"Manner" 2017 Amanda June, and "Seeing with Both Eyes" 2017 Amanda June
"estrange" encapsulates the moment or phenomenon when the familiar becomes unfamiliar; when the moment of recognition of the 'normal' or the known becomes disrupted, a moment of fundamental shift. Disconnected familiarity; the quintessence of everyday surroundings which have somehow shifted slightly, becoming a little more unsettled, a little more strange. Something that hovers on the edge of our memory, but which lies just out of reach, or which, in its reappearance, is now somehow more strange and less recognisable. This sensation is one that is vividly present as we re-navigate the wake of a pandemic and many irrevocable shifts in our daily lives.
At the intersection of our everyday existence and memory lies an ever shifting site of the familiar, the remembered, the recognised and the new. As new things are experienced, they are coloured by our past, but just as easily the past can be re-oriented by the present, as we re-explore things in new ways. The works in this exhibition aim to bring a sensory, tactile, intimate, and immersive exploration of anachronistic objects, images, the foreign and the not quite familiar. The camera is intrinsically linked with devices of looking, however, the works in the exhibition explore the entire interaction associated with the notion of 'looking'. I invite participants to touch, open, look, unfold, smell, feel, and hear the images in this exhibition, seeking to unsettle expectations of how one interacts with a photograph. The wonder of engaging with something unfamiliar is one I have experienced often living abroad, and I challenge viewers to encounter collaborative installations in which they will become immersed and entangled in the works.
The exhibition will explore the phenomenological aspects of 'orientation'; what is presented to us as 'familiar', what is accessible (within reach), and how we inherit these 'orientations', but also how art can challenge these concepts. The works interrogate notions of 'gaze' as the viewer is caught in the act of looking, but also of being seen; in a Lacanian device whereby the work 'looks back at' the viewer, the works aim to disrupts traditional relationships of viewing.
At the intersection of our everyday existence and memory lies an ever shifting site of the familiar, the remembered, the recognised and the new. As new things are experienced, they are coloured by our past, but just as easily the past can be re-oriented by the present, as we re-explore things in new ways. The works in this exhibition aim to bring a sensory, tactile, intimate, and immersive exploration of anachronistic objects, images, the foreign and the not quite familiar. The camera is intrinsically linked with devices of looking, however, the works in the exhibition explore the entire interaction associated with the notion of 'looking'. I invite participants to touch, open, look, unfold, smell, feel, and hear the images in this exhibition, seeking to unsettle expectations of how one interacts with a photograph. The wonder of engaging with something unfamiliar is one I have experienced often living abroad, and I challenge viewers to encounter collaborative installations in which they will become immersed and entangled in the works.
The exhibition will explore the phenomenological aspects of 'orientation'; what is presented to us as 'familiar', what is accessible (within reach), and how we inherit these 'orientations', but also how art can challenge these concepts. The works interrogate notions of 'gaze' as the viewer is caught in the act of looking, but also of being seen; in a Lacanian device whereby the work 'looks back at' the viewer, the works aim to disrupts traditional relationships of viewing.
A viewer is invited to sit in the chair. They are caught in between two mirrors with a projector falling on their body. The image projected is of a figure reciting a poem. The poem is titled "Everything is Rhythm". The words can be felt as vibrations through the chair.