Contours and Conditions

Human hair, lipstick and scavenging form basis of new exhibition at the City Art Rooms - Contours + Conditions is an exhibition of works by five young artists, on display from October 7th through to Nov 1st.

The artists translate a sense of self and personal boundaries through the manipulation of real, pictorial and cultural space. Contours + Conditions will includes works by: Sam Hartnett, Liyen Chong, Rabdeep Singh-Bains, Jessica Peerless and Kate Woods.

The artists work across a range of media which incorporates sculpture, photography, embroidery and installation.

About the artists:
Photographer Sam Hartnett investigates borders, boundaries and sensory thresholds in existing architecture, tourist sites, public monuments and abandoned interiors. Instead of focusing on conventional views of architecture and the landscape, Hartnett forces us off the main road to experience less obvious built environments and views that both invite us in and repel us at the same time. His work confronts cultural realities through imagery which “speak of false desires and quick, often unconsidered solutions.”

Human hair has long been used as a primary element in both the historical artefact and fine art and yet it still has the ability to confront us due to the fact that it is a unique aspect of ones personal identity and being. Liyen Chong negotiates implied architectural boundaries and also social and sensory borders due to the use of the artist’s own hair in the construction of her works.

Challenging representational space by blurring the intersections between floors, walls, ceilings and windows, Jessica Peerless’ vinyl cut outs and installations are simple, graphically powerful and dynamic. Their indebtedness to 20th century modernist architecture and art means that she not only seamlessly incorporates all aspects of modernism, but reinterprets that aesthetic to produce bold 21st century forms.

Rabdeep Singh-Bains investigates not physical but metaphorical boundaries. He circulates and questions pre-conceived ideas relating to identity and how it is fashioned via stereotypes relentlessly perpetuated through the media, fashion magazines and popular culture.

The collision of sculpture, painting and photography in the works of Kate Woods explore conceptual spaces that have been originally appropriated from nostalgic paintings and illustrations. The artist inserts abstracted sculptures onto the picture plane, which is then photographed, and sometimes cropped to present multiple possibilities of a non-existent, shifting landscape.

Contours + Conditions opens Tuesday October 7th at 5.30pm.