“Super Structure”
James Avery, Anastasia Klose, Tess Milne, Simon Pericich, Steven Rendall, Julia Robinson and Terry Summers
19 Aug → 3 Sept 2005

The processes and products of contemporary art are increasingly high-tech: painting, photography and video are permeated by the language of advertising while the practices of sculpture and installation are dominated by the materials, manufacture and finish of industrial design. Onto this stage, the works of these seven artists come shuffling along like a pack of hobos, pausing several times in self-effacement and leaving a trail if debris in their wake. If our eyes are accustomed to seeing and appreciating slick works with a factory gloss, we must retrain them to see and accept the dull homogeneity of paper and cardboard, the sweet crappiness of Play School cardboard make-believe, the shambolic nature of the make-do compared to the purpose-built, the vulnerability of fragile works and the shabbiness of the home-made. These works are all biodegradable in a deliberate refusal to participate in a global economy that can countenance, on one hand, the destruction of forest habitats and on the other, the construction of cardboard shelters for the homeless and cardboard cities for the poor