ArticulateUpstairs | Chantal Grech - Annotations, notations, notions

Three week work in progress
Project from Mar 18th until Apr 3rd

Opening times to be announced

Lake George- the Luxor desert

My work is never about a single idea. It’s more a constellation of fragments on a single subject looking for a form. That subject has been about home and the nature of belonging. For some time, home resided in the texts and the voice of others who have travelled the same way. But recently it has become more embodied involving momentary encounters with people I have never seen again. These encounters were like signposts, co-ordinates on a map, moments in the same narrative.

Each of us, I think, has a narrative that defines our life. Mine is one of displacement and migration. What gives it meaning are the details, often incoherent, like a mirage, constantly disappearing over a horizon just as a resolution is in sight. And so the question shifts and the journey begins again. What form this narrative can take is one of the ongoing questions posed in this work in progress over the three weeks in Articulate. What are the elements and what relationship between the visual and textual language of this narrative can co-exist in an art space without the conventional illustrative relationship between image and text without losing the specificity of those moments.

The aim here is not to seek coherence or resolution but to ask the question-what is possible if anything. The project begins with both abstract and and representative elements juxtaposed and laid one on top of the other. As such there are no 'works’ only incomplete fragments searching for a form and the only rule is to keep moving.

Nb: Here colour is selective; red, black and white are the colours of the Egyptian flag and though I do not wish to emphasise nation states it seems colour here matters (this flag and these colours were used in the Arab spring to represent the Egyptian people as a united community just as we are seeing blue and yellow as the colours for Ukraine). 

Red is an ongoing colour in my work and represents for me the colour of blood and roses and perhaps as John Berger says, ‘could it be that red is the only colour that is constantly seeking the body?

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Conditions of entry:

NSW Public Health Order requires all visitors over 16 years of age,

To sign in with the QR code provided at the entrance,

Wear a mask, social distancing rules will also apply.

Please don't come if you are feeling unwell.

Articulate is a registered Covid Safe business.

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