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13 June – 10 August 2008
God-favoured, Rodney
Glick: Surveyed
God-favoured, Rodney Glick: Surveyed, is an exhibition that
brings together art works ranging across the last 15 years of
renowned West Australian artist Rodney Glick's practice, in a
typically idiosyncratic mix of sculpture, installation, photography
and publications.
In his latest series of works - which in this exhibition include
eight sculptures and two groups of related photographs - it is the
capacity, or the potential, of everyone to take on some aspect of
the divine which provide the ground on which Glick and his
collaborators have built an elaborate and engaging series.
The larger than life carved wooden statues, cast bronzes and
manipulated photographs are derived from Glick's observations of
Buddhist and Hindu religious statues in Western art museums. The
statue series titled Everyone and based on real people in Glick's
life, have taken on the aura of the venerated object of
contemplation. Through the photographs of other gesturing figures
with multiple arms and hands, the series is extended, both in Bali
(where the statues were carved) and back home in Australia, and
potentially to everyone, everywhere. |
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Photographs feature heavily through this exhibition, including
family snapshots. In his Defaced series Glick has taken family
photographs that were being discarded, and scratched out many of the
faces that made these characters familiar and known. In doing so,
they become representatives of anyone or everyone. As the memories
fade; the snapshots move into being just records of the historical
past. Glick and his partner, Lynnette Voevodin, have made a number
of panoramic films which compress a full day in a single hour of
video. The 24 hourly slices of condensed time and space are of a
forest in Kent and sections of downtown Havana with a focus on
everyday, routine activity.
In the Jewish orthodox tradition the full prayer service can be
performed only in quorum of 10 adult males. Glick explores this
tradition through his Master of Prayer installation, where each
computer has been individually programmed to respond (in Hebrew) to
the blessings recited by the main computer - just as they would
respond to a human Master of Prayer.
The title for this exhibition, God-favoured, has come from the
name of a Chinese rubber used for table tennis bats (which Glick, an
avid player, used for several years).
Throughout his work since the early 1980s Glick has compressed
time, space and elements of everyday life, and fictional but very
real stories into dense and humorous amalgams. Explanations of art,
of life, of collecting, of place and origin are created by Glick,
retold and recast in ways which destabilise as well as intrigue,
which are cut through with the blackest humour or which transpose
details of real life into a different but still quite possible
world.
Rodney Glick is an artist with a wide-ranging practice,
encompassing everything from painting to architecture, film to
sculpture and public art to furniture design. He has exhibited
widely across Australia and internationally. He has undertaken
residencies in Yogyakarta, Kent, New York, Seoul and Basel and been
included in major exhibitions and biennials in Sydney, Perth, Havana
and Sao Paulo. His work has been exhibited at the Lawrence Wilson
Art Gallery in several exhibitions since 1992 with this being his
first major survey exhibition in Western Australia.
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