Occasional Tables

Visual art

Is it wrong to assume that people would naturally jump at the chance to spend time with their family?

The emotional heaviness in our psyche that is required to spend a special moment with family members can be a life-long residue. The tables, featured in Roderick Sprigg’s Occasional Tables on display at Craft Victoria, are the results of those who have taken opportunity to connect with their families.

The allegoric and metaphoric nature of Roderick’s tables, along with the documentation of their histories, allows for a sensitive interpretation of the Festival’s theme Closer Together. Through the example of archetypal father and son situations, Occasional Tables brings to light universal truths and assumptions, and in doing so, the viewer is invited to reflect upon his ideas and experiences of parental relationships in his own life.

Occasional Tables is a process and community-based project that explores the politics of inter-generational and masculine relationships in what is usually seen a man’s space, the shed. The engagement of physical activity—the cutting of wood, the moving of large objects, laminating of surfaces, joining things together—is captured on video and photographs, and in text and drawings. The documentation presented in this exhibition honours the process by uniting the private domain with the public.