ASH KILMARTIN
Artefact and Letter
11 Feb 2015—28 Feb 2015
Artefact and Letter presents two corresponding video works, made in Christchurch and Sydney. Each work studies a pair of sites, whose use as astronomical or geophysical observatories have made them, in turn, worthy of observation. Comparing the current sites with evidence of their former configurations – through collected objects, photographs and documents – Variables and binaries (first shown at the Physics Room, Christchurch) and Artefact and Letter (developed during a residency at Artspace, Sydney) attempt an incomplete portrait of the cultural and scientific impulses behind these spaces of measurement.
Ash Kilmartin (b. Auckland, New Zealand) is an artist and writer based in Melbourne. Her recent works draw references and forms from particular histories of design, focusing on specific tools and places as a way to think about the qualities of time and measurement. She is interested in how certain objects might store and communicate memory.
Recent solo exhibitions include Bricard, flake, Melbourne; Variables and binaries, the Physics Room, Christchurch; Kilmartin House Museum, Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; The Perpetual Planner, RM, Auckland; and STOP WORK, Y3K, Melbourne. Selected group exhibitions include Nothing Beside Remains, Octopus 14, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Two Room Exhibition, Rearview, Melbourne; Impossible Objects II, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne; HOUSE WEAR, State of Design Festival, Melbourne and BWA Wroclaw, Poland; Another Yummy Fantasy II, TCB, Melbourne; Magazine, Gambia Castle, Auckland; and Architecture for the Nation, ARTSPACE, Auckland. In 2014 she undertook residencies at the Cité International des Arts, Paris and Artspace, Sydney.
This exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.