Catalogue of studio activities (SLOPES), 2014
site-responsive ensemble performance, scores from Catalogue of Studio Activies (2002-present), variable materials and equipment. w/ Matthew Day, Geoff Robinson, Anna Varendorff, Helen Grogan.
at: Slopes Gallery, Naarm Melbourne, curated by Joel Stern and Helen Hughes
site-responsive ensemble performance, scores from Catalogue of Studio Activies (2002-present), variable materials and equipment. w/ Matthew Day, Geoff Robinson, Anna Varendorff, Helen Grogan.
at: Slopes Gallery, Naarm Melbourne, curated by Joel Stern and Helen Hughes
Slopes documentation by Laura May Grogan
From Charlie Sofo’s responsive text:
Grogan’s work is in dialogue with a range of artistic forms unveiling connections between disciplines. It is inclusive without being sentimental. A participant can have a deeply satisfying and sensual experience; they can draw out material pleasures and appreciate subtle shifts in perception, mood and environmental conditions. Difference is not only accommodated, it is instrumental to the realisation of the work. I feel that with Grogan’s work we arrive at a performance that can actually frame and intensify life. It reflects the artistic imperative to affirm the bare existence of things. By butting up against the limits of language and matter, avenues are opened up to clear thinking and deeper experience.An intensification of a physical and lingual awareness has political implications. Through the whittling away of social warranties (the absence of Indigenous land rights) and the rise of social technologies, the real has undergone profound shifts. What historically constituted the real feels like it has been fast tracked into the status of cultural ruin.
A sense of ruin is articulated in the final action in Grogan’s work THIS SITUATION WITH METHOD FOR THIS SITUATION (2014), which occurred at Slopes gallery in Fitzroy. In this action, Helen Grogan and Geoff Robinson carefully gathered up all of the materials used in the performance and compacted them into the end of a driveway. They essentially trashed the gallery. This action seemed to speak to the context of Slopes, which is essentially a showroom for a property development, destined to be sold off, demolished and then rebuilt. This is a performance concerned with materiality, time and embodied experience that directly connects with the violence of gentrification. Like the performance, we are both viewers and participants in it.
1. This is a reference to a tweet by Danny Butt: “Teaching painters taught me that media art was a thin concept, like nationality: every medium has opposing camps seeking external allies.”
2. This sense of art being an intensification of life has been inspired by reading Elizabeth Grosz’s “Chaos, Territory, Art”.
3. “The whittling away of social warranties” is vaguely extrapolated or mis-interpreted from Franco Berardi’s book “The Soul at Work
Grogan’s work is in dialogue with a range of artistic forms unveiling connections between disciplines. It is inclusive without being sentimental. A participant can have a deeply satisfying and sensual experience; they can draw out material pleasures and appreciate subtle shifts in perception, mood and environmental conditions. Difference is not only accommodated, it is instrumental to the realisation of the work. I feel that with Grogan’s work we arrive at a performance that can actually frame and intensify life. It reflects the artistic imperative to affirm the bare existence of things. By butting up against the limits of language and matter, avenues are opened up to clear thinking and deeper experience.An intensification of a physical and lingual awareness has political implications. Through the whittling away of social warranties (the absence of Indigenous land rights) and the rise of social technologies, the real has undergone profound shifts. What historically constituted the real feels like it has been fast tracked into the status of cultural ruin.
A sense of ruin is articulated in the final action in Grogan’s work THIS SITUATION WITH METHOD FOR THIS SITUATION (2014), which occurred at Slopes gallery in Fitzroy. In this action, Helen Grogan and Geoff Robinson carefully gathered up all of the materials used in the performance and compacted them into the end of a driveway. They essentially trashed the gallery. This action seemed to speak to the context of Slopes, which is essentially a showroom for a property development, destined to be sold off, demolished and then rebuilt. This is a performance concerned with materiality, time and embodied experience that directly connects with the violence of gentrification. Like the performance, we are both viewers and participants in it.
1. This is a reference to a tweet by Danny Butt: “Teaching painters taught me that media art was a thin concept, like nationality: every medium has opposing camps seeking external allies.”
2. This sense of art being an intensification of life has been inspired by reading Elizabeth Grosz’s “Chaos, Territory, Art”.
3. “The whittling away of social warranties” is vaguely extrapolated or mis-interpreted from Franco Berardi’s book “The Soul at Work