Sawtooth ARI | Portal @ Sawtooth ARI

Pausing just to keep up

September-December, 2015

Sawtooth ARI, Tasmania, Australia

Artists: Jess English (AUS/US), Oscar Gracida (MEX/US), Umber Majeed (PK/US), Ryota Sato (JP/US), Alma Sinai (IN/US), Vered Snear (IL/US), Jeremy Olson (US), Andy Wentz (US)

Contributing writers: Fernando do Campo (AUS/US), Karen Hall (AUS), Claire Krouzecky (AUS/US), Will Lee (US), Gillian Marsden (AUS), Deborah Malor(AUS), Patrick Sutczak (AUS)

Curator: Fernando do Campo (AU/US)

Pausing just to keep up is a four-part project of new work by New York based artists being presented in the Portal Space, Sawtooth ARI, Tasmania, from September-December 2015. The work of two artists will be presented each month and a Tasmanian based writer will be invited to respond. Writers Will Lee (US) and Claire Krouzecky (AUS/US) will also engage with the project holistically.

In an epoch of need for speed and access, where time and space collapse as much as they are elastic - humans can move across sites, histories, and precedents at ease. Such ease is complicated. What occurs to our carbon bodies as we go through this process is contested. Does what we understand as the corporeal human also become elastic? When moving like this, does something lag? If one can’t keep up, is this human species’ failure or is this our success? Current definitions of extinction and survival seem redundant in this new epoch where our future existence may not look like what we previously understood. Much is gained and lost in this process; but what that is remains to be seen.

The artists’ who are emerging today are not time-space based characters in the ways that we are used to projecting biographies and practices. Rather, they are often transnational, always multi-disciplinary and most importantly; they know that they have chosen to practice as artists at a time when we are simultaneously most unaware of, and sensitive to, our presence on this planet. The materiality and aesthetics of this generation corresponds to such new forms of excess and fragility. Complacency and anxiety co-exist and are shared by all, or at least they should be. This political, economic, environmental urgency that everyone seems to speak of – is palpable just as it is mystical. Pausing just to keep up brings together a series of works that present the complexities of this time, pointers towards this phantom but felt urgency - or maybe these are mere gestures, strategies as to how best move forward.

Aground

September

Umber Majeed and Alma Sinai

Writer: Gillian Marsden