“Life in Space”
Dell Stewart
21 Sept → 27 Oct 2012

Presented in West Space’s back-space, this project is populated with handmade instruments, tools and other objects of use. Basic furniture; a chair, a table, a light, a kind of bastard wunderkammer, a microcosm and museum of recent works.

Musical instruments, porcelain serving platters, occasional finger foods, costumes, tools and coddled plant life comingle in a workshop setting. Pursuing an obsession for objects with mystery and purpose – or least suggested purpose and potential mystery – creates a series of curious gatherings with ritualistic possibilities. The exhibition will allow both the artist and the audience to entertain the promise of a suggested, unspoken narrative. The changing relationships and instances of documentation build up a kind of field guide to living with things.

The works in the space become the subject of further work, documented for an online publication to be updated during the show. This will feature drawings, video, animation, performance and conversation. It’s an attempt to chronicle the various instances and possibilities of these things, while rejoicing in the quotidian detail.

Dell Stewart has organised and participated in numerous solo and collaborative exhibitions, working with print, textiles, ceramic, sculpture, drawing, animation and installation. Her work features recurring motifs and symbols in a broad range of media, creating a personal symbolism, suggestive of memory and elementary connections. She was born and raised at the end of a dead end road in the mountains of North Queensland where she learnt self sufficiency and a do it yourself outlook. Interested in tools, patterns, nature, exchange and mysterious things.