Innovators 3

Five exhibitions that prove the Japanese have it right: decay and darkness can be beautiful.
Meg Watson
Published on November 11, 2013

Overview

Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts is rounding off their Innovators series on a bit of a downer this year with "an exploration of time, transience, frailty and decay". Pretty challenging stuff for the beginning of summer, guys. That being said, the artwork on exhibition is anything but depressing.

Off the back of her recent residency at Artspace in Sydney, Santina Amato's No Point in Time (pictured) will be leading audiences through an engaging video installation that explores the idea of ageing through a distinctive feminine lens. Alternatively, in a contemplative display of masculinity and its downfalls, Peter Thomas' Coma Country will be interrogating local sites where "young men have been killed by other young men outside licensed venues."

Similar to the bold affirmations of Jenny Holzer, Michael Carolan will be drawing from the world of advertising and neon signs to examine our modern-day relationship with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' '5 stages of grief' in 5 Stages of Grief: Choose your own (Mis)adventure. Daniel Price's sculpture in Plans will be exploring frailty and decay, and in a joint venture between curators Kim Fasher and Sarah Mosca, Mono No Aware is a group exhibitions by 12 artists looking at the Japanese concept of 'the pathos of things'. According to Fasher and Mosca, the chosen works are "about an experience of beauty and time that is heightened by an understanding of its inevitable passing. It is about the wonder of beauty in the face of decay, of happiness that cannot last, about an appreciation of light in the knowledge of darkness."

Image: Santina Amato, The Garden of Instance, 2013, video, reproduced courtesy of the artist.

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