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8/7/2011

Three solo show

Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts PICA, Perth

Brook Andrew
The Cell

Central Galleries

Commissioned by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Brook Andrew's The Cell is an immersive installation, featuring a 12.5m x 6m inflatable rectangle that requires the viewer to wear a specially designed costume, before crawling via a tunnel into a striped cell. This is the first time The Cell has been shown in Western Australia.

Working with striking neon installations, powerful photographic studies, prints, sculpture and optical illusions, Andrew challenges cultural and historical perception using text and image to comment on local and global issues regarding race, consumerism and history. Language and traditional designs from Andrew's Wiradjuri heritage are combined with contemporary elements such as optical art patterns, pop art aesthetics, and the declarative strategies of advertising to create compelling and insightful pieces. The inflatable cell draws on such themes concerning cultural identity, colonial experience and consumerism.

In the artist's words "The original idea for The Cell is an extension of my wall pattern installations, where one is immersed in the pattern and experience. You are immediately transformed once you don a costume and enter The Cell. It's like you become an inmate, a cellular astronaut or asylum seeker. Experiences of loss, asylum and genocide, an 'outsider', is turned on its head. The Cell is a conundrum, a monument to such stories, a space for quiet contemplation, disorientation and spectacle."

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Li Gang
In the grey scale

Westend Gallery

PICA is proud to present the second major solo exhibition of Li Gang's photographs in Australia. Curated by Australian artist Tony Trembath, Li Gang: in the grey scale surveys the recent photographic work of this Australian-trained Chinese artist.

Although its origins are in sculpture, Li Gang's creative practice now crosses a range of media, with particular attention to photography. The exhibition presents the evolution of Li Gang's photography from random shooting and loose darkroom techniques to his current use of extraordinary large-format handmade cameras. The use of hand-built cameras introduces risk and accidents to Li Gang's work. In his photographs, instead of control and mastery, there is magic and mystery. The photographic darkroom was always a place of magic and mystery, where alchemy and science turned silver halides into pictures. Li Gang returns to these roots. Images, mainly of exterior spaces, expose process and experimentation as the primary concerns of Li Gang's practice.

The philosophy of the Victorian College for the Arts of the University of Melbourne (VCA) sculpture department where Li Gang studied was "truth to materials." This tenet certainly struck a chords with the artist; it could be argued that it is at the core of all his creative production. "Truth to materials" remains the constant and unifying element across his practice, as he researches and tests an endless stream of ideas, processes and opportunities. Working outside the mainstream of contemporary Chinese photography, Li Gang investigates the relationship between camera-film-subject-light-chemicals-artist, while his research has led to a distinctive style. This style was initially an artefact of primitive pinhole cameras and various found cameras (Kodak Brownie Box, for instance) which he reconfigured for pinhole photography.

"You can control or not control, the balance is important. But you have to have a broad heart to accept what happens - this notion actually is quite oriental because you have to let it happen." Li Gang
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Gabrielle de Vietri
Things I've Learnt

Screen Space

Things I've Learnt is the most recent video work by Gabrielle de Vietri, filmed on location in the regional town of Horsham in April and May this year. De Vietri has been further developing her interest in learning and pedagogy in art - and her recent residency in Horsham as part ART#2, the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA) regional art program, allowed her to work with a community of youngsters to ask them for their take on pertinent and enduring philosophical questions which were then used to engage the children in a humourous and touching game of chinese whispers outdoors in a country field.


Image: Brook Andrew, The Cell (installation view). Courtesy of the artist and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Photo: Roger D'Souza.

For all media enquiries including high resolution images, please contact:
Michele McDonald Acting Communications Manager Ph: 08 9228 6307 Fax: 08 9227 6539 communications@pica.org.au

Perth Cultural Centre
James Street Northbridge - Perth
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 6pm
Free Admission

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