Stephen Bush
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont
Starlie Geikie
Todd McMillan
curated by Lauren Reid and Tony Stephens
18 November - 18 December 2010
Grantpirrie Gallery, Sydney Australia
Exhibition text:
When confronted by an artwork, a viewer cannot fully comprehend the artist’s process – how an idea translates into action, back into an idea and then action again, repeating an indeterminate number of times until resolution is achieved. There is an intimacy between the artist and the artwork, articulated in all stages of the creative process, but not necessarily seen in the finality or the act of exhibition.
With a curatorial intention to focus on the unseen process of the artist, perhaps we could have selected any artist for this exhibition, as all artists develop an idea into an artwork – whether physical, ephemeral or conceptual. While this is true, the artists who form the voice of this show do so with a somewhat ambiguous conclusion, leading us to question the idea or concepts inherent in the work, connecting the start with the finish.
The Garden of Forking Paths draws together five artists who engage with transformation: a fiction into a history, a practical object into a melancholic romance, and domesticity into abstract. The aim is not to be reductive or to draw conclusions but to have many paths simultaneously open for exploration: to consider the movements that occur between, around and within an artwork’s conception, the artwork and its reception.
Starlie Geikie, Falling fast... Falling free, 2010, pencil on paper, 58 c 44cm each, image courtesy the artist
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, But Like Her Mother, Years Agone, She Has Her Dreams; She Has Her Dreams, 2010, glicee photograph, 120 x 54cm, edition of 5, image courtesy the artist and Goddard de Fiddes Gallery
Roy Ananda, Gravity Assist (detail), 2010, balsa wood, pins, acrylic paint, plaster, foam, timber, MDF, dimensions variable, image courtesy the artist and dianne tanzer gallery + projects
Stephen Bush, Col du Galibier, 2004, oil on linen 201 x 244cm, image courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery
Todd McMillan, After the deluge, 2010, projector, DVD, dimensions variable, image courtesy the artist and Grantpirrie Gallery