Exhibitions / Disappearance
25.11.2011 to 17.12.2011
Featuring works by Simon O’Carrigan, Lionel Bawden, Kevin Chin, Marcel Feillafe, Betra Fraval, Drew Pettifer and Chris Bond. Seven artists look at the notion of disappearance, tracing possibilities and significance across the personal, political, ecological, and philosophical spheres. Working across collage, works on paper, over-painted photographs, cast porcelain, audio- and sculptural- installation, the artists demonstrate that ‘disappearance’ is arguably the word for our times. Surveying the works in show, the implication is that in the present day we are more likely to witness disappearance than new discoveries, a point the artists drive hard. These artists, under the initial curatorial guise of O’Carrigan (also exhibiting), take a big picture approach to the questions they ask themselves. The works attempt to answer the questions, but avoid simplifying the issue to didactic statement. The result is a thought-provoking exhibition with a strong, if varied, aesthetic force. The viewer, like the artist, walks away comparing erasure to loss, and the impossibility of truly tracing the void left by disappearance. Surprisingly, the sum of the experience plants a feeling that disappearance—whilst negative in itself—can inspire a meditative, transcendent experience.
Chris Bond and Drew Pettifer, Untitled (Benjamin in a tree, erased) 2011
oil on chromogenic print
260 x 380 mm
Chris Bond and Drew Pettifer, Untitled (Dylan balancing, erased) 2011
oil on chromogenic print
260 x 380 mm
Chris Bond and Drew Pettifer, Untitled (Dylan in a tree, erased) 2011
oil on chromogenic print
260 x 380 mm