My House is Too Small
Matthew Berka, Jessie Bullivant, CJ Conway, Carolyn Eskdale, Andrew McQualter, Simone Slee
Curated by Julia Powles
From August - December 2013 a small inner city apartment became the site for an experimental artist residency program. Six artists were invited to undertake individual 5-day residencies in the home of one West Melbourne family and six writers were asked to respond to the project and the artworks made during each residency. At the end of each residency the projects developed by each artist were accessible to the public during a two day open house. Framed around the concept of the houseguest, the artists were offered a fold out couch to sleep on and given the keys to the apartment, to use, as they wished.
Curated by Julia Powles
From August - December 2013 a small inner city apartment became the site for an experimental artist residency program. Six artists were invited to undertake individual 5-day residencies in the home of one West Melbourne family and six writers were asked to respond to the project and the artworks made during each residency. At the end of each residency the projects developed by each artist were accessible to the public during a two day open house. Framed around the concept of the houseguest, the artists were offered a fold out couch to sleep on and given the keys to the apartment, to use, as they wished.
Residency 1 : Matthew Berka
19-25 August Matthew Berka 17:18 Diagonal Repeats (MY HOUSE IS TOO SMALL)
Residency 2 : Andrew MCQualter
16 - 22 September Residency 3 : Jessie Bullivant
30 September - 6 October Residency 4 : Carolyn Eskdale
30 September - 6 October Residency 5 : CJ Conway
11 -17 November Residency 6 : Simone Slee
30 September - 6 October |
Matthew Berka's film 17 :18 Diagonal Repeats tracks the daily life of the apartment and the family through the camera's slow pan diagonally forward and back across the expanse of the living room. Filmed across four days and nights the final 4.45hr long film is a collage of fragments, emphasising the repetitions and ruptures of daily life. The work that resulted from Andrew McQualter's My House is Too Small residency reflected his observation of the various connections between the family members. Life sized silhouettes of individual family members were pieced together to create a sculptural whole, before being balanced on the family dining table. Family as both a biological imperative and a social construct were reflected upon.
During her time in the My House is Too Small residency Jessie Bullivant sought to examine the ways in which the hosts and the guest might affect each other. Daily routines were altered, not only for the hosts who were asked to watch the TV Reality show Big Brother with Jessie each night, but also for the guest, who adopted a number of new daily rituals: listening to the radio, walking the dog, collecting objects/remnants from outside and bringing them into the apartment in order to alter, imperceptibly the host's understanding of their home and it's belongings. Throughout the duration of the residency all participants, both hosts and guest placed the same image as a screen saver on their laptops, an action that served as a gentle reminder of disruption. At the conclusion of he residency a series of rolling credits ran on the home television, a humorous, playful summation of all that had happened during the week. Carolyn Eskdale decided to interpret the role of the artist-houseguest as that of ‘repairer’, establishing a workstation in the family living room from which broken or damaged household items could be ‘mended’ through their transformation into artworks. An open project without a point of closure, Eskdale responded to discarded objects as the original from which a series of material casts were produced, thereby creating sculptural echos or residues of lived experience.
While Undertaking the My House is Too Small residency CJ Conway made a series of works that set about connecting the apartment, and it's residents, to the outside world. Links were made between the West Melbourne apartment, nature, the elements and the Amazonian rainforest. Among other actions city tap water was reanimated by magnetisation and the action of passing through a swirling vortex, time and light were mapped across the floor and walls of the apartment, the outside rain was captured and projected onto the glass cubicle of the shower, and though the use of conduction speakers, an antique rosewood table emanated the sounds of the Amazon at night. Simone Slee integrated the family into her sculptural examination of the 'ab-functional' a term coined by Slee to describe a hybrid practice where sculptures are activated in a durational manner through human intervention. Each member of the family was documented holding a sculpture in such a manner that the form of the sculpture reflected the physiological characteristics of each individual. Inserting herself within the family for week, Slee too performed the ab-functional.
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