Michael Feldstead, Moko Halford, Helen Hyatt-Johnston, Anne Kay, Victoria Monk and Herb Robertson, Dhirendra McGrath, Deborah Pollard, Julie Savage Curator: Penny Thwaite
Upon entering a group show of the nature of Untitled 93, we find ourselves in a realm reminiscent of Eisensteinian cinema, where connections are drawn, inevitably, between works of diverse and occasionally contradictory origin . Yet if there is a constant running through this show, it is centred around notions of visuality and invisibility boundaries and delineations of inside and outside, public and private, cross-cultural divides and inter-disciplinary methodologies.
Anne Kay's Flue, which greets the viewer in the first gallery, is a severe pale-blue column, suspended from the sky-light at the head of the space. As you move around this object of an oddly displaced domesticity you become aware of its function as a periscope siting you outside the confines of the gallery proper, and evoking the more hazy realm of individual memory. Julie Savage's embroidered and sewn works likewise deal with boundaries and delineations of private and public spheres, and also of high art and craft. They are understated, though not unambitious, in their questioning. However the contradictions and discriminations which they probe are silenced somewhat through their comfortable framing behind glass. This limits the potential power of the image/objects by relegating them to the safe and instantly recognizable domain of 'Pure' image.
Dhirendra McGrath also employs sewn elements in his OH.AH!, a humorously enigmatic work as complex as it is confused. McGrath's installation functions by re-directing the viewer's attention from the gallery's interior to a semi-enclosed courtyard beyond its perimeters. The work reminds us that the trajectory of desire is by no means a simple question of linearity, but rather that it is an intricate web of possibility echoed in the complicated lattice work of dance steps