Exhibitions / Field (Marginal Light)

10.04.2015 to 09.05.2015

Westspace, Melbourne

A collaboration with Lynette Smith

The collaboration has been contrived to test what might happen when two artists work with limited knowledge of what the other is doing and why they are doing it—contrary to the usual conventions of collaboration. It is a strategy that tries to show how association, obscurity, uncertainty, incompleteness, deception and the inauthentic colour our response to things.

The process by which the collaboration operates is straightforward: it begins with an object, in the case of Field (Marginal Light) it is a cover-less book found by Lynette on 1940s German gliders, and in Field (Wooden Cypher) it is a small, old painted wooden pencil box, chosen by Chris. These objects act as a starting point, with both artists working in parallel and over the top of the intentions of the other, as they think about how to interpret the object and work through its implications. Each artist is unaware of the other’s thoughts about the object except through what they can infer by looking at the object and knowing the circumstances of its finding.

The collaboration has some ‘rules’ or conditions. The finder of the starter object informs the other artist of the physical character of the work they intend to make, but they stay silent or obscure about their intentions. The finder will also make an underpainting informed by the object, and once finished, give it to the other artist to overpaint. The other artist won’t know until they receive it what this underpainting will be like. Apart from these constraints it is open: the finder artist will prescribe nothing about what the other should do with the underpainting, who can decide to work with, against, alongside or ignore as they see fit. Following the creation of the underpainting/overpainting, both artists are then free to respond to the starter object with drawing, sound, installation, video and sculpture using familiar techniques or new.

A website has been created to explore the process of collaboration, and to extend it: www.serpentcurling.com