“Touchstone (Lot's Wife)”
Saskia Doherty
16 May → 14 June 2014

Snap-frozen and petrified in salt as she turned back to witness the ignition of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s Wife’s enduring form is said to be held in a rock near the Dead Sea of Israel: touchstone of a myth, held in stasis as a visual deterrent against vision. The name was also commonly ascribed to pillars for the purposes of orientation in early cave exploration. In this way, Lot's Wife becomes the inverse of her biblical form, borne as the patron-saint of free exploration as she guides the explorer in their quest for new visions. Taking as its beginning a moment [real or embellished] in which an act of witnessing is reprimanded by the transformation of a subject into a static record, Touchstone (Lot's Wife) attempts to crack open this space of memorialization. It aims to create an environment in which a certain conception of constricted viewing might be released back into the natural flows of memory.

Saskia Doherty is an emerging Melbourne artist whose work incorporates archival material, sculpture, drawing and writing. She recently graduated with an Honours degree in Fine Art from Monash University. In 2013 she has held solo exhibitions at Platform Contemporary Art Spaces and MADA, and received a nomination in the Emerging Artist category from Melbourne artist Tom Nicholson to participate in the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, at the National Art School Gallery (Sydney). She is a member of The Donkey’s Tail and has exhibited collaboratively at Murray Whiteroom and the National Gallery of Victoria.