Kit Wise

Roarers

Invitation

Press release / Catalogue text

Catalogue Text
Roarers presents new work by Kit Wise, based upon images and found objects collected within a 1 mile radius of the artist's studio; also encompassing the Ocular Lab space.

In Radius ( Cloud City) , a reference to the fabulous rebel haven in George Lucas' epic film Return of the Jed i, all of the objects were found in the op-shops, discount stores, mini-markets and variety shops within this radius, and were valued at $10 or less. Globe similarly deconstructs the simulacrum implied by these familiar objects that employ the cheapest possible technology to mass-produce a semblance of a form - here, a leather football.

Using the notion of a white ground as a formal ink between these disparate motifs and objects of diverse origins, new syntheses of familiar items have been constructed through the pursuit of fascination as methodology - perhaps analogous to the movement via hyperlink from site to site on the internet (as well as to the condition of love). In a sense, the white screen that is the default page of most web-browsers and representative of the universe in Japanese calligraphy here becomes the 'site' of the gallery space.

Many of the objects in this collection imply a personal, subjective meaning - either as souvenirs, anniversary gifts or similar bijoux - that has however been suspended or revoked: the objects now existing as the flotsam and jetsam of Don Bosco and Savers. Similarly, the household objects discarded as hardwaste, filling the streets with impromptu abstract sculptures, shift semiotic register by moving from house to pavement; often only to be re-appropriated back into another domestic, social space.

Images of the hard-waste day of this area have been rendered as an animation in Roarers , using a combination of digital programs including simple 'panoramic stitch' software common with most digital cameras. The accompanying text refers to the famous paradigm of   the post-colonial condition, Shakespeare's The Tempest . The dialogue of the opening scene, spoken by mariners and passengers on the verge of shipwreck, socially and geographically disorientated and about to enter the 'magic' realm of Prospero & Caliban, is presented as a scrolling news-bar, found on many websites. The internet is taken as an example of Eco's reinterpretation of Diderot's Enlightenment concept of language organized as an encyclopaedia rather than a dictionary - dependent on rhizomatic cross-reference, rather than static, hierarchical structures. The Web, in which navigation is without a compass, by hyperlink, allows the desiring 'Internet Explorer' to make hitherto unknown connections between sites and references at whim.

Kit Wise

List of works:

 

Roarers 2005

DVD animation, 3'36"

 

Globe 2005

Found object

 

Radius (Cloud City) 2004 - 2005

Found objects, acrylic, fluorescent lighting