Forum is a new work completed by James and Eleanor on a 3 month studio residency at The British School at Rome, supported by the Australia Council, during April to July 2008.
This new work references post-Fascist Italian architecture merged with baroque sensibilities and cinematic spatiality.
Forum is currently on show in the entry foyer of The British School at Rome.
GRANTPIRRIE, Sydney, Australia 2008
James and Eleanor Avery’s Supernova explores the dislocated layers of order and disorder within contemporary culture. It’s an experimental investigation into our world of excess and visual overload, and how we interpret and attempt to understand it.
A colossal mixed media angulated structure is suspended above a cat’s cradle of steel scaffolding. Mirrored gold vinyl pulsates on top of a hollow plywood carcass, a giant golden star exploding out of a timber icosahedron. Suspended from the star’s points are crystal bowls, resplendent in macrame chandeliers.
Across the floor rests a pentagonal garden bench, more often seen circumnavigating a tree. A perspex five sided beacon rises above, reflecting the forms found within the scaffolding structure.
This scene is a cult fiction set-up. It’s a journey into the unknown via an intergalactic space trip, cut up with minor cult iconography and retro homecraft technology.
In their collaborations, James and Eleanor use elements of a recurring visual language to build layers and to make parallels and shifts across multiple platforms. They conflate concerns within contemporary culture with historical notes. Their current world is hyper-real, a real-time stage set, cluttered with warped realities, where fictitious worlds overtake conscious actuality.
Supernova is a journey across a multi-layered terrain, encountering reality and fiction in mixed measures. It’s an investigative visual language and an exploration into amateur physics.
Their Supernova will lead the way ‘home’. You know you want to go there, but are you ready for the ride?
Artspace, Sydney, Australia 2007
OUR DAY OUT yourspace was the outcome of a 5 week studio residency at Artspace, Sydney, Australia in early 2007, and was exhibited in Gallery 2 at Artspace during February/March 2007.
It's a semi participatory excursion through the imagined terrain of space travel and real days out.
A hybrid castle/space module straddles a stranded pier, surrounded by picnic tables for you to sit at and admire the view. A cable car hangs like a satellite above your head. It's a real day out, a sideshow distraction. An excursion in irony. Come along for the ride.
Text and Publications
Artspace will publish a text by a commissioned writer for the biannual Artspace exhibitions publication which will be published later in 2007. Clare Lewis, curatorial assistant at MCA, Sydney and Director of Terminus Projects, has written a text for Runway magazine which will also be published later in 2007. Details of both texts will be added to our website shortly.
all images and text © copyright the artists 2008
Spike Island, Bristol, UK 2005
OUR DAY OUT City Limits was the culmination of a three month collaborative residency at Spike Island, Bristol, UK, which formed part of an Australia Council Arts and Craft Strategy supported project for new work.
A 1960’s family tent forms the body of the installation. Balanced on top of this shaky iconic structure is a city built from cardboard, fur fabric and vinyl. Some of these buildings are home-built models collected on daytrips to tourist sights; others are modernist tower blocks made from the discarded packaging of our city’s waste.
In a desperate effort to maintain the stability of this sprouting city positioned atop it’s precarious structure, it has been propped up and underpinned by a mass of Acro Props and timber batons.
Building upon inappropriate foundations is an act of futility, a desperate attempt to claim the monumentality of the city whilst retaining the temporality of the tent.
A flock of birds has settled on the towers and rooftops, their featherweight forms further threatening to rock the stability of the city.
Publication
A 16 page Australia Council assisted publication, with essays by Clare Lewis, Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Lucy Byatt, Director of Spike Island, Bristol, accompanies this project. A memento of a great day out.
OUR DAY OUT Daytripper
Australia 2005/2006
OUR DAY OUT Daytripper is a real day out, a day sightseeing, a tourist attraction. Bring a picnic. You can view the mountains, there’s a cable car. You can sit by the stream. You can take home a souvenir.
We claim, we conquer, we consume. The landscape, both natural and manufactured, is there for our amusement. We iconicise, fetishise, anthropomorphise. We name, we climb, we capture.
OUR DAY OUT Daytripper is an installation which sets the scene of a pleasant day out. It’s all fake and it’s there purely for your enjoyment. It consists of a cable car, suspended from a wire and scaffolding towers; flatpack mountains; an artificial stream; timber picnic tables for you to sit at; a shed and awning piled high with home made souvenirs of all the places we have visited. And more. There’s also a real vending machine, just in case anyone forgot to bring their packed lunch.
This is not quite relational aesthetics, but it’s nothing without the viewer. It wouldn’t be a day out without you there.
This is as good as it gets. An armchair tourist fantasy. A spectacle in irony. Better than the real thing. We’ve reclaimed the landscape, made it ours, yours, something to share.
Only it’s raining.
We come together in this project as two British born and educated artists who work in strongly defined fields. James Avery investigates temporary living accommodation and containment. Eleanor Avery explores the landscape through intervention and dislocation. We are interested in ideas, not conclusions. There are strong links between our practices and we have worked collaboratively on past projects. We couldn’t realise ‘Our Day Out’ alone. It’s a collaborative process, a daytrip for two.
The venue for OUR DAY OUT Daytripper is still to be confirmed. Check this space regularly for project developments and updates.
Publication
A 16 page Australia Council assisted publication, with essays by Clare Lewis, Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Lucy Byatt, Director of Spike Island, Bristol, accompanies this project. A memento of a great day out.