Future Now is a travelling prize, curated by Will Foster, that seven 2013 Honours graduates were invited to be a part of. The show will travel to three Regional Galleries around Victoria over the next 6 months, I'll let you know more about those dates when they're a bit closer.
Essentially Future Now is an exhibition of work from the recent VCA Honours Graduate exhibition, but because I'd already been in a show of Grad show work at West Space earlier in the year, and also because I figured that most people who'll come to see Substation will have already seen that work, instead I asked if for this part of the show I could make new work.
The piece I made is called FRIENDS, and it's basically a kind of site-specific solo show within the exhibition, I think.
FRIENDS was exhibited in it's own little room within the gallery. From the doorway as you walk into the room you see a sculpture on the floor of a blu-ray DVD of the American sitcom Friends, (season two).
When you then look to the wall on the right you see six A3 drawings; a portrait of each of the artists in the exhibition, (plus, you know, the same amount of friends that are in the sitcom Friends).
Photo credit- Kristy Milliken
Six drawings, acrylic on 225gsm paper, each 42 x 29cm, from left to right they are titled Alex, Christina, Dan, Isabelle, Daniel and Sarah.
In each of the drawings the subject is smiling happily like a headshot photograph of a sitcom star.
Dan. Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 42 x 29cm. 2014.There's also an audio element to the show, as repeating throughout the gallery space is a one minute long looped recording of me singing the theme song to Friends.
If you'd like to hear my version of the song from the show I have previously used it as the audio to this video, that originally I made to accompany a slideshow of me and my friend Dan, that I made for Dan's sister when she was putting on a mini film festival.
The audio is coming from a CD player on the ground, (the cd player, of course, was the listening device of choice in 1995, the year of Friends season two).
So yeah, obviously I have the voice of an angel, but even still, that angelic song repeating all day long turns the experience of spending time with the work into a little bit of a friendzy.
Anyway the show is meant to be fun, but also I wanted to pay a genuine little tribute to all six people in the show I went through university with and am lucky enough to call my friends.
The work is also meant to draw a reference to the idea of group shows that feature a selection of only artists who are all friends, which I think is a pretty common thing in Australian artist run spaces.
The other thing I liked about the show is that to get to my FRIENDS room you have to have gone through most of the other artists rooms in the show, and so having just experienced their work I liked the idea that the viewer could now put a face behind the art.
For instance, here's a drawing I did of a detail of one of Christina Hayes' paintings from Future Now.
And now, exhibited fifteen meters away from Christina's painting, here's the face behind the work.
Christina. Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 42 x 29cm. 2014.
Ha, anyway, thanks heaps for reading, and I hope you know dear reader, that even though no one told you life was gonna be this way, and even if your job's a joke, your broke or your love life's D.O.A. And maybe it's like you're always stuck in second gear, and if you feel like it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year. Well, just write me an email cause I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour, yeah I'll be there for you, like I've been there before. I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.
The work is also meant to draw a reference to the idea of group shows that feature a selection of only artists who are all friends, which I think is a pretty common thing in Australian artist run spaces.
The other thing I liked about the show is that to get to my FRIENDS room you have to have gone through most of the other artists rooms in the show, and so having just experienced their work I liked the idea that the viewer could now put a face behind the art.
For instance, here's a drawing I did of a detail of one of Christina Hayes' paintings from Future Now.
Ha, anyway, thanks heaps for reading, and I hope you know dear reader, that even though no one told you life was gonna be this way, and even if your job's a joke, your broke or your love life's D.O.A. And maybe it's like you're always stuck in second gear, and if you feel like it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year. Well, just write me an email cause I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour, yeah I'll be there for you, like I've been there before. I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.
No comments:
Post a Comment