vertigo
Gosford Regional Gallery, Gosford | 5 June – 26 July 2009
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Perth | 5 July – 2 September 2007
Curators: Holly Williams and Jaki Middleton
Vertigo installation view at PICA with works by Simon Yates (right) and Broken Landscape by Eleanor Avery (background), courtesy the artist, and Ryan Renshaw Gallery. Photo: Jaki Middleton
About the exhibition:
Vertigo examined temporality, change and impermance through the practice of eight talented early-career Australian artists. The recent prevalence of disrupted narrative and fragmentation in contemporary cultural production (be it in literature, cinema or the visual arts) reflects this increasing sense of precariousness and the paradoxical effort made to resist change.
The word ‘vertigo’ is conventionally used to describe a physiological balance disorder or spinning sensation, this exhibition drew on this sensory experience, both in a physical sense by incorporating works that employed kinetic and perceptual elements, and more broadly via the notion of impermanence; engaging and grappling with a world in a constant state of flux.
The artists in Vertigo navigated this challenge in complex and surprising ways. Working across the mediums of sculpture, installation, photography and video, the artists gave visual form to the underlying sense of uncertainty and instability that pervades everyday existence.
Participating artists:
Eleanor Avery, Christopher Hanrahan, David Lawrey and Jaki Middleton, Ms & Mr, Holly Williams, Simon Yates. With Rebecca Ann Hobbs in the PICA iteration.