Helen Grogan, POEM (with insistence on plurality), 2015
glass, transport strapping, tie down strap, canvas photography background screen, paper photography background roll, adjustable photography background crossbar, 2 x Sony Bravia LED screens 1230 cm x 753 cm each, 2 x intermittently re-edited single channel videos (and diegetic sound) with durations varying, looped, headphones, steel, epoxy enamel, casters, Gertrude Glasshouse interior and entrance, sunlight, wind
at: Gertrude Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm Melbourne
glass, transport strapping, tie down strap, canvas photography background screen, paper photography background roll, adjustable photography background crossbar, 2 x Sony Bravia LED screens 1230 cm x 753 cm each, 2 x intermittently re-edited single channel videos (and diegetic sound) with durations varying, looped, headphones, steel, epoxy enamel, casters, Gertrude Glasshouse interior and entrance, sunlight, wind
at: Gertrude Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm Melbourne
from Sarinah Masukor’s catalogue text:
In Helen Grogan’s work the line between viewing bodies, live performance and objects (structures, monitors, film) is often barely visible. Their interaction articulates elements of space and encourages an extraordinary physical concentration on the present. Grogan’s practice is a continuous process of looking and listening. It is a process both systematic and open to the accidental, a practice that is committed to attention and to the cultivation of embodied thought, in the time and space of the now. All parts of this practice, installation, video, action and photography—including a daily collection of visual research apparent in her informal Instagram feed—connect, reflect and speak back to each other and together form a body of work that is concerned with space as a dispositif. Defined by Adrian Martin as ‘the arrangement of diverse elements in such a way as to trigger, guide and organise a set of actions.’1 Grogan’s dispositifs slow the viewer’s gaze, engage the body and direct the viewer to elements of space that frequently go unobserved.
This experience of focused attention has, in previous exhibitions, been accompanied by instances of live performance. In THREE ADJOINING SPACES WITH MANIFOLD EDGES (West Space, 2015) the artist enacted two CONCERT works, where structures installed in the gallery—including steel frames, mirrors, monitors and floor matting—were adjusted and reinstalled in front of a dispersed audience. The performance began fluidly out of the time preceding it and, at the start, it was hard to tell who in the room was ‘performing’ and who was ‘watching.’ Grogan’s live works feel, at first, formless and mundane, but then, after a period of time has passed, the work’s structure suddenly breaks open and the body locks into the rhythm of the specific time and space and into a state of what Grogan calls ‘embodied observation.’ Actions that at first appeared disparate and unplanned coalesce with disarming clarity.
In POEM (with insistence on plurality), Grogan removes the performing body from the work, evincing similar effects through the performing object and its interaction with the viewing body. A suspended glass pane directs observation, framing different parts of the room in relation to where the viewer is standing, sitting or walking. This mobile glass frame is cantilevered across the full length of the gallery to a steel trolley structure. The pane and strapping shift in tandem, subject to the conditions of the space. The frame is, as Grogan observes, ‘cast adrift’ and the movement of the pane and position of the viewer in time creates re framings and infinitely variable views. In a sketch video made in preparation for the show, the glass catches the light and the movement of it illuminates the texture of a wall—a material sight that might otherwise go unnoticed. The structure’s action, and the sensation of embodied observation, develops out of the interplay of viewer and moving form.
In Helen Grogan’s work the line between viewing bodies, live performance and objects (structures, monitors, film) is often barely visible. Their interaction articulates elements of space and encourages an extraordinary physical concentration on the present. Grogan’s practice is a continuous process of looking and listening. It is a process both systematic and open to the accidental, a practice that is committed to attention and to the cultivation of embodied thought, in the time and space of the now. All parts of this practice, installation, video, action and photography—including a daily collection of visual research apparent in her informal Instagram feed—connect, reflect and speak back to each other and together form a body of work that is concerned with space as a dispositif. Defined by Adrian Martin as ‘the arrangement of diverse elements in such a way as to trigger, guide and organise a set of actions.’1 Grogan’s dispositifs slow the viewer’s gaze, engage the body and direct the viewer to elements of space that frequently go unobserved.
This experience of focused attention has, in previous exhibitions, been accompanied by instances of live performance. In THREE ADJOINING SPACES WITH MANIFOLD EDGES (West Space, 2015) the artist enacted two CONCERT works, where structures installed in the gallery—including steel frames, mirrors, monitors and floor matting—were adjusted and reinstalled in front of a dispersed audience. The performance began fluidly out of the time preceding it and, at the start, it was hard to tell who in the room was ‘performing’ and who was ‘watching.’ Grogan’s live works feel, at first, formless and mundane, but then, after a period of time has passed, the work’s structure suddenly breaks open and the body locks into the rhythm of the specific time and space and into a state of what Grogan calls ‘embodied observation.’ Actions that at first appeared disparate and unplanned coalesce with disarming clarity.
In POEM (with insistence on plurality), Grogan removes the performing body from the work, evincing similar effects through the performing object and its interaction with the viewing body. A suspended glass pane directs observation, framing different parts of the room in relation to where the viewer is standing, sitting or walking. This mobile glass frame is cantilevered across the full length of the gallery to a steel trolley structure. The pane and strapping shift in tandem, subject to the conditions of the space. The frame is, as Grogan observes, ‘cast adrift’ and the movement of the pane and position of the viewer in time creates re framings and infinitely variable views. In a sketch video made in preparation for the show, the glass catches the light and the movement of it illuminates the texture of a wall—a material sight that might otherwise go unnoticed. The structure’s action, and the sensation of embodied observation, develops out of the interplay of viewer and moving form.