“Things I Wish I’d Known”
Ross Coulter, Melody Ellis, Brad Haylock, Veronica Kent, Sanné Mestrom, Patrick Pound, Benjamin Sheppard, Utako Shindo, Tai Snaith, Kieran Stewart, Dominic Redfern and Lillian O'Neil
29 Oct → 20 Nov 2010
Between the years 1902 to 1908 the 27-year old poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote ten letters to Franz Kappus, a 19-year old student seeking feedback on his poetry but, more broadly, career and life advice. The letters were published in a compendium titled Letters to a Young Poet.
Things I Wish I’d Known riffs on Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet; each participating artist will ‘think back’ through their practice to consider the discoveries – and also the pitfalls and anxieties – that attended the development of their arts practices. Rather than acting as notes of guidance, each work within the exhibition reflected on the processes that took place within the evolution of an artist’s work – the sometimes unrecognisable yet fundamental transactions that shape an artist’s career.
The participating artists were all current West Space Board or Program Committee members. West Space has a history of mounting extended group exhibitions that reflect upon and reference the artistic communities around West Space. At the centre of West Space is a focus on artists’ practices and the organisation is proud of its artist-led governance, which manifests in robust critical dialogues that consider the changing needs and practices of artists.
Ross Coulter is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.
Melody Ellis is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.
Brad Haylock is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.
Veronica Kent is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.
Sanné Mestrom is an Australian experimental and conceptual artist who works mainly in the mediums of installation and sculpture. Mestrom has a research-based practice and incorporates notions of play into social aspects of urban design.
Aotearoa/New Zealand born, Naarm/Melbourne based artist Patrick Pound is an avid collector, equally interested in systems and the ordering of objects: an attempt, perhaps, to make things coherent. As he says, ‘to collect is to gather your thoughts through things’.
Benjamin Sheppard
Utako Shindo
Tai Snaith has a multifaceted practice working as an independent artist, curator, producer and writer. Honesty, absurdity, animism and the fine line between fiction and reality heavily influence her ideas alongside a recurring focus on collaboration and experimentation. Using collage and drawing Snaith often explores the inner thoughts, spiritual beliefs and aspirations of the greater animal kingdom as a means to find her own.
Kieran Stewart is a Naarm/Melbourne based visual artist working across the mediums of video, image making and sculptural installation. His practice revolves around exploring gross excess and notions of exhaustive labour; affecting stresses such as physical and mental exhaustion.
Dominic Redfern works at the intersection of site, screen and identity and in recent years his work with identity has increasingly focused on narratives of place. He exhibits widely in Australia and around the world in exhibitions ands screenings programs and he works as a senior lecturer at RMIT’s School of Art.
Lillian O'Neil is based in Melbourne and Sydney. She uses monumentally-scaled collage to explore possibilities of accumulative autobiography and is interested in the way aggregated images compress time and history.