2023

The Philosophers

Bondi Pavillion Gallery

20 May – 25 June, 2023

The Philosophers

Two sides of the same coin, curated by Elizabeth Reidy and Todd Fuller, Bondi Pavilion

20 May – 25 June, 2023

The Philosophers (2021 - 2023), play with absurdist notions and poetics of the everyday lived experience. Totemic structures act out as past and present ‘beings’, as residents, citizens, and co-habitués. They embody fragility, vulnerability, awkwardly loitering, suspended, interrupted, hovering and jostling, rearranged and rescheduled. We are confronted by ourselves, curious to seek who we are, how to behave, and what to value in this familiar yet puzzling contemporary situation.

Juxtaposed readymade, reclaimed objects, and fragments, commonly found around the home and neighborhood complicate the distinctions between the interior and exterior spaces. Mass-produced materials and forms probe the interconnected, commoditized, and hyper-consumerist 21st-century global culture that influences our identity, and manipulates desires, fantasies, fears, and feelings shaping our everyday lives.

The received external and informed internal psychological landscape is where The five of me (2017) begins. The confessional statement connects to the notion that ‘personal is universal’. The viewer is implicated with the personal statement and may alternate between the individual/subjective self and the collective consciousness. We cultivated a persona for the exterior world. At home, we relax to our ‘true’ selves. The five of me is a gift from my family suggesting I have a multiplicity of personalities. The painted statement text is integrated with the reclaimed cardboard text ‘Liberty’ and ‘united’ which opened agency to activate, acknowledge, accept, and value my multiple personalities… personal /universal diversities. 

Let GoGo (2017) has its roots in the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s universal theory of the ‘good life’ where one flourishes in mind and body to live well so you can fulfill your potential as a human being and live with integrity with four key principles: virtue, excellence, fulfillment, and happiness. Let GoGo also plays on the positivity and personal growth industries. The ability to ‘let go’ or ‘let it go’ of annoyances or influences of past experiences is considered central to living a fulfilled life.

The work can be seen as a reminder, words of advice, or simply an absurdist notion in visual language, a pictorial illusion where repetition is used to echo and affirm line, shape, and meaning. The reclaimed text is painted on reclaimed cardboard packaging as an activated ground and thus embeds the ‘aura’ of ‘real-world’ life experiences and interconnection of object and subject opening questions of value/less and worth/less in our complex and excessive global 21st contemporary socio-culture condition.

Waverley Artist Studios, 2023 residency artists: Armando Chant, Georgia Banks, Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Philippa Hagon, JD Reforma, ZoeSlee.

Documentation Silversalt Photography

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2023 We know ourselves as part and as crowd

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2022 pleasure eaters