Curated by David Attwood
Commodify Me
26
October 2017
26
Oct
2017
10
Nov 2017
Gallery 1
Commodify Me
Curated by David Attwood
26
October 2017
26
October
2017
10
November 2017
Gallery 1
ARTISTS:Isabella Darcy, Michael Georgetti, James Parkinson and Jo RichardsonThe exhibition Commodify Me brings together works from a group of artists that in various ways make direct use of off-the-shelf, store bought or free-to-take items in their practices. The exhibition draws on Joshua Simon’s notion of the Unreadymade, a term he uses to described a recent trend of contemporary artistic gestures that emphasise the commodity as the foundation of the art object. After all, “only some commodities are art objects but all art objects are commodities.” As an extension of ideas around the readymade and its continued presence within the practices of local contemporary artists, Commodify Me presents an attitude of purchasing, finding and sourcing rather than producing, making and crafting.
ARTISTS:Isabella Darcy, Michael Georgetti, James Parkinson and Jo RichardsonThe exhibition Commodify Me brings together works from a group of artists that in various ways make direct use of off-the-shelf, store bought or free-to-take items in their practices. The exhibition draws on Joshua Simon’s notion of the Unreadymade, a term he uses to described a recent trend of contemporary artistic gestures that emphasise the commodity as the foundation of the art object. After all, “only some commodities are art objects but all art objects are commodities.” As an extension of ideas around the readymade and its continued presence within the practices of local contemporary artists, Commodify Me presents an attitude of purchasing, finding and sourcing rather than producing, making and crafting.
David Attwood
David Attwood presents readymades and sculptural assemblages using contemporary commodities. His work is concerned with the auratic qualities of products and branded materials, especially those associated with work culture and discourses of productivity, entrepreneurialism and maintenance. Attwood is based in Perth/Boorloo Western Australia. In 2016 Attwood received a PhD from Curtin University, and in 2019 completed the SOMA Summer program, SOMA, Mexico City. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, and his work is held in Australian public collections, including Artbank and Art Gallery of Western Australia. Recent exhibitions include The Post New, Moore Contemporary, Perth, 2023; A Commodity Is A Strange Thing, Cellar Door, Sydney; Magic Vacuum, Disneyland Paris, Perth, 2023; New Beasts of Burden, Low Gallery, Riga, 2022; An Appetite for Servitude, scatalogicalritesofallnations, London, 2022; Dust Blaster, Savage Garden, Melbourne, 2022; The Last Bastion of Laziness, Metro Arts, Brisbane, 2021; sala-jardín-bar: I Believe in God, Only I Call It Nature, Lodos Gallery, Mexico City, 2021; WFH, STATION, Sydney 2020; Teenagers, Lon Gallery, Melbourne, 2019; Jugo, Biquini Wax EPS, Mexico City, 2019; A Decadent Defecation, Bus Projects, Melbourne, 2018.Alongside his studio practice Attwood directs the independent project space Disneyland Paris, and is co-editor of the book The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Post-work Politics (Art + Australia, 2020). He acknowledges the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which he lives and works.
Isabella Darcy
Isabella Darcy is an emerging cross-media artist based in Melbourne (Naarm). Her practice follows an interest in the systems and flux of value within consumable objects and design, reconsidering and exploring value and the alignment with ways of contemporary culture, material culture, and human consumption. Darcy works across a range of media, including installation, photography, printmaking, textile, and expanded painting practices. Her practice seeks to reflect and critically engage in class and subcultural practices linked to fashion and wearing. Darcy employs the use of found and collected materials in her work, whilst simultaneously forming an archive of material. Darcy’s archive places observation on how materials and objects carry their own histories and stories embedded within their own materiality. By creating and using her archive of collected material, Darcy preserves and recontextualises each of the materials meaning - creating new narratives around them.Through her work, Darcy seeks to challenge and observe assumptions and habits around consumption, prompting further reflection on how materials and objects, are symbolic of how we navigate our lives.
Jo Richardson
In her photographs and oil paintings, Jo Richardson explores how vulnerability can be a catalyst for connection. The handmade clay sculptures that populate these scenes are abstract and organic while also being underpinned by a fascination with structure and form - an inspiration from her training as an architect (MArch - University of Colorado, Denver).Richardson received her BFA in printmaking from the University of Denver and her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and throughout Colorado, where she is currently based.