SYDNEY’S YOUTH IN TROUBLE ARE HIJACKING ART SPACES
Luke Letourneau
Screen-obsessed ravers are infiltrating art spaces across Sydney, whether it is the group exhibition selfies at Kudos Gallery, Keep Everything by Chunky Move for Performance Space, or Plush Ruins by Chris Ross at Archive. New modes of sociality and the increasingly distortional perceptions of the individual and their surrounding worlds are being drawn from by a range of young and emerging art makers.
What could possibly be more narcissistic and insecurity-ridden than a selfie? The dichotomies of a selfie, specifically that it is asking to be looked at but also to hide in already accepted views of larger collectives, was a core interpretation of the exhibition selfies. This dichotomy was most strongly executed in ‘Unkempt’, ‘Babe you’r flawless’ and ‘Nowhere to go’, three works by Terrence Combos. The artist conflates op art and text, hiding the latter in the former’s eye-altering patterns. Presented in a barrage of magnificent and analogous colours the self-deprecating and self-defeatist texts tell an audience that the work, in its own opinion, is not worth looking at. This ‘look at me, wait why are you looking at me?’ mentality gets to the desire to stand out and demand attention but also to surrender to the liberating joy of anonymity. Here is a concept that is at the heart of living through avatars, or alternatively, in the disappearing into the visceral and humid body blurring of the rave mosh pit.
While it may seem fairly inflammatory to join what is a cross-generational choir perpetually harping on about a mind-altered youth in trouble, there is something I must first clarify; representations are the key to the aforementioned hijacking.
Throughout selfies, Keep Everything and Plush Ruins there is an indulgence of the individual as it is hiding in a world. The cultures surrounding rave parties and social media platforms share many similarities in the way the individual participates. Appearances are everything and judgements are encouraged but participation is the process of finding connections with others. Our hashtags or music tastes are avenues to finding our comrades, to fall into our groups; we stand out so we can hide.
Where the raver and the screen-obsessed cross paths is not just in the disappearing into fantasy but also in the relishing of hampered states and the delighting of the absurd and the mundane. Chunky Move succinctly and gorgeously melds these ideas in Keep Everything. Featuring a soundtrack by the apex of Sydney electronic music, The Presets, Keep Everything immediately attracts a reading through the context of an electronic music fan and the 5amER. Depending on how you intend to interpret the performers, they can come across as pre-human, post-human, or just ones who have a hampered state. These performers are trance-like throughout. For the first three-quarters of the production there are unique personalities, movements and interactions, but at the end of this point it all flashes to black. Smoke then fills the stage followed by lights that strobe onto the three dancers who now occupy a newfound synchronicity. At the end, movements evolve into the common raver dance style known as shuffling. Their unique personality traits are ruptured and mutate into a simulacrum of their one combined self.
The ‘follow the crowd’ mentality and the distancing of the self from reality’s consequences are encapsulated perfectly by Chris Ross’ Plush Ruins. The work is presented in the gallery space as a series of foam bricks that at one time was a structure but which has now disintegrated under the guise of a playful audience. This disintegration evokes a catastrophe’s aftermath, yet one that is totally without consequence. It is through the media’s coverage of these events that they are made to seem more distant and fleeting. They are events that affect other people. Asking to play in fantasy rubble is offering audiences a tangible experience of make believe. The work recognises the culture of a mediated reality and of the social and offers a communal release.
An over-stimulated generation has given rise to individual/collective social anxieties. The desire to seek connections and comfort is being represented to unpack how this mode of sociality is impacting relationships. How much of our definitions of self are impacted by our desires to connect? Given the platforms that broaden our access to social niches, this representation deserves to be explored throughout a range of exhibition spaces. These are questions that need to be explored; this is a hijacking that is welcome.
Chris Ross, Plus Ruins install shot. Photography Courtesy of the artists and Archive_
