Opening: Friday 27 August 6pm
Exhibition Dates: 27 August – 17 September
Gallery One
Blind Juncture
Artist: Ingrid Dernee
Ingrid Dernee Blind Juncture X, pen and pencil on paper, 2009. Image courtesy the artist.
Blind Juncture represents a distinct and important arm of Ingrid Dernee’s practice. The drawings for this exhibition investigate whether the visual tools of mask and mirror can be used as a subversion of dominant cultural ideology. Dernee references Judith Butler’s key idea that gender and more broadly, self, is a performative action that is continually constructed through interplays with other individuals, culture, institutions and society and large. Dernee’s use of mask ‘blinds’ herself to the outside world, both as a source of refuge and subversion to reading. Within her drawing and performance works, the mask becomes a key aesthetic device and equally significant to the figure. It helps to strip the figure of any identifying features, removing context. The mask itself has manifested in Dernee’s drawings to become a stylized abstraction and aesthetic device, which is represented in a large-scale drawing and sculptural work.
Gallery Two
Squinch (uno)
Artist: Mandy Ridley (Level Artist in Residence)
Mandy Ridley Embroidered garment, Sephardim Museum Toledo (Detail), ink on paper, 2010.
Image courtesy the artist.
Squinch is an architectural term that describes a small arch or vault, placed diagonally across the corner of a square or rectangular room and serving as an intermediary between this and a round superstructure.The transition between square or rectangular rooms and round domes was one of the chief problems of Islamic Architecture.
For Mandy Ridley, a short-term residency at LEVEL has provided just such a transition zone within her own art practice.
Working with materials collected during research in Southern Spain, Ridley has developed imagery that expresses her fascination with the cultural convergence that blossomed during the 700-year period when Andalusia was under Islamic rule. This confluence of traditions resulted in a sophisticated hybrid culture. The work continues Ridley’s ongoing investigation into translation and the fluidity of cultural identity; in particular the expression of world-view through material culture.
Barrucand, Marianne. and Bednorz, Achim. Moorish Architecture in Andalusia 2007 p. 230. Taschen Köln.
Gallery Three
I’m Okay, You’re Okay
Curator: Alice Lang
Artists: Agatha Gothe-Snape, Kate James, Sanja Pahoki
Agatha Gothe-Snape Test projection for Major Major at home, digital documentation, 2009.
Image courtesy the artist.
I’m Okay, You’re Okay explores the relationship between anxiety and contemporary art practice.
Artists Agatha Gothe-Snape, Kate James and Sanja Pahoki each examine the potential for anxiety to motivate and embody the subject matter of their work through: analysing it’s role in the creative process; drawing from and re-enacting it’s presence in every day scenarios; and incorporating it as a tool to fuel labour intensive processes.
Mandy Ridley’s work has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.