GALLERY 1+2
THE BLACK SHOW
DARREN SYLVESTER – ROB MCHAFFIE – TARA GILBEE – NEVADA DUFFY – ROB MCLEISH – BRIGID HEALY – ANGELA THIRLWELL LISA BENSON – HAYLEY WEST – ROSLISHAM ISMAIL AKA ISE – GREG SPILLER – TIM STERLING – RIKI METISSE MARLOW – JON BUTT – ELEANOR BUTT – PIP DAVEY – KENT WILSON – THE WHITE TRASH OF ASIA – ROZALIND DRUMMOND
– GABRIEL CARAZO – MILA FARANOV
What is this Black?
When we think of black, it is often in relation to product, which helps us to appreciate it somewhat more clearly for what it can be or what we most obviously, have come to know it to be. In the realm of product it denotes the classic, the uncluttered, the monastic, free of fuss, full of luring sophistication. It protests its seriousness and its abhorrence of the frivolity of colour. Its power is direct and strong.
Removing the focus from product it can be many other possibilities that sit outside of materiality.
Black is the dark and hidden parts of our private and collective histories; wounds transforming into the abyss. It is the black of shame and horror that slips into a shadowy past.
Colour leaves us with no reminder of the natural world, as blacks’ primary affection comes from the enveloping night, the consuming nullification of sleep and either the blur of black thoughts or the quiet of the meditative mind. In all cases it holds a position beyond the activity of the day to day.
It’s void defies it’s origin as the absorber of all light and colour to become a presence and simultaneously an absence. It is ‘without’ and yet contradicts itself with the force of presence through its lack. Within the absence arises the pulse of potentiality, the unknown, swimming within the viscous density, the secrecy that hides within the fold.
For the artists participating we asked them to look at black from the centre of their own practice. The possibility exists to explore black as an emotive language or in its literal tome or perhaps re-configuring it in a philosophical sense. All of these possibilities are encouraged.
