Curator

BRIGITA OZOLINS

Artists

JULIE GOUGH

JORDAN BASEMAN

SALLY REES

ALYSSA SIMONE

MATT WARREN

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS

ANNE OOMS

LORRAINE JENYNS

RUTH FROST

PAT BRASSINGTON

Date: 24-Oct-2008 – 20-Feb-2010

Location: LONG GALLERY, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE, HOBART AND VARIOUS TOURING LOCATIONS ACROSS AUSTRALIA

Parallel explores the possibility that the everyday world is not what it seems. Intersections between art, spirituality and parallel states of being are explored in this exhibition through the work of ten contemporary artists using a diverse range of media including video, sound, sculpture, photography and installation.

The works in Parallel reveal the ability of art to deal eloquently with ideas and experiences that science cannot explain. Near death experience, contact with UFOs, the fragmentary and impermanent nature of memory and ghost sightings are some examples of uncanny topics engaged. Meanwhile, other works in this exhibition employ the abstract and symbolic to evoke a sense of curiosity, intrigue and disquiet in the viewer.

The project was initiated by Salamanca Arts Centre and has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australia, State and Territory Governments and is assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts, and the Hobart City Council.

CURATOR’S STATEMENT:

The following quote by curator Dr Brigita Ozolins comes from the exhibition catalogue. It articulates the original motivation behind Parallel:

…I am open to the possibility of other worlds and other states of being that may well exist in parallel to the one that I normally experience…I wanted to bring together a range of works that suggest an engagement with something that may exist beyond the everyday, objective, rational experience of life. I selected ten artists whose work does not offer a typical, postmodern critique of contemporary culture, but rather, reflects a search for meaning and a desire to make manifest aspects of the unknown, the unreachable and the unseen.