FUNCTIONAL SCULPTURE

Exhibitions

Clay Memes, Abstract Thoughts Gallery, Darlinghurst 2022

Foreground: Chair 2022, Michael Cooper, Upcycled Polystyrene, epoxy resin Midground: Clay 2022 unfired wheel thrown terracotta Background: Smoky I & Smoky II, Timber, polystyrene, PVA glue, sand

JESSE HOGAN, GATORBEUG, FUNCTIONAL SCULPTURE + ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE OPENINGS

ALASKA Projects \ Car Park space.

10 August – 25 August 2018

Social Disorder is abundant in the sharp clean aesthetics of the IT smart pants SOCIETY of this era. An era so aestheticized by its own Image ~ Narcissus would appear relatively unconcerned with the self in comparison. Our Smart aesthetics, or Athletic Aesthetics - (to borrow the term from Brad Tromel) knows all of modern designs great achievements and has enough examples of intergeneration style and fashion failures to have a fail proof approach to looking cool, smart and clean. Even amongst ourselves in the good old ‘art’ world, this tendency appears to have worked itself in successfully. We know that minimaldisplay and conceptual branding can carry a scrap of plastic through a dosage of critical doubt but, alongside the neutral surfaces and coordinated objects lies our most destructive habits, the dust of this planet. Objects function as ornamental fruits of capital & desire, while phrases and language(text) frames our embrace of our ideological contradictions. The works in this display dabble with exactly this tension, embracing both high and low, sophisticated and trash aesthetics that pervade our consumer relationship to the Image of society & culture. The form – to present a disparate relationship between materials and energies (on the one hand a purest approach to minimalism and on the other hand an outrageous hybridization and embrace of all things that are fucked up and look good). How do you minimalize, reduce and mass produce sub-culture? How do you aestheticize and brand the embarrassment of 1970, 80’s, and 90’s Australiana. We all do it, why? Because, we know how to do it, it makes us second guess our cultural habits and affinities, and we like it. Its sincere insincerity, the nature of our times - To be insincere means in this context to make art beyond all taste – even beyond one’s own taste.

Contemporary art is an excess of taste, including the pluralistic taste.

Using produced objects, video, text and images, WE arrange an exhibition which explores Social Disorder and High Grade minimalist aesthetics. Using exhibition display such as (un)conventional plinths, platforms and display tables to present the works, formal sensibilities will be at odds with stylized hyper aesthetics of Australiana and bad habits. Repetitive production of ceramic slip cast and glass cast iconic PET bottle bongs and Hyper subculture domestic objects explores the ironic taste of the marijuana sub-culture in Australia and its commodification in the world of fashion and internet graphics. A selection of Bakes and Objects will adorn a range of exhibition displays and sculptural forms designed, built and installed by everyday people.

Functional Sculpture acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. We recognise the First Peoples of this Nation and their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to the lands, waters, seas, skies, and communities.