Me you me | For no real reason | Divine intervention

Firstdraft: Emerging artists investigate the interaction between couples, create a ‘broomsphere’ from 180 household brooms and make a divine intervention in Firstdraft’s last exhibition for 2010.

Gallery 1 and 2 – me you me
Luke Tipene and Emmanuela Prigioni

“The world is a twofold (wo)man in accordance with a twofold attitude. (…) This world is somewhat reliable; it has density and duration; its articulation can be surveyed; (…) Without it you cannot remain alive; its reliability preserves you; but if you were to die into it, then you would be buried in nothingness.”

me you me is an installation and video artwork that investigates the interaction between couples. A collaboration between artists Luke Tipene and Emmanuela Prigioni, me you me is developed from analysing footage of couples in the public domain. The work rationalises the complexity of relationships into derivative “interaction structures”. Isolating specific instances of relationships in this manner provides a platform to explore the nature of interpersonal exchange in detail.

Adopting scientific exploration as parody, me you me positions itself as an objective, rational investigation of intimate and complex personal emotions. As a commentary, this work suggests that the ability of intimacy, empathy and even love to be rationalised means that these values have lost their social relevance. me you me aims to create a platform for spectator reflection and dialogue on the importance of these values by ironically suggesting their finite, rational limitations.

Gallery 3 – For no real reason
Yasmin Smith

In July 2010, Yasmin Smith participated in an archaeological excavation in Spain, influencing her investigation into the intersections of fiction and fact in the representation of reality. For no real reason seeks to highlight this intersection, and the language structures, that underlie the interpretation of objects.

The House of the Tragic Poet is a 3D model of the floor plan of a Roman terrace, drawn and described by one of the volunteers on the dig. This work visually encapsulates the influence of memory and personal discourse on recounts of historical knowledge.

Broomsphere utilises 180 household brooms, which protrude from a core of welded plumbing sockets to create a 3 by 3 metre sphere of brooms. This work plays on language associations we create around unnerving objects. ‘Like a giant dandelion’, ‘sort of like a Sea Anemone but bigger’. This work was inspired by an investigation into literary tropes and the role they play in familiarising the unfamiliar.

Gallery 4 – Divine intervention

Kristin McIver

Kristin McIver is a visual artist whose work is a study of desire and aspiration. Through her works, the artist explores the aspirational impulses of the middle class, and highlights the way that fundamental human needs are transformed into desirable commodities by self serving global corporations.

Divine intervention proposes that the media and digital age have created a perpetual desiring machine, resulting in a global culture obsessed with material consumption. As Corporations expand their markets into remote corners of the globe, they exploit countries desperately trying to buy into the capitalist dream. Our natural habitats are destroyed in order to make way for newer, better environments; seemingly an improvement on that provided by nature.

Through its formal construction and materials, Divine intervention evokes the false propositions promised by futuristic developments, and their glossy promotional material. The work borrows a phrase taken directly from a marketing campaign, emblazoning it in neon to seduce the viewer, while exposing the irony and falsity of the message. The absurd proposal “Life unlimited” promises the impossible; the gift of immortality pursued previously only through religious and spiritual refuge. Has desire replaced religion to become the salvation of the 21st century?