Press Release Statement

The upcoming exhibitions Hung out to dry and Greetings at Ocular Lab gallery were conceived while contemplating the way an artistic practice influences other activities outside of normal art production. Accordingly, I was also interested in how these exercises encountered in daily life, such as dress and the making of greeting cards, influence an artist’s output.
For Hung out to dry the artist’s washing will be literally ‘hung out to dry’ on lines suspended between the gallery walls at Ocular Lab. The work encompasses issues such as the extension of a lived experience into the gallery, the introduction of changed climatic environment via an artwork (humidity), and foremost: the allegory of artistic decision-making via dress; dress being presented as a situation where the difference between ideological intent and ideological actuality is played out.
For the curatorial show Greetings artists were asked to respond to these thoughts:

I have been reflecting upon occasions such as friends and family birthdays along with Christmas and other special events when instead of buying some gimmicky, ugly and overpriced commercial card an artwork-card is created. The product of this decision may end up being just be decorative; or it may be an artwork itself; or it may be some offhand gesture that the normal art practice wouldn’t accommodate; or it also could be a greeting card version of the art practice. It is in this spirit that I would like you to make a greeting card/artwork for this exhibition.

The cards/artworks will be placed on the lines used to hang the washing from the previous week (by then my clothes will be dry and removed – I hope!). By presenting the cards as one might hang Christmas cards in the home there is the suggestion that the influence of an artistic community is similar (yet different – it is a gallery space) to the way a friendship and family group are incorporated into one’s life.