Released

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Object: Wood veneer, Perspex, 380 x 1310 x 200mm
Book: Released: The Uncertainty Principle. POD paperback, 148 x 105mm, 60pp. ISBN 978-0-9775906-8-1

Exhibited in The Uncertainty Principle: University of Canberra staff exhibition, ANCA Gallery, Canberra, 29 August-16 September, 2018. Curated by CF + Jen Webb.

FINALIST, The 66th Blake Prize, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (CPAC), Sydney, 13 February 2021 – 11 April 2021

Artist’s statement
Wood veneer is thinly-shaved and joined strips of tree, glued onto a surface – like a table-top – using extreme amounts of pressure. It is then usually coated with a skin of something clear and protective. If this skin is scratched or the veneer is damaged, the surface is compromised and moisture makes it stress and release. 

My family’s simple pine and veneer kitchen table was a prop for my brother’s suicide. It was present that day, and I was absent. This is often the root of a relic’s power. There are no definitive answers as to why he chose this action, and we often mull over the variables. I have kept the table with me for over 30 years. When it was irreparably damaged in a recent move, I tried to let go by exposing it to the elements and allowing it to decay; within a short time the top began to curl into itself and separated from the body of the table. I kept this top piece, because I realised that it was the element that actually mattered to me: the site of death. It is like a portable roadside memorial.

The accompanying book contains ideas, research, uncertainties. Shop link

Research statement
The event that this table witnessed has shaped my life and textured my work. The table itself was a thing that held meaning for the family as a gathering place, and it has now transformed into another kind of thing by acts of releasing control. However, my ‘final’ act of release also reversed the gesture: I find I now have an thing that I cannot let go and which has intensified in meaning. 

I use the word thing deliberately. I have been making work about translation for many years, and this show’s theme prompted me to think about objects and thing-ing, the transforming of an object by a human relationship (Gaull, 2008). I have also thought about grief and place (Clark and Franzmann, 2006), and nostalgia (Stewart, 1993) when considering how to present this body of wood to a public gaze. All of these ideas, combined with statistics relevant to the time and circumstances of the event, have generated a printed meditation on the physical relic as talismanic companion and of the inability of anyone to have certainty about complex emotional matters. 

Photos by Brenton McGeachie and the artist