Volume V;
The Sugared Sewer Pipe
Curated by Molly Stephenson & Iona Mackenzie
Madeleine Minack / Veronica Charmont / Alice McIntosh / Hélène Padoux / Emma Crabtree / Lauren Wilson / Patrick Zaia / Matthew Clancy / Simone Scandrett / Astrid Vandercamere / Skye Malu Baker / Liv Moriarty / Madeline Cline / Cáit Ní Dhuinnín / Danielle Divola
Danielle Divola
An homage to comfort food here and where I cannot reach it, with long furbies
Acrylic paint on paper & velvet polyester on foam board
2020
Through the artist’s affinity with long Furbies, she pays homage to her favourite comfort foods: a bowl of spaghetti or her grandmother’s riscta with meat in one panel, and a cup of takeaway ice cream from Gelato Messina in the second panel. The savoury meal is readily available to the artist should she decide to cook up some pasta, but due to the distance in driving which would breach current lockdown laws, buying takeaway ice cream would be unfeasible and punishable with a fine. This is the situation of experiencing food in Narrm (Melbourne) in 2020, mid-pandemic.
Astrid Vandercamere
Memories from LV-426
Resin & polyester
60cm x 80cm
2020
Entitled Memories from LV-426, this sculpture questions the new, future and/or imaginary forms of life that ecological, transgender or even scientific questions raise today. If we find here the shape of the egg, a form of a life already engaged but still fragile and mysterious, we do not know which creature it contains. Is it a new life form that appeared on earth following environmental changes, an alien egg (like those that contain a threat in the film Alien), a hybrid creature or unidentified fluid texture? This strange egg presents an aesthetic closer to the imagination of science-fiction than reality, to give us the possibility of imagining what it contains and the world to which it belongs.
GROWTH, DECAY, METAMORPHOSIS: WHEN ART LOCATES MEANING IN CHANGE
Written by Matthew Clancy
Image citation: Annabel Mehran
Cáit Ní Dhuinnín
on Seili
Moving image & text
2020
In the time of isolation I travel in my mind back to Seili, an island off the West Coast of Finland. Remembering Seili I live through different times and layers, recalling the turbulent history of the place, once a leper colony, then a psychiatric hospital, now a research facility studying marine life. I revisit my own experience there, the shared sadnesses, joys, the comfort of companionship. The humans I shared my time with were generous and warm, sensitive to the difficult past and the fragile present of the place. We greeted trees and dipped in icy waters, grieving and rejoicing at once, with gratitude for the place that held us.
Veronica Charmont
Vertigo
Digital scan of Kodak 400 TX, 120 Film
2020
Typically mundane, everyday images are manipulated and distorted during self-isolation through consecutive multiple exposures. The laundry, a usually ordinary, practical section of the home, becomes transformed into a luminous visual kaleidoscope of sheets, windows and shadows. The powers of celluloid and light accentuate the floating shapes of shadows that become imprinted onto the white sheet, allowing them to appear animated and life-like. Connotations of the laundry and the washing line as being places exclusively resigned for tedious daily chores are shattered, with motifs alluding to dreaming and the unconscious, ultimately replacing them.
Liv Moriarty
Hybrid and Collision
Video
2020
I made this video during the government required two week quarantine period for a person traveling interstate; a time of complete physical isolation. It discusses the intersubjective paths made through speaking, understanding and making sense, written upon reflection, in a period of silence. The text centres around processes communication, and what is left when conversation wanes, then disappears all together. Pared with footage of a figure mowing down a lawn with a push mower, this speaks to ideas of touch, friction and learning. Of isolation and time. Speaking with another mows down a similar path, it digs out a space from which to backtrack, leaving a muscle memory, or is it a touch?
Madeleine Minack
Maybe Later
Digital image / collage
2020
As a visual artist who responds to physical landscapes, Covid-19 has pivoted my practice into new digital realms where experiences translate into a hybrid of online/ ’real’ world interactions. Through a process of documenting found materials that I would normally collect (such as a pin, piece of ribbon or drink bottle lid) and re-imagining their materiality and landscape in digital collage forms, my practice has transformed into photoshopped sculptures. This digital experimentation with accumulated rubbish discovered mainly inside the home, has moved my practice into a place of dream like, delirium where my sculptural forms have merged into fantasy collages. These collage-sculpture hybrids reflect forgotten found materials through a distorted digital lens, investigating that which otherwise does not get looked at. To see the unseen. My new works created during the Covid-19 pandemics restrictions, re-evaluate found objects before they deteriorate into the nothingness they once came from. The collages capture a fleeting moment where the objects can live forever online, no longer forgotten on travels and left on the streets to die.
Hélène Padoux
Despite Our Good Intentions
Acrylic & ink
50 x 40cm
2020
Alice McIntosh
Untitled
Cotton, silk, cat food bag, flour, paint & egg cartons
40 x 25 x 20cm
2020
Ideals of the past cannot remain intact, they are either forgotten or get corrupted. When there is a strong demand for emotional engagement towards societal issues and when political debates get more and more polarized, slogans, short statements and fast approval do not leave enough space for nuances. The need for emotionality conflicts with the impossibility of innocence. A pear is an imperfect, unloved version of an apple that melted and loosened. Like a ripe fruit that falls by itself in a trap, a bonne poire (“good pear” in french) is a naive and manipulable person whose kindness can be easily taken advantage of.
Simone Scandrett
Caught Wings
Velvet, cotton, dried vegetation & magnolia
2020
Created specifically for QIQ gallery, this artwork is intended as a homage to nature and femininity through soft colour-use and textures against the brittle twigs and fleshy flowers. Caught Wings is meant to combine what to me has been most comforting during this time: nature and softness.
Alice McIntosh
Untitled
Cotton, silk, cat food bag, flour, paint & egg cartons
40 x 25 x 20cm
2020
Madeline Cline
Her Desires Are Proclaimed Mythic
Digital book (swipe to see)
2020
A dark fairytale of a surreal dream which explores animal commodification and heartbreak. This narrative acts as a cosmos of the pet snake, subverting the religious teaching of Eve being born from Adam’s rib. Themes of greed, capitalism and the patriarchy are explored through the regurgitation of a serpent birthed from the intestine of man. Embellished with pristine marbled surfaces and silky hybrid POV’s the body of the quilted book takes on an impossible nature.
Emma Crabtree
Drawings About Crochet I
Pencil & chalk pastel on paper
2020
Written by Patrick Zaia
Patrick Zaia
Moaning Programs
Audio (Please click the arrow!)
2020
Simone Scandrett
Butterfly Enclosure
Embroidery & glitter on hand dyed canvas
45cm x 41cm
2020
Butterfly Enclosure was intended as an ‘elven flag’ completed during isolation. This artwork was a long-term investment in creating a miniature imaginary world to escape into during this time of uncertainty and discomfort.
Emma Crabtree
Drawings About Crochet II
Pencil & chalk pastel on paper
2020
Lauren Wilson
Thing Formation
Flour, salt & water
40cm x 55cm
2020
Skye Malu Baker
Shy-intimacy painting
Mixed media on paper
2020
My pieces sit in a precarious place of becoming. Emerging from a practice of diary writing, of marking passing days and recording undulating thoughts, these thought-portraits offer quiet musings from a winter locked-down. The fragility of this notion called ‘the self’ is materially expressed in collage. Here, layers obscure, outlines suggest, and disparate elements co-exist uneasily. Writings from previous eras, failed prints, unmentionable past works are assembled in the dairy’s boxed-in edges, composing the day’s subjecthood. Aesthetic decisions tempered by what is found at hand result in the digestion of remembered past selves.