Supervalent thoughts
This year's Sculpture Triennial punctuated the developments and directions being taken within contemporary art practice, and acted as a brief, but important point of stasis from which we were able to survey the habitually shifting position ·of others, and of ourselves. Supervalent Thoughts, one of the exhibitions which made up the
Triennial, corresponded particularly well to David Hansen's curatorial theme, which was to disavow the status of sculpture as art object in favour of the valuing of the viewers' experiential interaction. This particular exhibition also served as a testament to the current period of cultural disillusion and uncertainty.
Elizabeth Bodey's installation for Supervalent Thoughts was titled Periodic: Post Factum and it explored the idea of periodicity, particularly the marking of personal time through the recording of specific events. It was one of a series of such events which she has recorded over recent years. Post Factum referenced a scenario in a mortuary between the artist, a doctor and a corpse, all of a similar age and of the same name. This scenario was told/witnessed through the language of objects which functioned as a semiotic text. The very presence and fabric of the objects recalled subliminal associations with sickness and death. On metal stands which were as shiny as hospital trolleys, were photographs from a sleep experiment, a printout from a patient monitor, and glass boxes with 'feverish' engraved upon them in French. The medical purposes of these objects were obscured, however, as their actual objecthood became the appropriated language through which we were led to examine the transience of life, and the vulnerability of all positions.
Significantly, this exhibition became the particular marker for the life of artist Andrew Charker