Obsessive Impulsion (2018)


27 Apr 2018
to 23 Jun 2018  Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gorman Arts Centre

Obsessive Impulsion curated by David Broker, featuring Jodie Cunningham, Michele England, U.K. Frederick, Ann McMahon, Suzanne Moss

View the Obsessive Impulsion catalogue

Impulsion is a driving force; the impetus, the motive or influence behind an action or process. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition that focuses on desire as it is revealed through the methodologies of five diverse artists. In both concept and technique, each practice reflects an obsessive flamboyance that drives the artists to produce work with an appearance of excess and yet, such are the skills at large, there is no sense of overreach. Jodie Cunningham confesses to being a “chromophile” with an obsession for colour, circles, pattern and “the delights of Perspex”. U.K. Frederick delights in the tensions created between flannel shirts that might have been worn by Kurt Cobain and the abstracted light passing through the fabric in her evocative series of photograms. In the dextrous hands of Ann McMahon, recycled bread bags index domestic ritual through complex colour field weaves that mirror the grid of a thirty-one day calendar. Alarmed at inexorable environmental degradation, Michele England blends activism with domesticity in eccentric works where kitsch household objects carry the “great moral challenge” that faces the planet. Suzanne Moss’s commanding paintings examine colour through its absence and presence. Exploring the ways that colours interact she experiments with a saturated palette of colours that reverberate throughout the gallery – as if in conversation with works by other artists. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition in which each of the artists presents work based on personal obsessions and we, the audience, are able to follow the lengthy, painstaking processes through which they come to realise their ideas.

To check out the fun at opening night see the CCAS Social Pages

Image: UK Frederick CMYKurt #4, 61 x 50.8 cm, C-Type print (photogram of Seattle-sourced flannel shirt)

 
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