Past exhibitions -- 2002

Energy Fields

Selected installations from the Monash University Collection

Kate Beynon, Peter Cripps, Aleks Danko, John Nixon, Mike Parr
22 January - 16 February 2002

Monash University Museum of Art presents an exhibition of works by five artists from the Monash University Collection entitled Energy Fields . The exhibition invites the viewer to consider the nature of 'installation art'. Installation art refers to work that uses the entire environment in which it is presented. Materials can include sound (Kate Beynon), sculpture and found objects. In an installation the art lies not solely within the objects themselves, but also in how they are perceived by the viewer. The viewer's experience results from the way the artists articulates the space of the gallery, placing objects, sound and images to create a new reality that the viewer can occupy. The active role of the viewer is further enhanced in site-specific installations such as the work here by Peter Cripps, which is physically and conceptually related to the space it occupies.

Chinese calligraphy and an ancient Chinese fable surround the viewer in Kate Beynon's Li Ji (1996). Using craft techniques to present a narrative that is accessible to the English-speaking audience only through the accompanying images, Beynon addresses historical and contemporary roles of women in both the East and West.

The Melancholy (for Jude Walton) (1986) by Aleks Danko fuses personal memory with art history. Danko invites the viewer into a minimal but theatrical space, moving through a portal toward an empty frame, and an image of a solitary dark figure, in a contemplation of separation. While Danko employs objects, images and space to explore emotional relationships, Peter Cripps exposes the reality of the viewer's body in the gallery surroundings. The mirrored forms of Cripp's Field Theory (1996) reflect the gallery context and the spectator's negotiation of space in an ongoing investigation into the relationships between the artist, works of art and their public display and reception. Cripps both guides and reveals the movements of the audience, as well as referring to the wider socio-cultural operation of institutions.

Brown/Black (The Schizophrenic Arm) (1989) by Mike Parr and John Nixon is one of a series of collaborative works that one could view as double self-portraits. Nixon simply presents an untreated rectangle of standard-size masonite. It hangs next to Parr's roughly painted ply rectangle, onto which is fixed an elongated open-ended box or 'arm' that juts out several metres into the gallery, perpendicular to the wall. This arm is physically confronting, but resists our direct gaze and looks like the open end of a cannon; its tapering shape implies that it has been cut off from an even longer protrusion.