July
Breenspace, Sydney
Pic: Courtesy the artists & Breenspace
