Mediated Displacement: Shifting curatorial rhetoric and meaning
A Backroom Project facilitated by William Seeto
Barbara Halnan
Preview: Saturday & Sunday, 21 & 22 and 28 & 29 March 2020, 12-4pm
Open Hours: 11am–5pm, Friday–Sunday, 21-29 March 2020
Meander
Water finding a path through a flat terrain – a starting point? Or is it purely about a line, Klee’s dot taking a walk, the line diverging from the horizontal, then returning to find a new level. A second line joins the first, following the same rules of engagement, but without mirroring the first line.
The two lines together create a third irregular linear form which meanders around the space.
Form is important: the formalism of the work; abstraction taking a concept beyond representation and also, perhaps more importantly, beyond symbolism – the form is itself with outside reference reduced to a minimum. But what is being aimed at is not “minimalism” as such. A reductive process is certainly used, but not reduction as a concept - its more a refining of an idea – formalising rather than reducing.
So the initial concept is about lines that behave according to a set of parameters that control direction and deviations. There are elements of the random, but always a kind of balance is maintained in the pathway. The aim is for a feeling of continuity: a feeling that it could go on forever – or within this specific space – circularity. The paradox is that in the end the installation could be interpreted as a “representation” of the initial concept.
Barbara Halnan.
Over the past decade, in the absence of private and institutional curated support, the curator’s role shifted from gatekeeper and go-between for the fashionable and popular to mediating and interacting directly with artists without ties to the interests and objectives of private and public institutions.
‘Mediated Displacement’ is an artist-funded project in the backroom of Articulate Project Space, an artist-run not-for-profit. It is the first in a series of mediated displacement projects outside mainstream curation facilitated by William Seeto beginning with multifaceted artists Adrian Hall and Barbara Halnan.
‘Mediated Displacement’ engages with the architectural site free from the constraint of curatorial direction; it relies on artwork brought together by the limits of the space and the artists’ own ability and experience in creative structure. The ‘Backroom Project’ features work by artists for artists that are not made to fit a curatorial recipe. It allows artists to experiment with practice and artist-run spaces to evolve and shape discourse. William Seeto
William Seeto is an exhibition facilitator and installation artist with a practice of more than three decades. He is experienced in mediating exhibitions and creating perceptual installations that examine visual perception and the different way artworks heighten or displace experience and referential codes.
Articulate project space backroom
497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt NSW 2040 Australia
http://articulate497.blogspot.com/