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Natasha Johns-Messenger makes everyday art. Not, that is, art that reflects some self-styled vision of the everyday as site of retro, low-fi culture. Instead this is the everyday we all experience, the one that somehow gets lost in critical writings. This is the everyday made up of the stuff that truly surrounds us- the real, the here, the now. So how exactly does Johns-Messenger present, or more precisely re-present, this most beautifully mundane of subjects?
From the street, the expansive front windows of 200 Gertrude Street have been turned into an opaque field of pale blue, carefully matched to that of the surrounding architecture. Almost a high gloss colourfield painting in its own right, the window, like so much within, is given multiple functions. Some carefully positioned geometry/viewing-slots signpost the invitation. If you take it the first thing you will be greeted by is a larger than life video of yourself looking at yourself looking. Once over the initial disorientation and inside the gallery, a series of coloured, upright folding planes (or are they monochrome paintings?) compress the physical space of the site into a viewing unit with which one is hard-pressed not to engage. Upon entering the tight maze that is Here, what begins as an abstract relationship of lines and planes of flat colour quickly becomes transformed into vectors in the construction of real and reflective space. Realtime image capture occurs in body-scaled mirror and projected video-such that the use of digital technology appears to be in a symbiotic rather than appositional relationship with the old . In fact, such is the sense of dislocation engendered in some of the folds of Here that there are brief moments when reflection , video