© Copyright @gun_shy_design
Melbourne, Australia
@gun_shy_design is RMIT alumnus
Artist statement: Written examples
View the different structural parts of each example across a number of artists working in different mediums and media.
A short artist statement (47 words) which captures the visual style and impact of this creative work in an informal yet bold text.
@gun_shy_design
#texturalintercourse
Mixed media installation
RMIT University Gallery
#texturalintercourse is a magnificent, OTT, tongue in cheek, contemporary, psychedelic, psycho-sexual journey. A pop subversion exploring fetish in the everyday normality of life.1Screen reader users, this is the description of the installation. It’s a mad world out there… Who knows what’s really on people’s minds or behind closed doors?…2Screen reader users, this is the context – how it links to contemporary culture. Interact with our piece and hashtag #texturalintercourse lovers.3Screen reader users, this is the artist intent, audience interaction.
Thanks to @honchodisko and all the beauties at the 200th Birthday who wrote on our toilet wall lining. We love you!4Screen reader users, this are the acknowledgments.
Steven Rendall
Recent Developments I, 2018
This is one of 3 works titled Recent Developments: In making these works I was trying to mesh personal conditions and interests to requirements of contemporary painting.1Screen reader users, this is the format of the work. This obviously set up a vast array of problems, discrepancies and diversions. The way through this was to hold on to the idea that these paintings could be images of demons. In many cultures a demon is a hybridised creature made up from the components of other creatures – a kind of horrifically meshed collage. In some instances, even a demon’s voice is multitudinous: “My name is Legion: for we are many’.2Screen reader users, this is context, methods and problem solving.
The lack of an identifiable singular self that the demon has (for we are many) relates to the method of assembling these paintings from disparate voices, more specifically, the paintings are made from images extracted from art market auction house catalogues.3Screen reader users, this is how the work was created.
This compromised authorship sets up strange correspondences with the demon’s: we are many. There’s a kind of horror in this – a dismantling of authorship that I still don’t understand. It’s not post-modern pastiche but I’m not sure exactly what it is.4Screen reader users, this is the rationale and exploration of the theme
Recent Developments I, 2018
Artwork Acc RMIT.2018.28
Oil and acrylic on linen 183 x 153cm
RMIT University Collection
© Copyright Steven Rendall
Carly Fischer
Artist biography
Carly Fischer is a sculptural and audio installation artist from Melbourne, Australia.1Screen reader users, this is who the artist is. Her work explores the smaller details, peripheries and hidden histories of places, creating alternate narratives that question broader cultural and colonial perspectives. Engaging with environments through a fragmentary and meandering process of encountered objects, materials, sounds and histories, her sculptural and sonic reconstructions reflect on places as complex and shifting sites of accumulation, interaction and negotiation. Since 2011, her works have often included collaborations with sound artists.2Screen reader users, this is what the artist makes or does.
Carly has exhibited widely in Australia, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Scotland, Japan and the US through solo, group and collaborative projects and residencies, including recent exhibitions at Bus Projects, Incinerator Gallery, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, BLINDSIDE, Melbourne, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Watch This Space, Alice Springs, KWADRAT and REH Kunst, Germany and MU Artspace, the Netherlands.3Screen reader users, this is where the artist has exhibited their work.
Her sculptural and audio installations often include collaborations with sound artists. Her recent collaboration with audio visual artist Edwina Stevens 'I feel the earth move under my feet', created in response to a residency at Melbourne's Living Museum of the West and exhibited at Incinerator Gallery in 2019, was included in Radiophrenia, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, with their following collaboration 'Conversation Piece' exhibited at Bus Projects in 2021.4Screen reader users, this are the collaborations with other artists.
Carly has also been a finalist in prizes such as The 2017 Guirguis New Art Prize, The Art Gallery of Ballarat and The 2018 Incinerator Art Award with her work 'Creating False Memories for a Place That Never Was', in collaboration with sound artist Mieko Suzuki. She has been the recipient of City of Melbourne and Australia Council Art Grants as well as an Australian Postgraduate Award for her MFA research at Monash University focusing on some of the problems of site-specific practice in a contemporary context.5Screen reader users, this are the achievements and awards.
Make Australia Great Again, 2017
Artwork Acc RMIT.2017.21
Found wooden household objects, pine, Tasmanian oak, Jelutong, balsa, bamboo, MDF, cotton, nylon, adhesives, acrylic paint and varnishes, spray paint.
Dimensions variable approx. 60x60x160cm.
RMIT University Collection
© Copyright Carly Fischer
Peter Westwood
The Poor Hospital, 2012
The poor hospital alludes to multiple places and times affected by troublesome occurrences. The title of the work is ambiguous and could infer an inability within a society to care appropriately for those it holds in its care. A poor hospital may imply something about a failure to feel for the plight of others, or the capacity of hospital staff or residents to endure, due to financial or political factors, or, if we consider the world currently, a pandemic. A poor hospital may be a place of uncertainty due to an incapacity to provide refuge or guidance, rather than being an institution capable of promoting well-being. A poor hospital may be a piteous reflection about an infirmary overtaken by sickness, or an institution that has failed its capabilities. 1Screen reader users, this is the context and meaning behind the work.
In the centre of the work, a group of figures converges, comprising three nurses and two shadowy figures. We enter the picture, closely following a nurse as she pushes a wheelchair into the ward, towards a trolley that is being made ready. A shadowy character stands at the centre, his identity hidden by the mask brushed across his face, and although indeterminate, this figure implies a patriarchal presence. The intention of the nurse who stares directly at us is ambiguous: perhaps we are related to the incoming patient, or we’re part of the medical staff, or perhaps we are merely the viewer of the painting. The patient and their bed devolve into swipes of paint, their status, and even their very existence, reduced to the intrinsic structure of the painting itself. The blood-red streaks, depicting blankets and a nurse’s sash, are a sanguine reminder of our mortal fragility.2Screen reader users, this is the content – description of the work.
The nurse that stares directly at the onlooker casts an enigmatic gaze. The gaze, and the nurse’s intention are not clear. We consider that she may be seeking our aid, revoking us for our role as ineffectual observers, or may equally be standing defiant, rejecting our assumptions. Nevertheless, the nurse appears to provide a ‘draw’ for the viewer as they become self-aware through the subconscious repetition of being seen and looked at: the viewer becomes conscious of the gaze, the pattern of being aware of equally being a visual object. (Lacan 1977, pp. 77-79). The nurse’s gaze locks us into a silent dialogue, and we suspect that this may be our hospital, that we have somehow permitted its impoverishment.3Screen reader users, thisis the rationale - artist intent for the audiences
Reference: Lacan, J. (1977). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Miller, J-A. (ed). Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. London and New York: Karnac.
Peter Westwood
The Poor Hospital, 2012
Artwork Acc RMIT.2018.24
Oil on linen; 92 X 128 cm
RMIT University Collection
© Copyright Peter Westwood
Keywords
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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