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Artist Statement:
Please visit my primary web
site, www.dashdotdash.net.
My art is the product of
studio experimentation and
investigation. The elements of
light, electricity and more
recently, kinetics, are
re-occurring fields of
exploration.
This investigative process
finds its public presentation
as site-specific adaptation in
galleries that provide
architectural ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Solo Installations
2005 Movement
Studies, Linden Centre for the
Arts, Melbourne
2004 Sufi Disco,
Yarra Sculpture Gallery
2001 Strange Weather, Mass
Gallery. Melbourne
1999 Threescore and two,
Yarra Sculpture Space,
Melbourne
1998 Closed Shop, Grey Area
Art Space Inc., Melbourne
Sunspotting, Noosa Regional
Gallery
Dirt T.V, Museum of Dirt,
...
Further Information
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Reviewer: Ruth Learner
Gallery: Yarra Sculpture Gallery (117 Vere Street, Abbotsford 3067)
Show: (main galleries) Christopher Bell and (small gallery) Simon Kilvert
23 June - 11 July
If sculpture is to art as poetry is to writing, than Bell's latest installation is pure haiku. With a background in industrial design and study at the Sydney College of the Arts’ progressive sculpture department, Bell has created an impressive portfolio of transcendental works.
In ‘Sufi Disco’ eight light bulbs hanging from long ropes of black flex skate languidly across the surface of a coarse concrete floor, a soft star-like reflection tracing their mesmerised dance. Although appearing to intersect, at times even threatening to collide, the bulbs are moving in four discrete circles. Each pair of flex is attached at ceiling level to either end of a black cylinder. The four evenly spaced cylinders slowly rotate, each one at a slightly different speed, varying the arc or circle of dancing light.
Bell’s interest in motion and light is inspired by architectural concerns, in particular how structures engage with the sun. It was the extremes of sunlight he experienced as a child, moving between saturated Sydney and his wan ancestral Ireland that led him to focus on light. ‘The sun has a cosmic connotation. The Neolithic Irish built passage tombs where the sun penetrates into the chamber at a particular time. This gave me a sense of the power of light, and of drama.’ ‘Sun Drawing’, Bell’s permanent installation at Federation Square, responds to electronic smog, the invisible congestion created by two-way radios. A pod of robotically controlled mirrors tilts with the sun’s movement; the more diffuse their kite-shaped reflection on the façade of the Alfred Deakin building, the more courier, police and ambulance activity is in the air. As this disturbance wanes, the reflections knit back together and the mirrors wait for the next sunrise.
As the title of Bell’s current work wittily suggests there is a trance-like quality to the movement, as well as lightness; both literally and metaphorically. ‘Sufism and disco are two kinetic pursuits that humans do. Whether it's in the high discipline of Sufism or high hedonism of disco, dancing is an innate human joy…an uplifting act in this world of distraction.’ The equilibrium and tension too makes full use of the scale and rawness of the warehouse space. ‘Adapting work to different galleries yields possibilities… using the light qualities and closing off the rest of the world creates a theatre with a captive audience.’ The contrast of the pliant cord weighted by the brittle elegant light bulb, and the purity of the light itself reflecting the rough concrete, raises the tension. This is coupled with the ease of movement against the precariousness of 240-volt powered lights…any disturbance could result in collision and smashing glass.
There is tension too in Bell’s ‘experimental’ installation in the neighbouring space. Here he is attempting to build a freestanding arch from blocks of butter. Called ‘Small Leap with Gravity’, it is all about stress; push and pull. A work in progress, it again uses unexpected juxtapositions. Butter opposes the highly compressible, durable material from which arches are built. Yet, by using it Bell exposes the effectiveness of simple principle.
Butter, like light bulbs, is a bare necessity. Its humble origins and commonplace associations draw on Bell’s love of the rudimentary, both in design and in principle. ‘We're in a very sophisticated age… continually negotiating complicated structures and relationships. I relish getting a bit of wonder and reprieve out of the elemental stuff.’ It is this notion of being transported from the business of life; of turning off and in, that takes us back to Bell’s cosmic roots.
586 words ©Ruth Learner 2004
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