SIGNS (All’s well)
Felix Oliver and Sean Monaghan
06.09.24 - 10.09.24
'I am disappearing, but the photographs were worth it. A volcano is not a mountain like others. Raising a camera to one's face has effects no one can calculate in advance.' - Anne Carson (excerpt from 'Autobiography of Red')
'Signs (All's well)' acts as an inquest into what happens when we are spurred to adapt, what is torn away and what could possibly fill the void that remains. The artists reflect on the notion of exiting change;
What does it mean to move on?
What is exchanged in the process?
Are we ever whole again?
Centred through loss, memory, and ownership, Felix Oliver examines relations between the constructed natures of ideas, symbols and rules. He considers what occurs when shifts are undergone, what is torn away, and what could possibly be filled into these lost spaces. Through orchestrated photography, his practice captures conversations of gesture between subjects. Navigating; the fluidity of despair, support and release in an attempt to embody the experience and tension of change. How do we embrace each other while traversing the undercurrents of loss?
Material interplay drives the installation of his work, which ask questions that echo no answer. Engaged with intimacy, Felix studies the experience of holding on tightly to another while observing memory shifting, distorting and fleeting.
@Felix0liver
Sean Monaghan is an artist and writer. His practice is reflective of his experience surrounding the human, more specifically ideas of masculinity, loss and grief, gender perception, and emotional turmoil. Monaghan uses the medium of photography in conjunction with performance and written word as a vessel to explore what makes us, ‘us’ with tenderness and an uncanny sense of the familiar. The synthesis of his artwork comes across through homely presentation, often displaying work at ground level or adjacent corners. Through the incorporation of written word an abstract element adds an emotionally complex aspect to an otherwise seemingly direct statement. Monaghan studies how people give and take from one another and how our lives take infinite shape whilst tessellating one another. Via this push and pull comfort as well as a sense of fond aggression is encouraged to take new shape.
@Seen.that
Opening event sponsored by Stomping Ground.
Room sheet availble here.