October-November 2013

from left: Anton Hart, Merilyn de Nys, Anton Hart, Mark de Nys

The works in “invite” are all small; to see their details one has to move close. In this sense they are invitational; the jewellery by function, the objects by curiosity, the photographs by quietness, the paintings by suggestion.

Traci Chamber’s jewellery colours are from old anodised saucepan lids; these precisely cut shapes then composed with sterling silver reference the Hills Hoist – familiar (to some of us) domestic utilities given another life to be carried by the body (and to be talked about); memories imbued in material (aluminium) mixed with memories imbued in shape (Hills Hoist).

The photographs by Merilyn de Nys are calm, peeled off the constantly moving world; their subjects were already present as offerings upon surfaces or as remains in furniture (chalk); markings and markers awaiting notice – the graffiti an art for declaring a situation, the chalk a tool for declaring information.

Mark de Nys’s sculptures are coated by time; the entwined barb wire has done its fencing job, and now rusted by air and water it looks soft and velvety, while still strong and dangerous. Each work holds its shape internally, as if a type of jewel-like architecture as well as a three-dimensional drawing. Their solid square bases, slightly raised, carefully provide a counterpoint (to the poetic curves above).

Craig Stratford’s Culinary works reuse domestic instruments – cutlery; forks and spoons, found and gifted, that usually transfer food for the body from plate to mouth, are machined into quite different instruments that the body can carry as decoration (another form of nourishment); these jewellery pieces have served for decades in houses far and wide, and have witnessed varied and complex human lives.

Anton Hart’s paintings in the series Prop are barely there; at the same time, each brush stroke of grey is visible, as are the degrees of grey/white. These ‘pictures’ contemplate a type of action that dances around the question of what painting is and does – what might happen next, or what has just happened (for instance); their modest planes are grounds for thought.

Anton Hart and Paloma Concierta’s collaborative work, The Conversation, consisting of two small delicate paintings and a text, brings into focus the relationships between word-language and image-language. As well, it unsettles looking and reading, as ‘reading’ can be taken away. The work, therefore, ‘works’ later, at some distance from where it was first encountered. Painting adjusts itself to the presence of a form that holds writing, and to do that must, like the texts, push itself away from the wall. A text here is a made thing, created by ‘talk’… to give to you.