Sweetex
Alice Anderson, Ben Judd, Pernille Holm-Mercer, Liane Lang & Dolly Thompsett
Exhibition: July – August 2006
‘Sweetex’ features works by five artists that engage with the surface textures of the sweet, innocent, and playful. Yet under the veneer of their bright, glossy surfaces and candy-coloured panoramas lurk elements of doubt, self-delusion, disillusionment, and aggression. The darker sides of hysteria and absurdity are never far away.
In all the works selected, ‘sweetness’ is the dominant ingredient. Yet, while it remains a powerful and seductive force, traces of something else - something too sugary, even at times bitter - permeates their surfaces, leaving a lingering aftertaste.
Ben Judd
Ben Judd, renowned for his intimate video ‘portraits’ of various groups of people, showed a series of object-based ‘3-D photographs’. Like many of his films, these invite a sense of intimacy and familiarity, yet also evoke a feeling of loss, alienation, and futility.
Understated Collision, 2005
Pernille Holm-Mercer Precious 2006
The interdisciplinary practices of Alice Anderson and Pernille Holm-Mercer - working across the fields of sculpture, installation, photography, and video - explore the world of ‘childlike innocence’ and play from the compromised and emotionally complex position of the self-conscious adult. The light touch and sense of playfulness evident in their work is often unsettled by an undercurrent of darker and more sinister movements. In ‘Sweetex’, Alice Anderson will display a series of photographs featuring a girly, yet sophisticated-looking doll that blurs the distinction between ‘sweet’ innocence and ‘inappropriate’ knowingness. Pernille Holm-Mercer will show a large sculptural installation. Although a spectacle of domestic delight, it hints at horrors embedded within.
Pernille Holm-Mercer
Precious, 2006
Alice Anderson
The Hidden Life of Anna Miletska, 2005
Liane Lang
In a video-work made specifically for ‘Sweetex’, photographer and film-maker Liane Lang records the gradual disintegration over time of an artificial garden created from unnaturally highly coloured crystal formations. Although visually stunning, this paradisiacal vista is unwholesome and has no substance. Its promise dissolves with the blossom.
Liane Lang, Utopiary, 2005
Dolly Thompsett
Painter Dolly Thompsett restages Romantic ideals and sensibilities in her colourful and seductive images. A knowing awareness of her ‘untenable’ position, however, results in the use of inappropriate excess.
Dolly Thompsett, Open Excavation 2, 2005