Let's Play: The art of our time
14 December 2017 - 25 February 2018
BUNJIL PLACE GALLERY, Narre Warren
Curator: Rodney James
Contemporary neuroscience and cognitive brain theory, especially Embodied cognition, suggests that the minds not only connected to the body but also that the body influences the mind. Just as 60s Minimalism returned the body and sensory experience to the realm of art, so too contemporary neuroscience investigates the plasticity of the mind and it's ability to adapt and evolve. Tina Douglas's work in Let's Play takes cognition and brain function and turns it into a visual soundscape. Douglas's practice ranges from large monochrome paintings, that combine intuitive mark-making and the self imposed rule of the grid, free-hand drawings and improvised sound and video performances. The connection thread is the parallels that can be drawn between patterns and grids. and how information is reproduced and communicated through digital forms.
Felt, 2017 is an interactive wall work commissioned for Let's Play. In it Douglas engages physically, visually and aurally. People are drawm to touch the work through their attraction to soft, natural materials. Sensors trigger unexpected sounds and subtle vibrations upon touch. Douglas likens the work to a non-naturalistic terrain that allows participants to take any number of paths. Sounds are triggered bt proximity, broadness of strokes, and the depth and angle of touching. The triggers operate concurrently so that complex ;ayers of sound can evolve.
Douglas's work follows a long tradition of experimental sound performances by 20th century artists who used discordant sound patterns to create music based on random elements, breaking down the traditional division between the artist and the audience. In Felt, the soundtrack shifts and changes through the movement and position of the audience. Sound loops created by processing recorded sounds from the real world through computer programs foster a hybrid experience that is neither natural nor digital. Much like our everyday experiences, it lies somewhere inbetween.
Rodney James 2017, Let's Play: The art of our time, exhibit. catalogue, page 36.
node
20 July - 12 August 2017
ALTERNATING CURRENT SPACE, 248 High Street, Windsor, Victoria
Repurposed materials operate two, three and sound dimensionally in Node. Painted and drawn elements shift to become controllers, joysticks, buttons. Painting, embroidery, natural surfaces trigger digital events jarring the viewer's relationship with traditional materials and displacing the viewer's expectations.
Node is an experiment which attempts to build on my sound performance and visual practice which have mainly remained separate.
Tina Douglas 2017
process
9 May - 4 Jun 4 2017
HAWTHORN ARTS CENTRE
Town Hall Gallery, community wall, Hawthorn Civic Space, Cnr Glenferrie and Burwood Roads, Hawthorn, VIC 3122
Exhibition launch Saturday 13 May, 2-4pm. RSVP townhallgallery@boroondara.vic.gov.au
Douglas produces large paintings that explore grids in a meditation on structure and decay. They are complex and layered, and their abstracted quality allows for free interpretation by the viewer. Their scale also creates a physical impact in the space, enveloping the viewer and drawing them into a tension between confident support and unravelling uncertainty.
signalbox
15 March - 1 April 2017, Five Walls Projects, Level 1/119 Hopkins St, Footscray
Douglas' series of paintings act as a testing ground for emergent relationships between three-dimensional sculptural structures and two-dimensional mark making.
Creating physical disturbances on the flat plane of her paintings, Douglas investigates methods of breaking up the rigid spatial constraint of the flat canvas by working with removable modules, demarcated areas and non-objective assemblages. Douglas likens the geometric assemblages in her paintings to small engines, creating chaos within the structural painted grid that has become a central focus of her recent work. By navigating the painted grid with clusters of sculptural elements, Douglas lets chaos erupt in the form of an arbitrary visual rhythm.
Five Walls exhibition notes March 2017
Her Way
March 16th - April 1st 2017, 5 Rankins Lane, Melbourne
Melbourne Artists Lily May Waters, Tina Douglas, Kari McInneney-McRae, Jess Milne and Emily Raubenheimer.
In the week following International Women's day join us for the opening of 'Her Way', an exhibition that focuses on the work of female artists living and working in Melbourne.
