Pieces of Practice: April 2014

'The Survey Show' | Clandulla State Gallery

Tied grass, radiometer, bell jar, white glass light shade,

seed globe on milk glass vase.

Bell jar, plaster cast of egg interior, lichen.

Radiometer.

Seed globe, tied grass.

Mushrooms, door knob, white markers, label.

Skeletal pieces, clouded house box ornament, white markers, label.

Native orchid, plaster cast of egg interior, white marker, label.

Milk glass hand vase, feathers, tied grass.

Tied grass, smokey quartz crystal.

Tied grass.

The Survey Show | Clandulla State Gallery

You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the Clandulla State Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, The Survey Show, at 1pm on Sunday 13 April 2014. Thirteen established and emerging artists are producing new work especially for the event, engaging with the unique context of the gallery.

The Survey Show was conceived by Clandulla State Gallery founder, Alex Wisser to engage contemporary art with the forest environment. The Survey Show was jointly developed and organised with visiting artist-curator, Margaret Roberts, in conjunction with the artists.

Clandulla State Gallery is co-extensive with the Clandulla State Forest. Measuring approximately 1400 hectares, it is considered to be the world’s largest art gallery. It is a pleasant five-minute drive along Bylong Valley Drive from Kandos in the New South Wales Central West, and will be clearly sign posted (look for the ‘Contemporary Art’ sign) on the Western side of the road.

For directions and map, please visit our website: http://clandullastategallery.wordpress.com

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About 'Pieces of Practice'

Pieces of Practice began as a way to document the arrangements and processes of my studio practice, and to locate and catalogue the places where composed and accidental poetic relationships occurred. It has since, also become, a way to explore the different spaces and contexts a practice exists in—where exhibition and collaboration sit beside the privacy of practice; where failed, lost and remembered works still exist; and where imagined future works remain uninitiated. Above all Pieces of Practice is a living space—the labels grow, gather gravity and form new relationships and narratives between posts—behaving just as objects would do in the studio.

In the Country of Last Things

"It is an odd thing, I believe, to be constantly looking down at the ground, always searching for broken and discarded things. After a while, it must surely affect the brain. For nothing is really itself anymore. There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again...As an object hunter you must rescue things before they reach a state of absolute decay. You can never expect to find something whole-for that is an accident, a mistake on the part of the person that lost it-but neither can you spend your time looking for what is totally used up. You hover somewhere in between, on the lookout for things that still retain a semblance of their original shape-even if their usefulness is gone."

Paul Auster 'In the Country of Last Things' Faber and Faber, London 1989, p.35-36

'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'

"The presence of others, other people, excite and rattle him, force him into an endless, frenzied, social chatter, a veritable delirium of identity making and seeking; the presence of plants, a quiet garden, the non-human order, making no social or human demands on upon him, allow this identity-delirium to relax, to subside; and by their quiet, non-human self sufficiency and completeness allow him a rare quietness and self-sufficiency of his own, by offering (beneath, or beyond, all merely human identities and relations) a deep wordless communication with Nature itelf, and with this the restored sense of being in the world, being real."

Oliver Sacks 'The Man Who Mistook his wife for a Hat' Pan Books, London 1986, p.110

'How I classify'

"The sheer number of the things needing to be arranged and the near-impossibility of distributing them according to any truly satisfactory criteria mean that I never finally manage it, that the arrangements I end up with are temporary and vague, and hardly any more effective than the original anarchy. The outcome of all this leads to truly strange categories. A folder of miscellaneous papers, for example, on which is written 'To be Classified'..."

Georges Perec 'Species of Spaces and Other Pieces' Penguin Books, London 1999, p. 196

'Futile Gestures: Photo Albums and the Ecology of Memory' Faith Moonsang

'The Garden of Time'

"The flowers grew to a height of about six feet, their slender stems, like rods of glass, bearing a dozen leaves, the once transparent fronds frosted by the fossilized veins. At the peak of each stem was the time flower, the size of a goblet, the opaque outer petals enclosing the crystal heart. Their diamond brilliance contained a thousand faces, the crystal seeming to drain the air of its light and motion."

J. G. Ballard 'The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1' The Garden of Time Harper Collins, London 2006, p. 406

'Window'

"Window." There is a poetic image to be found in the origin of the word "window". It derives from two Scandinavian terms, vindr and auga, meaning "winds eye". Early Norse carpenters built houses as simply as possible. Since doors had to be closed throughout the long winters, ventilation for smoke and stale air was provided by a hole, or "eye", in the roof. Because the wind frequently whistled through it, the air hole was called the "wind's eye". British builders borrowed the Norse term and modified it to "window". And in time, the aperture that was designed to let in air was glassed up to keep it out."

Charles Panati 'Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things' Harper & Row, New York 1987, p.158

'Parable of the Palace'

"What we do know - however incredible it may be - is that within the poem lay the entire enormous palace, whole and to the least detail, with every venerable porcelain it contained and every scene on every porcelain, all the lights and shadows of its twilights, and every forlorn or happy moment of the glorious dynasties of mortals, gods, and dragons that had lived within it through all its endless past. Everyone fell silent; then the emperor spoke. "You have stolen my palace!" he cried, and the executioner's iron scythe mowed down the poet's life.

Others tell the story differently. The world cannot contain two things that are identical; no sooner had the poet uttered his poem than the palace disappeared, as though in a puff of smoke, wiped from the face of the earth by a final syllable."

Jorge Luis Borges 'Collected Fictions' Parable of the Palace Penguin Books, London 1998, p. 318