Mediation objects

Background: This research investigates the physical and systemic structures of institutional space through a methodology of domestic dwelling and sculptural intervention. It explores sculptural mediation as framed by Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) ideas of the in-situ as an everyday production and adjustment of space, and Jane Rendell’s (2006) ‘Art and Architecture A Place Between’, to demonstrate notions of the dialectical image/object. Similar themes are referenced in the relations of photo documentation and installation by Heidi Bucher ‘The Seen’ (2018), Parasol Unit, London. The research considers how dwelling actions in gallery space and objects in the same gallery space mediate the viewer’s experience of present and past spatial experience and memory. Contribution: ‘Mediation objects’ co-exhibits in an exhibition space documentation of prior acts of the artist’s making with installed sculptures. Each reveal layered patterns of spatial use in time. The installation was a commission across several gallery walls and spaces for Latrobe Art Institute, Bendigo. It comprised ten photographs, mounted on aluminium located at specific locations and a situated open-form, timber sculpture projecting from one corner of a rear gallery space. The project suggests that intervention acts and installation constitute a sculptural mediation of the viewer’s encounter of the domestic in public discourse. Significance: The work was curated as part of ‘Infrastructuralism’, a critical examination of the impact of exhibition spaces in regional Australia. It was shown alongside works by artists Agatha Goth-Snape, Helen Grogan, Jessie Bullivant, Shannon Lyons. The catalogue essay by creative director Kent Wilson states ‘the exhibition exposes the hidden, neglected or secretive support structures that serve as platforms for the presentation of art objects.’ The exhibition was reviewed by Laura Couttie, in the journal Art and Australia, Feb 2018.