What are we doing when we ameliorate a statement with the subtlety of a punctuation mark, such as, a comma? By way of disrupting slightly the syntax of a premise — Dear History Painting — with the presence of a pause, we are performing an act of semiotic interrogation. I don’t think consent comes into it here. We’re getting rough and smart and also slightly slow and sordid. In the first instant we're establishing a separation, between who and what we are addressing. C/- the comma(,) we are now speaking to history on the subject of painting, rather than a prior addressing of history painting as the single object (receiver) of our discourse. It’s getting a bit complicated, as I lean over, a whisper in your ear in a slightly passive aggressive tone 'get outa me'.
This exhibition has developed out of a proposed feminist history painting gone awol. The acronym AWOL stands for 'absent without official leave'. Where originally used as a militarist term, the expression has trickled down into everyday speech amongst civilians as a term synonymous with acts of dissent. Here the etymology of the expression becomes a placeholder for an active withdrawal from didacticism in dominant narratives in art and place making. Through its literal capacity to make something known, the gallery will become an expanded publication, employing post-medium dispersion as a means of critiquing dominant rationale.
[left] Painter’s Re-markspainter’s tape, digital prints of Google history tabs onto phototex
(dimensions variable)
[right] Hito Steyerl, Pages from In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective in The Wretched of the Screen (2012 © e-flux, Inc., Hito Steyerl, Sternberg Press ISBN 978-1-934105-82-5)
The Dialectic of a Dazzling Encounter (Peace)
graphite on paper
[left] Dear History, Part I
digital print on rag paper, painter's tape tabs
[right] The Dialectic of a Dazzling Encounter (Peace)
graphite on paper
Dear History, Part I
digital print on rag paper, painter's tape tabs
Silver; the Poor Illusion of a Woman’s Value (Support)
oil and acrylic paint on Masonite pegboard
[top left] um-er- (,’)
digital print on rag paper
edition of 6
[bottom left] /Caché
digital print on rag paper
edition of 6
[right] Sweeping Exchanges (Sue)
digital print on rag paper, di-Bond
edition of 6
Silver; the Poor Illusion of a Woman’s Value (Support)
oil and acrylic paint on Masonite pegboard
Sweeping Exchanges (Sue)
digital print on rag paper, di-Bond
edition of 6
um-er- (,’)
digital print on rag paper
edition of 6
/Caché
digital print on rag paper
edition of 6
Bind
digital print on phototex
Bind
digital print on phototex
Spine
digital print on phototex
[left] Spine
digital print on phototex
[right] In the Land of the Poor Image, the Supreme Vision Gets the Shakes
graphite on paper