The Centre for Contemporary Photography presents four exhibitions: Alex Pittendrigh. Take care! The phantom!; Caroline Brunet and Tara Shield. Trompe l’Oeil; Patricia Piccinini and Peter Hennessey. LumpCD; Eugenia Raskopoulos. Turn on the Tongue. CCP is supported by the Victorian Governmant through Arts Victoria - Department of Premier Cabinet.
Alex Pittendrigh. Take care! The phantom!
Inspired by 1980s power dressing, Pittendrigh's contradictory photographic and
sculptural ensembles document the body at play. Through an examination of the
natural world, Pittendrigh contextualises current fashion discourse in relation to the
environment and to basic human desires and instincts. Notions of 'blending in'
through costume and dress are re-examined in terms of insect morphology and
processes of adaptive mutation. Through camouflage and other patterning devices,
Pittendrigh transforms the uniformly grey business suit, presenting a fashion
spectacle based upon concepts of mimesis, the morphology of the body and
biological defence strategies.
Caroline Brunet and Tara Shield. Trompe l’Oeil
The more adroit we are at carbon copies, the more confused we are about the
unique, the original, the real McCoy (Hillel Schwartz, 1996)
Brunet and Shield seek to expose a contemporary and everyday reliance upon
illusionistic means and methods, Plastic foliage, wilderness posters, oil painting
reproductions and artificial light are presented as symptomatic of the constructed
nature of our common existence. Dissecting a variety of both empty and inhabited
social spaces, from gyms to stadiums to office buildings and eateries, Trompe I'oeil
formally conflates boundaries between original and copy, reality and reproduction,
Patricia Piccinini and Peter Hennessey. LumpCD
Enter the world of TMGP Incorporated, a fictitious biotechnology company that has
succeeded in developing LUMP (Lifeform with Unevolved Mutant Properties TM), the
world's first designer baby. The LUMP is a human, genetically re-engineered from
the ground up - smarter, stronger, cuter - and available to any parent who can afford
it, LumpCD allows the player to explore this strange world and find out what really
goes on behind the company's slick advertising campaigns and marketing promises,
An immersive narrative environment, LumpCD features fully rendered 3D
environments, strange characters and a funky soundtrack by Subtopia,
A part of the 24- 7 Digital Art Program
Eugenia Raskopoulos. Turn on the Tongue
Raskopoulos' uncompromising art is a constant questioning, a light-text-space
writing, of our existential dwelling in language. It is graphically cognisant of how our
understanding of identity, exile, migrancy and place is realised as we travel through
our languages, histories and worlds and how we always need to be open to the risks
of being-in-the-world (Heidegger's Dasein). What is called for by Raskopoulos is
nothing less than art as a language of becoming, art as self-translation, an ethics of
being. In a word, Raskopoulos' art is intimately connected with the continuing drama
of the other.
(John Conomos, 1999)
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