August 4.
Chilly Winter night.
Clear skies in Dark above. Cars drawn and gathered in a car park, side by side – warm silent engines cooling – ticking…
Bodies travel toward and converge at the light that glows from the interior of an art gallery’s open doors.
Inside: Lively; Alive; Engaged; Engaging.
Space – filled with Art.
Space – filled with Bodies.
Pulse – and Beating Hearts.
-Here be my Brief, Immediate, Reflexive Response & Rebound. A rambled and pondered reaction:
VIOLENCE within. Violence without.
A mix of mediums on display – canvas, paint, video installations, short film, photography, feature film.
A mix of The Body on Display. And it’s Parts. And various forms. And it’s scars. And History. It’s Presentation. It’s Pride & Shame. It’s STORY.
-Deformity – Destruction – Care – Defile – Beauty, in Baring Witness & Exposing Lived Experience-
The Image of The Self.
The Image of The Other.
Presentation/Representation.
The Public Figure/The Hidden Mind (Inside).
Amidst the vast Kaleidoscope and melting pot of mediums and ideas, ‘Headlines’ leap out:
RELIGION. BODY. VIOLENCE. SEX(UALITY). NATURE. The Elements.
Pop Culture. CONSUMERISM. Poverty. Wealth. IDENTITY.
The Watched, & The Watcher.
And all of this is offered in an Immersive experience – multiple gallery rooms – each with their own selected collection of themed and related works – each with their own Identity in Use of Space.
This is not only Art on display – this is an Experience provided, should you Choose to Engage.
For further to the Exhibited pieces, the Gallery Walls from which they hang are also Adorned – backgrounds to the Artworks in foreground. Backgrounds of different styles and colours and material and messages. Walls sometimes Bare. Walls sometimes technicoloured military camouflage. Walls sometimes of inverted painterly landscapes…
This is Art ON, and IN, display.
Floors were also taken into consideration – individually adjusted and manipulated for the senses.
The ‘construction’ of this exhibition seemed to also be concerned with presenting and providing a Commentary on the Glamour, Seduction, & Artifice at play in the Designing for a gallery exhibition. Aesthetics and Disguise versus Reality. Frameworks sometimes literally lain bare – raw timber on the reverse of constructed frames highlighted in presentation, encouraged to be viewed – to pay attention to. While at other times distinct efforts to mask or Dress Up were made.
Reveal, and, Conceal.
I saw here Art, for all its enticing Illusions, and what it seeks to Represent and Communicate; and at the same time, I was exposed to what Art also really is – what it’s made up of – in all its ‘nuts and bolts’.
This Griggs exhibition offers an opportunity for Exposure, Experience, Expansion.
Try – Engage – Critique.
It is running at the Campbelltown Arts Centre til October 15, and will be touring Nationally throughout 2018 & 19.
If you can – If you want:
Go. See. Support – Absorb. Inhabit. Detect.
Peter Maple Attended the launch of this exhibition.
Peter Maple – Theatre Now and Talking Arts
Original publish date, August 10, 2017.
http://www.talkingarts.com.au/2017/08/10/david-griggs-exhibition-between-nature-sin/
