Transfer

'Transfer' is part of the curatorial project Surface Sound and Space, an ongoing series of exhibitions, texts, concerts, discussions, concerned with multi-disciplinary approaches to non-representation taking the premise of an art work as surface or field modified through staged encounters. It was curated by Bernice Donszelmann, Sharon Hall, David Ryan, and Donald Smith.

Within these projects a collaborative, open approach is adopted towards critical juxtapositions, placements, and occasional blurring and overlapping between works and ideas. The curatorial group invite further artists, writers and musicians to participate depending on the particular project.

The title, 'Transfer', specifically refers to the “blurring and overlapping” mentioned above. This exhibition included sound pieces, videos, paintings, wall drawings, and kinetic installations and all are shown with no sense of division between media or even distinction between individual artists. The flow of the overall installation to create a single surface - a non-hierarchical approach to medium, artworks, curators and creators, is the curatorial model adopted.

The exhibition aimed to investigate how conceptions of surface within non-representation can be reformulated through a dialogue across a range of disciplines and media. The project drew upon Gilbert-Rolfe’s notion of a “morphological parallelism” between, originally, the painted surface and body surface/skin and, eventually, surface as ‘screen’ – cinema, television and computer screen. The exhibition expanded this remit to include object-based work, wall drawing and sound works, all engaging with surface in differing ways.

The project included a seminar workshop and a live performance of Saunder’s ongoing #180506 (featured in Miser and Now magazine, August, 2007).

Bernice Donszelmann

wall drawing: ‘Turnstile”

In the wall drawing, “Turnstile” Donszelmann reworked the relation between gesture and surface within painting in architectural form. Via a chaotic ‘pictorialism’ the gallery space is reanimated.

Catalogue Essay, "Touch Screen"

Using the work of David Reed and Katarina Grosse as contemporary examples, Donszelmann's essay “Touch Screen” argues against an understanding of the materiality of the painted surface as a site of ‘authentic’ bodily experience. It instead proposes surface as a site where corporeality is explored as a problem within a contemporary context where the dematerialized image of the ‘screen’ is ubiquitous.

Donald Smith

To illustrate the curatorial premise of this exhibition Smith made a multi-part work reconfigured from several of the works illustrated in the catalogue. This fragmented, recycled work occupied two corners of the gallery, scattering onto the floor in critical relationship to the architecture and the work of other artists.