Curator

MARIA MACDERMOTT

Artists

LUCIENNE RICKARD

ROWAN REYNOLDS

ELLIE RAY

DUNCAN MARSHALL

Date: 11-Sep-2004 – 10-Oct-2004

Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania

As part of the CAST’S annual Emerging Curator Program, Maria MacDermott has curated Timepiece.

CURATOR’S STATEMENT:

In Timepiece we examine a range of works that are centred on the relationship between time and the physical properties of materials. The work of each of these six artists is informed by rigorous structures applied in the making. But, while they reveal programmatic clarity and repetition, these qualities are disrupted by the sense that the materials are imbued with meanings that move beyond formal intentions. Subtly emotive, they appear antithetical to the idea of prescriptive processes, but it is the rigour of the procedures that allows change to occur and makes manifest the passage of time.

Through repeated actions over extended periods of time, traces of the ‘making’ reveal an intrinsic history in relation to specific media in the works of these artists. This history allows conceptual and emotive evocations to arise from various relationships: the web and memory; the stitch and reparation; crystalline structure and fragility; gesture and growth; wear and exhaustion; and reflection and transience.

Time is further articulated through the properties of movement, trace, light and shadow that recur across the works. These effects, which are generated through the manipulation of the various media, accentuate the abstract characteristics of time. In a similar way, the paradox of the immaterial and the material, held in a tentative balance, generates an expanded presence for the work.

The works in this exhibition are residues of actions and movements. Because the movements are emphasized through repetition these residues hold an authority that distils the actions of the past causing the accumulation and compaction of time. The relationships between the materials and processes are carefully considered, for they are used to convey emotive and conceptual connections with the passing of time for each artist. However, time, rather than being presented as something linear, is shown through these works to be radial, fragmented, layered and permeable.