Spacingout

Drawing from the State Art Collection, Spacingout considers aspects of the affective dimension of contemporary life with particular interest to sensations of emotional and perceptual ambivalence.

This exhibition lingers in moments of confusion and uncertainty; when our feelings and understandings of particular situations are not quite defined. Spacingout foregrounds what so often remains in the hazy background of life and proposes the potential for events to be other than what they are.

Life is, all at once, explicit and obscure. In the disjuncture between the material life and personal experience, we are left grappling with cause and effect, purpose and clarity. The unfulfilled fantasies of a good life and promises of order have produced an uncertain atmosphere. Spacingout draws upon subjectivity to articulate a sense of out-of-jointness with the present world. The indeterminate zones created by these limitations suggest an infinite potential for the works in this exhibition to be considered in new states.

Within the wide expanse of works displayed here, there are certain shared strategies that unify otherwise quite disparate works: erasure, reconfiguration, doubling, ambiguity. Each artist is involved with a manner of creating that holds the complexity of their concepts open. So, while each work is deliberately conceived and elaborated, a general sense of ambiguity is unleashed amongst this collection of works.

The exhibition forms part of Re/Collections, a series of exhibitions presenting new ways of seeing, sharing, and showcasing works in the State Art Collection.