WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC

Wednesday, 14 October 2015

DAVID MUTCH AT LINDBERG - OCT 15 - 31

Friday, 9 October 2015

ANNA SANDE - WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC 8

ANNA SANDE

CHAIRS 2015

Chairs, along with films, buildings, cars, and undoubtedly much else in our list-led consumption-driven world, have their ‘1001 best examples of’ book.

A good chair is indeed a fine object – aesthetically pleasing, functional and light.

Over the years I have gathered around me some chairs that it is almost fair to say ‘I love’ – they please me so much. I enjoy just looking at them. I know I can sit on them in comfort. I know I can move them with ease. These three attributes are the essentials of a fine chair, to my mind.

Now, using my favourite chairs, I want to tease the passersby with a chair-based installation and a simple question that has been bothering me:

How many people in the world own a chair?

The answer is impossible to establish – just as Schrodinger’s cat couldn’t be both alive and dead, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle suggests that the position and momentum of an object cannot be measured with absolute accuracy (because the time taken to measure allows change to occur in one or the other phenomenon). Just as two variables cannot be known simultaneously, it is clearly impossible to precisely ascertain bums on seats. But does physics make the question not worth asking, or a possible answer not worth pondering?

Sadly I am no physicist and my interest here is in culture as much as in science and philosophy, but I will hazard a guess in answer to my question:

in the west we take chairs for granted but in more populous other parts of the world, where the floor, a carpet or bolster will do, the use of a chair is not a given, indeed use of a chair might well signal discomfort, interrogation, scrutiny and elevation of an unwelcome kind …

so cultural preference plus some kind of head count, and consideration also for the 60 million odd refugees not carrying chairs may suggest that those with chairs are not in the ascendent ...

A search for chairs on google (from my location, a swivel chair at a table made from a door) produces: for sale, ikea, kmart, online, for backs, ebay, bunnings ... and stools, then there’s the electric chair and the Eames chair, along with the Barcelona …

when is a chair just a chair? Somehow a chair always has more meaning than ‘just a chair’ so perhaps there is no such thing …

Ionesco wrote to the first director of his play The Chairs (1952) regarding ‘the last decisive moment of the play’ which ‘involved’ the absence of the two actors (who had jumped out the window): "At this moment the audience would have in front of them ... empty chairs on an empty stage decorated with streamers, littered with useless confetti, which would give an impression of sadness, emptiness and disenchantment such as one finds in a ballroom after a dance; and it would be after this that the chairs, the scenery, the void, would inexplicably come to life (that is the effect, an effect beyond reason, true in its improbability, that we are looking for and that we must obtain), upsetting logic and raising fresh doubts."

So too I wish to raise ‘doubts’ about some of the objects I dare to say ‘I love’.

Artist introduction to favourite chairs

Sat 31.10.15 @ 11 am – 79 Main Street BEEAC

Monday, 5 October 2015

AS IF - the WOMEN'S ART REGISTER IS EVERYWHERE

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

WOMEN ARTISTS
SUPPORTING WOMEN ARTISTS

13 MELBOURNE Venues - showing October into Nov 2015

A CELEBRATION OF THE WOMEN'S ART REGISTER -
an archive of Australian Women Artists' work
physically housed at Carringbush Library Richmond, Victoria, Australia

Check out the multi platform, multi format, month + calendar of eventS here:
www.womensartregister40years.info

Tuesday, 22 September 2015

COMING UP - What do you think? CHAIRS

CHAIRS

AN INSTALLATION THAT COMES WITH A QUESTION

What do you think? 1#

ANNA SANDE

ADDRESSING BRANDIS: PRESS CUTTINGS

Linda Morris, Nick Cave implores Malcolm Turnbull to remove Arts Minister George Brandis, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 September 2015.

Michaela Boland, Brandis' plan will damage culture http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/george-brandis-plan-for-arts-funding-will-damage-culture/story-fn59niix-1227530900548?sv=99dcb35479583f878cb1aee93f258a8e&fcae17af9c749b7abb431465d8758825, The Australian, 17 September 2015.

Michael Cathcart with Tamara Winikoff, Should Turnbull take over the Arts Ministry? ABC Books and Arts, 16 September 2015.

Raymond Gill, Artists gather at PM’s office: Call for Brandis’ removal, appoint himself instead, Daily Review, 16 September 2015.

Richard Watts, What will Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull mean for the arts? Arts Hub, 15 September 2015