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Indepth Arts News:
"Temporary Fixtures: Jonathan Bottrell, Chris Fox, Claire Healy, Horst Kiechle, Raquel Ormella, Elvis Richardson and Rodney Spooner"
2001-03-09 until 2001-03-31
ArtSpace
Woolloomooloo, Sydney, NS,
AU
Woolloomooloo has recently undergone a period of rapid commercial re-development. The suburb now accommodates the assigned homes of the Public Housing Commission, the found home of Tom Uren Square inhabited by nearly one hundred homeless people each night, and the designed homes of the wharf development. It is the competing interests and possibilities of commercial and institutional architecture within a suburb that constitutes the thematic point of departure for the seven artists participating in Temporary Fixtures.
The observation of, and speculation about, this socially and economically heterogeneous urban space is a highly sensitive undertaking and one which the artists have problematised throughout the process of developing site-specific installations for the project. The artists reflect, from different material and conceptual starting points, upon their own assumptions and place within the community, and raise issues relating to ideas of housing, home, gentrification, community, real estate and the temporary nature of city living. As Artspace sits on Cowper Wharf Rd, which has effectively become the dividing line between the different socio-economic groups in the area, the project also deals with issues surrounding the Gunnery building itself - its past and present inhabitation by artists and its converted warehouse-style space exemplifying current trends in gentrification processes. The artists first hand experience of the commercial re-development of inner-city spaces used as studios and exhibition spaces permeates the work and links what can be perceived as polarised social institutions - public housing and publicly funded art.
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