ANYWHERE NOW

ANYWHERE NOW - the exhibition   Seven Australian artists were invited to participate in ANYWHERE NOW — a multidisciplinary exhibition celebrating the work of Samuel Beckett to be staged in conjunction with the 2003 Samuel Beckett Symposium in Sydney. Artists were selected whose practice explore themes and concerns in common with Beckett without being narrowly literal or illustrative in their interpretation of the writer’s work.   The gallery will be open on Monday 6 & Tuesday 7 January (11am-5pm) during the Samuel Beckett Symposium and will then revert to normal opening hours (see below) for the remainder of the exhibition.   Location: The Scott Donovan Gallery is located at Level 1, 86 Liverpool Street — on the corner of Liverpool & Kent Streets in Sydney’s Spanish Quarter — a short walk from Town Hall train station. Gallery hours: Wed to Fri 11am — 5pm & Sat 11am — 4pm. Phone: 61 02 9283 6626 Email address: scottdonovangallery@hotmail.com

Stephen Birch civic minded, 1999 civic minded consists of two near identical tree trunks facing one another across the gallery. Beneath each trunk is a pair of men’s black leather shoes. The work explores an important theme in Birch’s practice, that of the anthropomorphic and its manifestation in art history. Seemingly solid and indestructable, Birch’s trees are, on closer inspection, found to made of papier mache. This becomes a bark of its own, recalling the material processes that reduce trees to paper. Here that process is reversed and the pulverised tree is figuratively resurrected. civic minded deliberately emphasises sculpture’s materiality alongside its representational aspects. The trees exist both as objects in their own right and as elements within a range of possible narratives. As narrative representations the placement of the shoes questions whether we imagine a figure encased inside each trunk and other related possibilities. For instance, to assume that trees are inanimate because they do not ‘move’ is to ignore the biological processes that render them living organisms. By offering these trees shoes and thereby alluding to their temporal existence, the idea of trees as inanimate objects is humorously if not somewhat sinisterly dispelled.

Ryszard Dabek 26 bus stops, 1999/2002

Dabek’s series of 26 photographs of bus stops were taken from a moving vechile while travelling between the towns of Kosina and Solina in southeast Poland. Presented as a continuous strip these images depict a range of utilitarian structures framed by glimpses of the surrounding countryside. The bus stops are defined as much by their lack of mobility as by their purpose and design, each acting as a potential stoppage to flow or movement. Collectively they remap the countryside, replacing topographic conventions with a series of open ended descriptions that encourage a more speculative involvement with the landscape.

Alex Gawronski untitled (Try again), 2002

untitled (Try again) consists of a pallet of fake bricks supported by a timber post that rises from a galvanised domestic rubbish bin. A small, floor-based monitor depicts a single brick falling to the ground in continual sequence.

untitled (Try again) centres on two themes crucial to Beckett’s ouevre: abjection and irrational seriality. Beckett’s concern for the abject is here echoed through the symbolic inclusion of the rubbish bin. Furthermore the writer’s frequent allusions to the il-logical of common-sense explodes logic’s presumptions through sequences of obsessive serialisation. This concern for ‘seriality’ is approached in this instance via recourse to the humble house brick as a basic constructive symbol. Both themes are contextualised in the work through the video component which fulfills the work’s narrative. Ultimately untitled (Try again) reveals the circularity of logic in its fundamental ‘Beckettian’ absurdity. The nature of this cycle and its relation to the act of writing and the act of making recalls Beckett’s famous line,

"Try. Try again. Fail again, fail better."

MINIT (Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly) no sound, no movement, no memories, 2002

MINIT’s electro-acoustic installation no sound, no movement, no memories uses multiple arrays of speakers and a flickering fluorescent light to explore the connection between the mundane nature of our sonic environment and the passing of time, and our elastic perceptual relationship to its duration. Field recordings of ambient room tones, radiophonoc signal, electrical hums and site-specific environmental noises are combined in a seemingly random order to create an architecture of interminable sound, the form of which is at once conceivable yet forever unfolding. The fluidity of this audio composition is counteracted by the erratic, incessant interruption of a single flickering fluorescent light.

Tony Schwensen waiting for enlightenment waiting for a train, 2002

Tony Scwhensen’s waiting for enlightenment waiting for a train comprises two video/performance pieces exhibited as/on two monitors facing each other. Each monitor shows a single camera shot of the artist seated, one waiting for a train, the other waiting in his studio (for enlightenment). The work draws on previous performances by the artist which coupled endurance with everday language, commentary and regional vernacular, pushing the suggestive aspect of linguistic constructions to their limits and developing new and peculiar narratives through their repetition.

Ruth Watson

(project under development at time of writing)

Watson’s interest in maps, both historical and contemporary, has often led her to investigate the cultural semiotics of constructed, ideal and utopian world pictures. She brings an aesthetic sensitivity to the problems of representing lived, geo-political space, creating elegant and moving art works which betray a keen awareness of the history of map-making and its interrelationships with the history of Western conquest.

Copyright Notice

All photographs © Scott Donovan Gallery 2002.
Reproduction, transmission, performance, display, rental, lending or storage of this image in any form or in any retrieval system is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder.

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