group exhibition
The Swamp Age
MOP Projects, Gadigal/Sydney
17 November – 14 December 2008
artists
Steinar Haga Kristensen, Kristian Øverland Dahl, Clare Milledge
Steinar Haga Kristensen, Kristian Øverland Dahl, Clare Milledge
curator
Clare Milledge
Clare Milledge
photography
Clare Milledge
Clare Milledge
Art is inextricably linked with the notion of form, and as Lawrence Weiner once stated “Art can never be anything else but a specific object!" According to Bourriaud, “Forms come into being, from the ‘deviation’ and random encounter between two hitherto parallel elements…Form can be defined as a lasting encounter”. Thus, the human form is merely a lasting encounter, and the subconscious objective of humanity is to preserve that encounter for as long as possible. It thus follows that those forms that exhibit a purist, clean and defined shape and resist decay or contamination invoke a sense of well-being and security. On the other hand, those forms that exhibit a heterogenous, dirty, dark and entropic form (or formlessness) invoke a sense of fear and insecurity.
Kristian Øverland Dahl, Steinar Kristensen and Clare Milledge worked together on collaborations and group shows in 2006 in Norway, Austria and Sweden. Dahl is concerned with the way in which we use pathos as a means of engagement within art practice and politics and the trust and value we instill in it. He sees the meaning we impose onto an artwork as a form of pathos, confronting us on a biblical, political and artistic level, leaving us reconsidering our inherent trust in pathos. Kristensen exposes the black confusion at the heart of western culture driven by negation. His concern with this constant process of disillusionism often takes the form of fake spectacle, somewhere between the real and the imagined. Like a failed utopian dream, it inevitably becomes over-dramatized bad theatre. Milledge leads you on a confused and dirty path of signs and symbols revealing the disjointed mental process of attempted cohesion and organisation in our quest for meaning. She exposes our attempts to fuse connections between things that are inevitably only held together by blind faith.
L – R from top
images 1 – 2
The Swamp Age, installation view, 2008, MOP Projects, Gadigal/Sydney
images 3 – 4
The Swamp Age, 2008, MOP Projects, Gadigal/Sydney, exhibition invitation