home  |   exhibition program  |  archive  |  services  |  proposal guidelines  |  floorplan  | contact us

may 8 - 26

Box Folly

by Kate Hendry and Clair Dougherty

Wardrobes, chests, caskets and trunks provide us with order, secrecy, privacy and solidity. One can spend a lifetime searching for the perfect box in which to conceal ones experiences. It may be incredibly ornate or inconspicuously plain. It may be carefully crafted, inlaid with onyx and lined with plush velvet.

The ultimate and final box, the coffin, is often chosen by someone other than the person it contains. The chooser will possibly select a box that best represents the person it encapsulates. 

Through large scale sculptures Dougherty and Hendry have investigated the intimacy of the box, the nature of its contents and its relationship to the viewer / holder of the box. The exterior and the interior spaces of Dougherty’s and Hendry’s objects are potent with memory.  Dougherty’s furniture opens and invites where Hendry’s sculptures may disallow entry. The interaction between the viewer and the container is intensely intimate. Where Dougherty and Hendry have provided the box, the viewer brings the contents.

 Clair Dougherty is a Melbourne furniture maker. Having graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, Kate Hendry has exhibited extensively throughout Victoria.

dark light

by Daniel Armstrong and Melinda Capp

 The desire to find shapes and patterns in the stars of the night sky is ancient in origin. Such visualisations infer a modeling of the universe which is now the domain of contemporary cosmology.

Daniel Armstrong takes astronomical images of the southern sky. From these images each star is individually selected and mapped into grid like alignments and symmetrical shapes. The images present an optical play between structure and mapping.

Contrasting with Armstrong’s investigation into light, Melinda Capp focuses on the transient shapes of shadows; the negative spaces defined by light.  Sections of shadows are over laid, juxtaposed and collaged together to create shapes and patterns that allude to being part of a greater whole. Shadows appear and migrate over surfaces, then fade and disappear as the sun makes its journey across the sky. The ephemeral state of shadows adds to their fragility and temporal place in time.  

Melinda Capp has exhibited extensively throughout Melbourne. Daniel Armstrong is currently completing his PhD at RMIT and lecturing in Photo media at Deakin University.

cell4 - Btu

by Heather Clugston, Annemarie Schweitzer and Leanne Baker

Nature employs a cyclic process whereby what is grown or produced is utilized by other organisms. Unwanted or waste material is returned to the ground and composted to provide energy and substance for regeneration. Modern technology can replicate almost all of these processes but the detritus created by this technology, coupled with the notion of the single-use product, has left us with vast unresolved problems in waste management.

A consumer driven quest for the bigger, the shinier and newer leaves the superseded single use product to be destroyed through unceremonious burial and burning.

cell4 – Btu has represented technology through the repetitive use of the humble, seemingly innocuous plastic shopping bag. The single use plastic bag is a consumer friendly corporate creation produced in billions worldwide. It now grows and pulses as a cellular unit in the gallery space. The plastic bag is used as a basic building block and highlights the invasive, suffocating yet malleable nature of the bag, which poses such a potential threat to our wider physical environment. The production of the bag uses much needed energy resources but their destruction may require more than the viewer can give.