February 27 – March 27 Opening: Friday February 26 at 6pm
Gallery
Anthony Johnson is interested in sculpture as a perpetually antagonistic problem – a thwarted object lesson that seeks no objective. The ubiquitous artists’ conundrum of ‘What to do?’ is interpreted by Johnson as symptomatic of a wider existential void. Essentially, his practice embodies a spatial and temporal questioning: that of our capacity to reconcile spatial experience with the actual, and that of an object or action’s ability to embody the measurement of time.
The automated exhaustion of a spray-can continuously releasing in a confined space, a pinball-machine propped level, the dragging of a pair of shoes 1115 kilometers, the releasing of a captured fly into the passenger cabin of an airplane…
A fly in a plane expands on Johnson’s previous exhibition at Conical: (The relations which a lie is not in, 2008)1 and continues to probe the question of sculpture – both historically and conceptually – and its suggestive potential to explore the (im)potency of objects, and the profundity and mundanity of action.
1 www.conical.org.au/archive/2008.html
Gobstopper
A few days ago when riding the subway, I watched a marble-like ball roll around the hard linoleum floor of the train carriage. As the train took off from the station and picked up speed, the ball would slowly meander towards the back of the carriage – although never quite the full length of the carriage – before slowing to almost a pause as the train retained its top speed. Then, as the train began to brake, the ball would slowly roll forward, faster than the train. Picking up momentum it would bump off the side of people’s shoes, meandering down the centre of the aisle, yet never quite getting all the way to the front of the carriage before the next stop. The noise it made as it rolled drew everyone’s attention to its blind odyssey. Commuters would watch as it passed them and then wait with anticipation as it found that point of equilibrium between stops.
That night after dinner at the pizzeria, I bought a white Gobstopper from the coin-slot bubblegum machine. The next day I let the Gobstopper ball roll down the slanted floor from the top to the bottom of the spiral rotunda in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Anthony Johnson, 02.19.09 NYC
Johnson was selected to exhibit in the prestigious survey of young Australian contemporary art, Primavera (2007) at the MCA, Sydney, and the Samstag Museum, Adelaide. His exhibition history includes: Object Lessons, Westspace, Melb, 2003; Workrestplay, Firstdraft, Syd, 2005; Not all cocktails make good punches, Kings ARI, Melb, 2006; Your call is important to us, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery 2007; I Used To Draw A Lot, Criterion Gallery, Hobart 2008; The relations which a lie is not in, Conical, 2008; Smart Casual/Dumb Formal, Six_a ARI, Hobart, 2009, (Untitled), Expand/Contract, CAST, curated by Paula Silva, Hobart, 2009.
In 2004 Johnson received a New Work grant from the Australia Council,in 2007 and was the recipient of an Australia Council funded studio residency in Los Angeles, 2009. He holds a Diploma of Fine Arts (National Art School, Sydney, 1995), a Bachelor of Fine Art at the (College of Fine Arts, UNSW, 1998), Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (Tasmanian School of Art, UTAS, 2001) and will begin an MFA early this year at UTAS.
Tamsin Green To and from the end of the world
February 27 – March 27
Enclosure
To and from the end of the world is a visual spatial experiment directed at the horizon. The world, when taken as a picture, may have its limits described through perspectival mapping. The horizon marks the position of some unknown quality. To the end of the world initiates a communication with a perceived limit in knowledge. From the end of the world involves a response. By travelling to the horizon line in order to make the work I am attempting to place myself on a portion of a visually infinite plane. This is of course impossible.
Green is an artist, writer and curator who works predominantly in film and video. She has exhibited widely in Melbourne, as well as nationally and internationally. She is a current Kings ARI committee member, and a co-curator of Light Projects in Northcote.
