A COLLECTION OF OBJECTS TO RETAIN FROM A COLLECTION OF OBJECTS TO DISCARD
13 – 30 September 2017
Opening Night | Thursday 14 September, 6pm–8pm
PLEASE NOTE | BLINDSIDE will be CLOSED on FRIDAY 29 SEPTEMBER.
Leanne Failla
A collection of objects to retain from a collection of objects to discard is a continuing exploration of objects and their role in forming scenario.
Leanne Failla’s work focuses on how event (with reference to Deleuze’s fold) is constructed and the significance of anchor points in the perception of influence in creating event. Using physical objects to reference anchor points the work seeks the intangible aspects of event to address how heavily their presence defines a reading of situation.
In prior work, objects were related to function, design and volume. personal narrative comes into play in the new wor as the artist chooses a selection of objects she owns to hold onto and replicates their form using other objects in her possession. The resulting forms are displayed in the gallery environment as new art objects which hold the value of “discard” and “retain”.
Alchemical Process in Matter and Material
A Collection of Objects to Retain from a Collection of Objects to Discard, a new solo exhibition by Leanne Failla at BLINDSIDE, comprises works conjured by a kind of alchemical process. Selecting a series of personal objects, Failla replicates their forms through the material deconstruction of other possessions, such as the transition of dress to camera. This process is a natural progression for the artist, expanding on a ritual previously performed in her 2015 show at Seventh Gallery which saw a familiar sequence of material deconstruction and reconstitution, where the totality of two plastic chairs were powdered and adapted to be used as a painterly medium.
Expressed in the alchemical maxim ‘as above, so below’ is a conviction in the law of correspondences. A dynamic equilibrium is preserved, allotting change and variation with an overall constant of material mass. Failla’s handling of ‘discarded’ material gives thought to this symmetry, evidenced in the cyclical process of transformation of a thing to be discarded to one to be retained
Failla conceptually locates her latest body of work in the writing of French theorist, architect, and industrial designer Bernard Cache[1]. For A Collection of Objects to Retain… Failla conceives a material iteration of Cache’s notion of ‘inflection’, postulated by Cache as an in-between juncture; a point that marks a transition between two states or variations. It is in this transphase that the alchemical properties of Failla’s work become apparent with the experimental deconstruction and unification of matter and material.
As suggested by the exhibition title, these sculptural objects perform a deflection of their obsolescence and are sublimated back to a state of retention. Though material recycling, Failla cures the discarded objects of their destitution through a rite of purification and maturation. The result is an uncanny object of renewed form at once divorced from its explicit representation.
- Henry Law
[1] See: Cache, B. (1995). Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Leanne Failla is a Melbourne based artist with a practice focus on the structures of event and point of reference within events construction. She has a Bachelor of Design from RMIT University with Honours. She has held solo exhibitions at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne in 2014, Seventh Gallery in 2015 and C3 Contemporary Art Space in 2017. She has also collaborated on projects with Artland as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival and at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre in 2016.
IMAGES | Leanne Failla, A Soap Dispenser, 2017, plastic glue, 25 x 17 x 1.5cm. | A Tablecloth, 2017, fabric, glue, 41 x 32 x 1.5cm. | An Umbrella, 2017, fabric, metal, glue, 30 x 25 x 9.5cm.| every object in my house in paper, 2017, paper, various | Courtesy the artist.