Image, object, action: building paintings with digital logic (Master of Visual Art graduation show)
St Paul Street Gallery
3rd to 6th September 2022
Image, object, action: building paintings with digital logic is a project driven by the idea of “practise” as a verb. Practising is about discovering actions: finding out what can be done with (and to) collected materials; amassing and sequencing these actions; and layering and gathering them together with objects and images to build artworks incrementally. Through repetition, actions such as imitation and replication have developed into a personal logic that allows for continuous making, even with no fixed goal. The project is motivated by what occurs when the expected makes way for the unexpected.
These collected objects, images and actions comprise a database that functions in both digital and non-digital studios. Database as methodology emphasises myriad, networked connections over linear, hierarchical ways of thinking. Its poetic potential enables the balance of tension between the structure of systems with the joyous, idiosyncratic and enigmatic qualities of artistic production.
Layers, holes and transparency open up space within the works, emphasising painting’s dual position as both object and image. Temporarily held in stacked arrangements, the layers contain possibilities for other images; the works in this project are constantly in flux and driven onwards.
Acrylic, vinyl, pencil, crayon and stickers on canvas and PVC with laser cut Perspex, acrylic on wooden dowels, chains and metal clips.
Each painting 549 x 841mm, dowels 180cm long
Photos by Emily Parr