La Kinky Beat

David Jolly and David Franzke

Invitation

Press release / Catalogue text

Press release
The 'experimental' work exhibited by Jolly consisted of (then) incomplete paintings on glass panels, their fragility heightening their ethereal and ephemeral nature.   Simply displayed - each panel resting on coloured pegs and leaning against the wall - the transparency enabled a play between presence and absence of the support and the images appeared to float on the wall.  

The painted images, on the other hand, were a reference to and exploration of specific sociopolitical ideas and contexts belonging to graffiti Jolly found and photographed in his local neighborhood during a recent residency in Barcelona, and from which he developed a new body of work for Sutton Gallery.  

Franzke overlayed a variety of sounds recorded by Jolly - including environmental sounds (from birds to trucks), human voices and music - and produced a congenial and exclusively evocative 'audial graffiti'.   Played through speakers placed in wire-mesh rubbish bins and covered with a form of cultural detritus, the audience were confused as to whether the bins were to be used or whether they were 'artworks'.  

Together, the ephemerality of Franzke's sound collage and Jolly's politicized glass works created a relaxed ambience that played with and juxtaposed the articulation of the space as a cultural site and its location on a street corner in suburban Brunswick, while the rubbish bins shifted it further, playing between and giving equal status to signs of 'high' and 'low' culture - from an art gallery to an office to a graffiti site to a domestic space...

© Kirsten Rann   2004