Empty Places/With Suspicion
Outside, it is Monday morning, around 10am. Inside, on level three of Metro Arts, it feels as though its about 10pm. I am creeping around the exterior of an abandoned squat, concrete-rendered building. I am by myself in the dark, expecting a sensor light to flash me suddenly, caught in the act of trying to look at the work of Jarrod Van Der Ryken. Light levels are down low and I am at the windows trying to get in, to find a crack or opening, anything that will give me some perspective on what is going on inside. On opening night, through one window, we get a glimpse. A figure is lying flat on his back on a cheap mattress on the floor, looking up at the viewer (now voyeur), catching their gaze and acknowledging it. And that is it for closure. I am left on the outside, leaf litter underfoot and peeling Hello Kitty stickers on the window. I feel a bit dirty, I am suddenly aware that I am on someone’s property and have been caught out, curiosity reattributed as perversion. Peeping Tim, with one eye to the keyhole.
My thoughts turn to when I have had the rug pulled out from under me like this previously, forced into a situation when the exhibition space has turned on me, effectively flipping my dominant, privileged position as viewer on its head. Some situations come to mind, especially Mike Nelson’s The Coral Reef (2000) at the Tate Britain, London. I enter The Coral Reef via a shabby door off the cavernous and pristine Duveen Galleries, walking in behind the counter of a deserted bar, a crappy electric fan blowing
Jarrod Van Der Ryken, Empty Places/With Suspicion, 2015. Installation view, Metro Arts, Brisbane. Courtesy the artist.
