FELTspace | Sophia Phillips + Alison Smiles, Justine Walker, Aleksandra Antić

Since 2008, FELTspace has long maintained a strong focus on promoting emerging and early career artists. This December, the gallery presents the work of three of South Australia’s own – Sophia Phillips, Alison Smiles, and Aleksandra Antić who reflect on the nature of ‘self’, as well as Wellington-based artist Justine Walker who asks the question we all long to know the answer to: ‘do you love me?’

Sophia Phillips, Chickabee, chickabee (tree in the wind), 2019, porcelain, eucalyptus, feathers, silk thread

Tools of Self by Sophia Phillips + Alison Smiles

For me, this body of work has been about developing a sense of personal mythology. Without always meaning to I have captured the way I see the world working – for instance, my use of black, white and grey is an aesthetic decision, but also links quite closely to my own tendency towards reductive thinking and the repeated realization that in fact, the world is one big figurative grey area. By combining individual components that wear the marks of my body with other found and made materials, I want to create pieces that can be worn, handled and imagined on the body. – Sophia Phillips

In building these forms, I press a cheek or a nose into the world with a knuckle or a finger from the inside of the form to present itself on the outside. Allowing light to spill from these forms, I see the internal energy of the self-reflecting onto others, and in turn, their own light reflected back, bringing the self into being. The energy exchanged between bodies allows us to be remembered, experienced. I seek to capture this process into a permanent material as a testament to the importance of these transient exchanges. – Alison Smiles

Justine Walker, Aleksandra Antić, Sophia Phillips and Alison Smiles at the opening of their exhibitions at FELTspace, South Australia on Wednesday 4 December 2019. Artwork: Alison Smiles, Communia, 2019, handbuilt assorted clays, glaze and platinum lustre

Left: Aleksandra Antić, where I end, 2019, ink and screen-print on paper, approx. 620 x 260cm (overall), 56 x 66cm (each panel). Right: Aleksandra Antić, Tympan #6 (a study for the dissolved self), 2019, single-channel digital video, duration 11:19secs loop, sound, colour; black fabric, grass seeds, dimensions variable

a study for the dissolved self by Aleksandra Antić

‘A study for the dissolved self’ employs the legacy of the working life of my mother, a printed textile industry labourer, as a basis for a phenomenological inquiry beyond the dichotomy between internal and external ‘modes’ of being, particularly in the context of migration and assimilation. Through screen-printing and video, the project engages with the concept of fragmentation and repetition as provisional structures against which the understanding of movement, transition or in-betweenness are explored. The work considers Deleuze’s idea of the ‘becoming-becoming’ as a movement, a force of the continual production or return of difference, an idea of self as a constantly changing convergence of forces. – Aleksandra Antić

Justine Walker, ‘do you love me?’ (video still), 2019, video, 40 min. Courtesy the artist and FELTspace, South Australia

‘do you love me?’ by Justine Walker

‘do you love me?’ is the question we are all asking, whether it be to family, friends or an intimate partner. To be loved is a primal need we are born with, without love no one would feed and shelter us, we would never survive infancy. Love means very different things to disparate people in various circumstances. So how do we understand each other when communicating about love? If we send out the question will someone receive it? Will we understand the response? (if there is one). New Zealand based artist Justine Walker uses repetition, performance and lived experience to research longing, loss, acceptance and family. Her latest video work is a longing for acceptance. Using a child-size pair of semaphore flags, a woman repeatedly signals ‘do you love me’.

FELTspace
5 to 21 December 2019
South Australia

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