To be opened by Jonathon Holloway, Artistic Director of the Perth International Arts Festival, it is with great pleasure that PICA invites you and a guest to the opening of:
The Democratic Set by Back to Back Theatre
AND
Yonder curated by Jasmin Stephens
The Democratic Set
Back to Back Theatre
Presented by PICA and Mobile States
Original Concept & Set Design – Bruce Gladwin
Original Set Design & Construction – Mark Cuthbertson
Yonder
Guest Curator – Jasmin Stephens
Featured Artists:
Andy Best, Erin Coates, Heman Chong, Simon Faithfull, Benjamin Forster, Tony Garifalakis and Richard Lewer, Charles Lim Yi Yong, Clare Peake, Perdita Phillips, Helen Smith, Kai Syng Tan, Warren Vance and Jurek Wybraniec
The Democratic Set – Main Gallery
Yonder – Westend Gallery
Friday 7 September, 2012
6PM
The Democratic Set
The Democratic Set is a residency model that explores the belief that all people are, in principle, equal and should enjoy social, political and economic rights and opportunities. In form, The Democratic Set is an empty room constructed for the project. Acting as a visual soapbox, the physical ‘set’ is designed to be an egalitarian space, in which contributing artists and audience are able to project their own understanding of the principles that underpin democracy. Performances created ambitiously seek to be, both in form and content, unrestricted and uncensored explorations of the grand ideals of equality and freedom.
The residency will take place over four days and will involve participation from members of the public and local artists with and without disabilities working in theatre, dance, music, visual arts and film. THE SET will be placed in PICA’s main gallery space and the company will work with individuals and groups to capture multiple 16-second performance sequences in THE SET. These are then edited together into a short film that will be screened in the gallery for the following six weeks.
Yonder
Yonder offers a contemporary perspective on the desire that artists have always had to know ‘what’s over there’. With the notion of ‘mobility’ as the exhibition’s central idea, Yonder considers some of the poetic and pragmatic connotations associated with this strategy for investigating, taking action and day dreaming about one’s place in the world.
The artists in the exhibition reference material, virtual and enquiry-based itineraries that reflect a diversity of approaches to propulsion and apprehension of the world. Whether working with traditional media such as paper and pigment or recent media such as digitised text, their approaches produce the effect of a route, a path or way being taken.
Heman Chong is represented by Motive Gallery, Amsterdam; Rossi & Rossi, London and Hong Kong; and Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing and Guangzhou. Simon Faithfull is represented by Galerie Polaris, Paris and Parker’s Box, New York. Tony Garifalakis is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. Richard Lewer is represented by Fehily Contemporary Gallery, Melbourne; Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide; and OREXART, Auckland. Warren Vance is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne. Helen Smith and Jurek Wybraniec are represented by Goddard de Fiddes Gallery, Perth.
Image
Andy Best, Butterflies, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.