Six p.m. on a Wednesday
Rachel Button, Veronica Charmont, Kaijern Koo, Madeleine Minack, HeeJoon Youn
26 Feb–14 Mar 2020
The exhibition explores elevations of the mundane through a distorted, romanticised dream lens. Through examining daily, overlooked moments, the artists attempt to uncover meaning in an overwhelming state of being. The constructed worlds created by each artist bloom from our landscape of chaos and become a retreat away from it; a method of coping which involves manipulating, idolising, and reconfiguring the everyday. This process becomes an attempt to find poetry huddled within the chaos; a hopeful re-examination of reality in an attempt to understand it.
Six p.m. on a Wednesday explores elevations of the mundane through a distorted, romanticised dream lens. Through examining daily, overlooked moments, the artists attempt to uncover meaning in an overwhelming state of being.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Rachel Button's practice combines the elemental forces of ‘Spiral Jetty’ with the energy of punk - a clash of prehistory with futurism. The methodology sits between a school play and a science diorama - an enquiry into the relationship between storytelling and the production of meaning. They retreat to an interior world and fire is its beginning. In this mythology, fire was the first tool, and their iPhone camera is its technological successor in the history of human culture.
Veronica Charmont is a Melbourne based artist who explores the illusionary and dream-like quality of the cinematic image. Often shooting on super 8 or 16mm film, her films seek to construct an alternate visual world that originates from but lies separate to what is considered reality. Her work is scarcely planned, allowing for those who are being filmed to improvise spontaneously under the eye of the camera. She is interested in the concepts of experimental and surreal cinema, aiming to blend together traditional cinematic components such as narrative, with that which is abstract.
Kaijern Koo is an interdisciplinary artist living and working on Wurundjeri land in Naarm / Melbourne. Confounded by the innate human instinct to decipher and make sense, her practice gravitates towards the fantastic slipperiness of interpretation and the strange logics which often ensue.
Madeleine Minack is an interdisciplinary, contemporary artist who works primarily in installation and sculptural practice. Based in Melbourne, she has recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Art, Painting, at the VCA. Madeleine’s practice derives from a process of accumulating discarded found objects to produce small, intimate sculptures which reflect minute details of normally unnoticed everyday matter. Through this process of collection, she creates something that from a distance looks insignificant but, upon close examination, becomes detailed, complex bodies of works. Formed out of a found materials, wax, and string binders, her sculptures form a home or nest for that which would normally be lost.
HeeJoon YounMelbourne-based artist HeeJoon Youn is a graduate from Victorian College of the Arts. Her works are naive attempts to make sense of a sometimes overwhelming life. Recent exhibitions include Seventh Gallery, Caves and Blindside.