• Brook Andrew: The Cell

• Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids

• Ai Weiwei: Under Construction
• Jitish Kallat: Aquasaurus
• Jonathan Jones: untitled (the tyranny of distance)
• The view from elsewhere
• Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA
• Charwei Tsai - Water, Earth and Air
• Fiona Tan: Coming Home

Jonathan Jones: untitled (the tyranny of distance)

14 ⁄ 08 ⁄ 2008 – 11 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2008

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) presents an immersive new installation by Jonathan Jones.

 Six walls covered in blue tarpaulin glow with filtered light from fluorescent tubes articulated in a continuous chevron design. The chevrons are derived from elements of traditional Koori (South Eastern Aboriginal) line work and resonate with Western minimalism.

While visitors are able to walk around the perimeter of the installation and bathe in its light, they are allowed only sightlines between each wall. This lack of physical access in untitled (the tyranny of distance) sets up a dynamic of intimacy versus exclusion alluding to a sense of longing, alienation and lost or secret histories.

untitled (the tyranny of distance) was conceived following the implementation of the continuing Northern Territory Intervention.(1) It is concerned with access and its prohibition and is particularly relevant at a time of changing government policies in relation to Indigenous housing.

1. MAIN EXHIBITION SPACE

untitled (the tyranny of distance), 2008 

aluminium, tarpaulin, fluorescent tubes and fittings

6 walls, each 3.4 x 1.9 x 8.27 m

commissioned by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

courtesy the artist, Gallery Barry Keldoulis and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

2. SCAF OUT-SITE

genesis, 2008 

emu eggs, fluorescent light and perspex

dimensions variable

courtesy the artist, Gallery Barry Keldoulis and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney.

Jonathan Jones has conceived of the SCAF OUT-SITE as a benign art incubator for multiple layers of stacked, found emu eggs, illuminated by fluorescent light.

Emu eggs, with their distinctive, dark, green-blue shell were carved and painted as decorative objects by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in southeast Australia during the late nineteenth century.

 Associations may be drawn between genesis and untitled (the tyranny of distance). While the egg has universal (and intimate) connotations as a symbol of wholeness and new life, its use as an art object disallows this potential.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jones is a Sydney-based artist of the Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri nations of South Eastern Australia. His use of fluorescent light with his Indigenous traditions creates a powerful and meaningful set of references that have established him as one of the most interesting artists to emerge in the last decade.

His work explores the relationships of space – the personal, the public, the private, the common – and the unifying effect of light.

Everyday materials are of primary importance to Jones. His early works utilised corrugated iron, mainly because of its familiarity and ubiquity in both Indigenous and white culture. He first used incandescent light in a student exhibition to ‘hold together’ the component elements of his sculptural installation – fifty-six corrugated iron coolamons – not only as physical objects but also in terms of the memories and associations that gave them meaning. Coolamons are traditionally handcrafted from wood and used by Indigenous women when gathering bush tucker or carrying water or babies. Jones had conceived of his work to honour the memory of a much-loved aunt.

Jones’s use of blue plastic tarpaulin in the SCAF installation is similarly loaded with meaning. Used throughout the world during construction projects, as temporary shelter after natural disasters and as housing for the homeless, blue tarpaulin has a layered set of associations that are rendered more complex through the medium of filtered light.

Deceptively simple, Jones’s work embodies a complex set of art-historical and cultural references that relate as much to traditions of Indigenous mark-making as to 1960s American minimalism.

He has a strong identification with the idea of community and the place of the individual within particular communities. The abstract elements that make up his artworks signal such relationships, suggesting open and closed patterns as well as points of tension and connection.

Both artist and curator, Jones’s curatorial career began at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative Ltd in 2000. In 2002 he received the New South Wales Indigenous Artists Fellowship and in 2006 won the Xstrata Emerging Indigenous Art Award, awarded by Queensland Art Gallery.

Jones has worked with architects and landscape architects on various Sydney projects including the Wilson Brothers Site, Redfern (2003, with landscape architects Pittendrigh, Shinkfield and Bruce) and the Westpac Bank Headquarters, Sydney (white lines, 2005–06, with architects Johnson Pilton Walker).  Jones has also collaborated with artists including, among others, Ruark Lewis (homeland illuminations), Darren Dale and David Page (2004, Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the National Gallery of Victoria); and Jim Vivieaere (Auckland Society of Arts Gallery, New Zealand). He is currently Museum Educator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

(1) In 2006 the Northern Territory Government established a Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. In June 2007 the Little Children are Sacred Report was released, resulting in then Prime Minister John Howard’s announcement of an urgent government response to the critical situation of children at risk in the NT. This involved seizing control of some Indigenous communities for five years; sending police and army personnel to deal with law and order; banning alcohol; and quarantining welfare payments to control spending of welfare money by Indigenous people. The Intervention continues under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government. However, the permit system has been restored, allowing Aboriginal communities’ control over their own land. (Police, government workers and social workers have always been exempt from having to get permits and government retains the power to compulsorily acquire Aboriginal land. See http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/755/39009)  

Jonathan Jones is represented by Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

A full-colour catalogue will accompany the SCAF exhibition. It includes essays by Michael Desmond and Dr Eddie Chambers, as well Jonathan Jones in conversation with Hetti Perkins, Victoria Lynn and John Kean.

The catalogue will be available for $30 from mid-September.  A limited edition of 100 copies – with tarpaulin cover and signed by the artist – will also be available for $65.  Both catalogues can be purchased from SCAF.

To register your interest in purchasing a copy of the catalogue, in either edition, please email info@sherman-scaf.org.au for more information.

COMMISSION SUPPORTED BY SYLVANIA LIGHTING AUSTRALASIA