dämmerschlaf

Artspace, Gadigal/Sydney

28 January – 28 February 2016

Dämmerschlaf features new, site-specific work commissioned from three of the inaugural Artspace One Year Studio Artists: Nick Dorey, Mikala Dwyer and Clare Milledge. The studios are a key part of the ecology of Artspace, and as we welcome a new cohort of studio artists for 2016, Dämmerschlaf teases out the relationship between the sites of production and presentation as we look to further engage with the Gunnery building not merely as a container for activity but as an active participant in programming.

The German word Dämmerschlaf is the etymological root for the English ‘twilight sleep’, which describes a state induced by a combination of analgesia and amnesia. Here twilight sleep encompasses processes of dreaming, interpretation and translation that occur in and between the studio and the gallery, and that are central to artistic practice from the inception of an idea to its realisation. Dämmerschlaf highlights the thresholds and states of consciousness that can be explored through creative practice and ideas around the supernatural, the occult, alternate spiritualities and different ways of perceiving reality.

Aspects of this exhibition were exhibited in Erewhon, and toured with NETS Victoria