These Days is a group exhibition focused on painting that is juxtaposed with archival Video 8 elements. When I was 13 my family purchased a Sony Video 8 Camcorder to document our holidays.
I took to the new technology and began using it to document daily life as opposed to just travel. Through using this device I made my first explorations in composition, colour and making meaning through images. Watching the hours of archival footage back I saw how much my 13-year-old self struggled with the technology. I remember inviting my friends to watch this seemingly incoherent footage. Footage that was only unified by the fact that it purely represented my eye. What I was personally interested in even if I struggled to articulate why.
Painting is about lots of things but perhaps fundamentally it is about problems. It takes a very specific mindset to grapple with all the physical and conceptual rigours required to render an idea visually. This exhibition brings together a seemingly disparate group of young Australian painters who are united in their passion for embracing the challenges of painting, of working through the problems. Painting is a great game that is ultimately between the artist and the surface. As a curator, I work with images and artists concurrently.
I am fundamentally interested in artists’ relationship to their work. I am captivated by being given insight into these conceptual battles or the ever-present wrestling with materials that occupy and propel artists.
This exhibition is idiosyncratic. It’s a selection that is based on threads and connections between artists. These Days looks at what is happening now but also what has passed. It is a screening. Lights on. My hand fumbles with cables on the back of the television. The screen pops and the footage fades into view. Lights out.
– Sebastian Goldspink
Well, I’ve been out walkin’
I don’t do that much talkin’ these days
These days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
For you
And all the times I had the chance to
– These Days, Jackson Browne
