“Field (constant light)”
Chris Bond and Lynette Smith
10 Apr → 9 May 2015
Field (constant light) is an open-ended investigation of the way we find meaning in things and events. To ‘find it’, it seems that all you have to do is be present. The world and its interpretive possibilities seems given to you in some way—the meaning seems either there or you know how to get it. Mostly we are blind to the way our own desires and expectations make it all seem so inevitable. And if those expectations are thwarted, we feel deceived, or we become angry.
This can be exposed, sometimes, but only at the risk of obscuring something else. Chris Bond and Lynette Smith attempt to do this, trying again and again, partly because they think that’s one of the things that artists can do—they can look at the conditions on which we experience the world and the way we find meaning in it. The unconditional response is impossible and there is no gaze so sophisticated that it doesn’t have its blind spots. So instead the pair look for the possibility of pleasure (or another truth) in obscurity, uncertainty, incompleteness, deception and the inauthentic.
Chris Bond studied Fine Art at RMIT and has exhibited since 2000. He undertook a studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in 2001, and has since featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including being selected for ACCA’s annual New exhibition in 2008. He is currently studying Master of Fine Arts (Visual Art) at the Victorian College of the Arts, and is a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award.
Lynette Smith completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT University in 1995 and went on to do postgraduate study in linguistics and philosophy in the mid-2000s at the University of Melbourne. She has exhibited in public, private and artist-run galleries since 2000 and in 2004-2005 she was on the board of West Space. Her work is in private collections in Australia, the United States and in Europe. She divides her time between Melbourne and Berlin.