SITE PROJECTS, 2008

SEAN LOUGHREY & WILLIAM SEETO

This project is a site-specific project focusing on Ocular Lab as the 'site' for a series of interventions.

Sean Loughrey and William Seeto have both worked in the realm of site-specific installation based art practice for many years. They share an affiliation with the ephemeral nature of site-specific art practice. Both artists have also been known to use light as a primary medium within their work/projects, both in very different ways. Loughrey has created numerous outdoor projection works onto existing forms or structures, both architectural and free standing forms and Seeto has been creating architecture-based perceptual environments, many of which rely on light in one way or another. It seems apt that with both artists' interest in optics that they intervene upon Ocular Lab.

Sean Loughrey's interdisciplinary art practice takes on many facades; painting, installations, video installations, architectural interventions, projections, and digital prints. Since 1989 Loughrey has worked on an ongoing series of site-specific projection works. These works began in Essex, London, then continued in Melbourne and Geelong.
Specific projects such as "Two Triangles", "20 Windows (Possible Things Project 2)" alluded to the sixties' notion of the positive, idealistic possibilities in art with an emphasis on process. A later project, "Moments for 0" offered a complete contrast to this sixties' view by investigating Samuel Beckett's bleak and apocalyptic text and film explorations.

Loughrey is a member of Ocular Lab Inc. and has been involved in various collaborative projects including: Trinity Nine Trinity College, University of Melbourne, an exhibition devoted to site-specific projects. Loughrey has also been involved in Office of Utopic Procedures projects co-ordinated by Bernhard Sachs.
For this exhibition, Sean will work with an emblematic broken cross form. The form or set of forms will be presented in the space with the idea of 'projection' in mind, either by the shadows, silhouetttes, created by light or light redirected through stencils.

William Seeto's artwork is described as constructed, architecture-based perceptual environments that are minimal and at times ephemeral, dealing mainly with space and perception. The purpose of the work is to enable viewers to focus back on their own sensibilities and alter perceived spatial awareness on a visceral as well as intellectual level.
Seeto has worked on a variety of site-specific perceptual environments using building materials as well as corrugated cardboard cartons, powdered pigment, chalk and photo-media. His commitment to the use of ephemeral materials was spurred by his observations of European sensibilities in working with everyday materials.
His last major work was in Sydney, titled "Error of Closure - Part 2", at Artspace Visual Arts Centre in 2007.
The new work will be made specfically for the Ocular Lab site.

The exhibition will coincide with a launch of an artist's monograph published by the artist and Artspace titled "Thingness of Light: The Work of William Seeto". It is a major study with text written by Adam Geczy and full colour documentation of over two decades of installation work based on the investigation of space and perception.