Curandum

That Which Should Be Cared About

Inter-media and visual art

Presented by 80% Water, Curandum is a group exhibition under the direction of regionally based curator, Raymond Wholohan.

Incorporating artists from Wagga Wagga and Melbourne, Curandum questions the conditions in which art is curated, conserved, controlled and presented to the public by institutions and so-called ‘art experts’. Curandum invites artists to directly intervene in this process, creating critical, imaginative and often humorous artworks which playfully critique the extra baggage these institutions add to the presentation and reception of art.

What is the role of the arts authority and how do they influence the creative practitioner? Curandum is a departure from traditional curatorial models and a call for a more active and playful response from artists, audiences and curators alike.

Artist/s:

Raymond Wholohan (Curator), Melissa Delaney, Drew Halyday, Jamie Holcombe, Simon Matthews, Zoe Steers, Joel Thogersen.

[ Read more about the artist/s ]

About the artist/s:

80% Water Curandum is made up of seven artists from the Wagga/Melbourne/Wagga divide that care about art and each other. Four of the seven were involved in the 2006 Next Wave Festival and have since formed a small artist collective called 80% Water. The group’s collective artistic achievements to date include group and solo shows, CD releases, performing and facilitating the unsound Festival 2006, collaborating on ABC’s new Pool web site for media arts and participating in Dual Plover’s Drowning Man Festival 2007.

Raymond Wholohan (Curator) is a regionally based curator who is fascinated by the apparent rift between so-called ‘new media art’ such as image projection, and ‘traditional media art’ such as drawing and the general interaction between the constructed authority of public galleries and the artist they were founded to serve. In Curandum, Ray wishes to address some of his concerns and concepts in a humorous manner.

Melissa Delaney works within electronic art and text. Melissa likes words and the way they can shape the world. In addition to being a member of the Wagga Space Program, and being strongly involved in the unsound festival, Melissa enjoys collaborating with other artists and is currently doing a Masters in Cross Disciplinary Art and Design through the College of Fine Arts (COFA).

For Curandum Melissa will produce works based on the effects of didactic information on the work of art using image and text.

Drew DaDa (aka Drew Halyday) While in Sydney, Drew worked extensively as part of the Tribot Collective, producing subversive multimedia spectacles that were fuelled by a sense of anarchy and harsh, industrial-electronic music. He also produced several installations, including commissioned work for Video Combustion at the Performance Space and a multi-media, site specific work at the Sydney Opera House entitled Out the Back, both in 2002. Permanent installations of his work include the fit-out of the Machine Music record store in Surry Hills.

For Curandum Drew will produce a work based on gallery’s conventions regarding three dimensional work and the interaction of lighting and the display of sculpture.

Jamie Holcombe has a degree in Visual Arts majoring in Photography from Sydney College of the Arts, at Sydney University, and completed his post-graduate studies in Art/Photography at the University of Newcastle. He states: ‘Regardless of the area in which I am working, it is the context of the work that matters to me. It must permit critical contemplation, allowing an active interaction, stimulating our minds to reflect and ponder on what we have seen.’

For Curandum Jamie will produce a work in reaction to the commodification and economy of the art object.

Simon Matthews is a figurative artist who explores cartoon, animation and zine art, which he fuses with surrealistic concepts of object association and the automatic in an attempt to create fresh metaphor. Today, Simon has no inspiration to paint.

For Curandum Simon will produce works based on expression vs. conservation.

After participating in the 2006 Next Wave Festival as a Bitscape artist, Zoe Steers followed through with her practice, recently moving back to Culcairn (via Lockhart/Wagga Wagga) from Melbourne and is studying Graphic Design at Charles Sturt University. Zoe is interested in art/sound/noise/drawing/playing guitar/writing songs/stenciling/screenprinting and is currently designing her own range of t-shirts (albertbird).

For Curandum Zoe will contrive a performance based on preconceived ideas of the behaviour of the artist and interaction with the curator.

Joel Thogerson works with sounds utilised that are completely synthetic while their arrangement comes about through completely random means. Rhythms that develop are symptomatic of this randomness and not by its design. The deconstruction/reconstruction, sensical/nonsensical cycles appear as they do in life, allowing the strongest ideal to prevail. This harks back to our biological principles where evolution, symbiosis and reproduction each have the ability to achieve this ideal. Joel is currently completing a PhD in Bush Foods at Charles Sturt University and then plans to study sound art.

For Curandum Joel will produce a work addressing the glorification of the banal in art.