SCAVENGER
Jody Graham
27 April – 14 May 2017
Opening Reception Saturday 29 April, 3 – 5pm with artist talk at 3.30
Scavenger celebrates the broken, displaced and forgotten, bringing together a plethora of possessions that have been orphaned from their owners. Fervently gathered from abandoned spaces throughout Australia, this urban debris has been repurposed to satisfy a longing to rescue and restore.
Jody’s approach speaks of her long-nurtured compulsion for collecting, accumulating and altering such items, in ways that conjure a sense of empathy and curiosity. In an almost anthropological approach, she reinstates a sense of value to these relics of the past, animating them through considered treatment and placement.
Reveling in the marks, traces and textures that denote the personal histories of these objects, Jody inscribes them into her own imagined narratives. With a deft hand, she arranges these pieces with sensitivity and tenderness, reconstructing them into constellations that are highly evocative.
By framing these pieces within a new context (of displaying them within the gallery), Jody extends the life of the once desired and useful. The result is an exploration of how such items can act as a catalyst for story telling through their proximity to one another, and invites speculation around what we view as important within a consumer-driven context, including the desire for and treatment of possessions.
Images courtesy the artist and Document Photography
Jody’s approach speaks of her long-nurtured compulsion for collecting, accumulating and altering such items, in ways that conjure a sense of empathy and curiosity. In an almost anthropological approach, she reinstates a sense of value to these relics of the past, animating them through considered treatment and placement.
Reveling in the marks, traces and textures that denote the personal histories of these objects, Jody inscribes them into her own imagined narratives. With a deft hand, she arranges these pieces with sensitivity and tenderness, reconstructing them into constellations that are highly evocative.
By framing these pieces within a new context (of displaying them within the gallery), Jody extends the life of the once desired and useful. The result is an exploration of how such items can act as a catalyst for story telling through their proximity to one another, and invites speculation around what we view as important within a consumer-driven context, including the desire for and treatment of possessions.
Images courtesy the artist and Document Photography