The Fitting

Claire Lambe

Invitation

Press release / Catalogue text

Press release
Lambe's installations explore, amongst other things, modes of display in particular environments and the personal and public responses that are elicited.   In this exhibition, her play with space is achieved through a series of several poignant gestures.  

In opening the gallery to the outer suburban world in which it is located, internal and external space are juxtaposed as, depending on the viewer's position, one observes the gallery's white interior, or a view of the street with pedestrians and cars passing by, or both.

At the same time, her work operates as transparent border and visual intervention as a surreal pair of glove-like 'arms' hang in the doorway from a transparent wall and extend into the gallery space, at waist level.   Hovering somewhere between the signs of art, science, and/or the domestic, these static, disembodied forms become a body-in-space when the audience inserts their arms into the gloves, transforming the interior into a performative space.

Though this space was once a local milk bar, it now exists as a gallery, laboratory and workshop for artists.   Lambe's transparent wall work brings in the outside world, raising questions about the site, who the neighbours and audience are, and responses to the work - does it reference Art History?   Performance?   Scientific experiments?   Germ warfare?   Mass production?   Domesticity?   The sterility of modernism...?  

The Fitting can be seen at Ocular Lab Inc. between 24-31 October, an exploration of the social constructions of and relations between the body, space, display and site.

Kirsten Rann 2004