contemporary dimensions of the box
One of the exhibition spaces at the Brisbane City Gallery used to be a shop, I think. lt is small with wooden panels and frames. lt is not painted white and the polished timber shelving has been retained in brown. There are ten or so panels in the room about a metre wide where shelving might once have been: each panel is more like a discreet space, an inset receptacle with an auburn-coloured frame. This small gallery has always been a perplexing space, partly because it was once a shop now used as a gallery, and partly because it is quite small. lt is often used for craft and jewellery exhibitions or exhibitions of small pieces. lt is actually kind of boxy, not in a claustrophobic way but in a way that is intimate: warm and brown and wooden.
lt somehow seems appropriate that this small space was the venue for an exhibition of works that variously engage the !rope of the 'box'. LxWxD featured ten Queensland-based, contemporary artists whose works use concepts of the box as a recurring motif. These artists included Madonna Staunton, Nicole Voevodin-Cash, Kim Demuth and Helen Nicholson. Despite its seeming intractability as an object-a box is a box is a box-the box nevertheless has a certain flexibility and versatility in our lives. Most obviously, it is a receptacle, a container for memories, hopes and dreams. Actually, the box is a container for just about anything that can be stored. lt is just more poignant or precious when we store memorabilia and mementos than breakfast cereal. In my living room alone, there are probably about seventeen different kinds of boxes, all holding different kinds of things