LINEAR MOMENTUM
Curated by Conny Becker (DE)
Coordinated by Melanie Irwin (AUS)
30 Sept 2015—17 Oct 2015
Simon Faithful (UK), April Gertler (US), IEPE (NL), Melanie Irwin (AUS) & Richard Rocholl (DE)
This exhibition will bring together five diverse experimental approaches, using a range of media, to explore the potential of a fundamental artistic gesture the drawn line and its relationship with human movement through the city and through the landscape.
In some works, the line features as a visually prominent formal device. April Gertler traces hiking trails with thread stitched directly into the photographic image, addressing the human body’s traversal of the landscape by articulating lines that have been formed gradually over extended time periods.
Richard Rocholl uses analogue photography to produce luminous lines that trace the traversal of the landscape by speeding vehicles. The artist?s repeated photographic exposures capture the lights of passing vehicles on the freeway, combining the genre of representational landscape photography with a unique kind of hard-edge abstraction. IEPE creates a playful yet subversive public artwork in the streets of Berlin by splashing colourful paint directly onto the road and allowing passing traffic to draw his lines for him. In other works, existing utilitarian lines determine the artist?s performative physical trajectory.
Simon Faithfull’s 0-00 Navigation (2009) documents the artist’s physical journey, with a GPS device, as he navigates his way directly north along the Greenwich Meridian through Hampshire, London, the Midlands and Lincolnshire. Melanie Irwin paces and squats her way through the streets of Berlin, systematically photographing the overhead tram cables. The focus of these works is on the body’s adaptability as it diligently adheres to these predetermined linear paths.
Conny Becker is an independent journalist, author and curator. Trained as a pharmacist and scientific journalist, since 2006 her interests have focused on contemporary art. While studying art history at Humboldt University in Berlin (BA), she began working as an art critic and developed a curatorial practice. Exhibitions that she has curated include Family Jewels at Bahnw-rterhaus der Villa Merkel, Esslingen (2009/10), State of the Union in Freies Museum Berlin (2011), and Female Intervention at Kleine Humboldt Galerie at Humboldt University (2014). She is a founding member of the non-profit space tte, where she has curated seven exhibitions so far. She regularly works for the Academy of Arts in Berlin as well as with the residency/art academy hybrid PICTURE BERLIN, which is where the exhibition LINEAR MOMENTUM got its impulse. Internationally, she has realised exhibitions in New York, Shanghai, and Marseille. Conny has edited thE publications Metropolitan Views: Art Scenes in Berlin and London (Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin/Munich 2008) and Metropolitan Views: Art Scenes in Berlin 1989-2009 (Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin/Munich 2010) as well as several exhibition catalogues. In 2013, she was the main author of the catalogue of the Luxembourg Pavilion and also contributed to the general catalogue of the Venice Biennale.
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This project is supported by the City of Melbourne 2015 Arts Grants Program.