Testing Ground (2013-2015)

Testing Ground is a touring exhibition curated by Julie Gough featuring works by 1491s, Ólöf Björnsdóttir, Trudi Brinckman, Darren Cook, Rebecca Dagnall, Sue Kneebone, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Jeroen Offerman, Perdita Phillips, r e a, Christian Thompson, Martin Walch and Siying Zhou. The video sleepwalking and the night vision photographic prints were selected by the curator.

Testing Ground is a compilation of investigative insights by artists on the nature of identity or persona, particularly in place. The terms identity and place are not fixed or comparative in this project, and the overall installation is intended to resolve as a circuit of uncertainty about notions of site and self. The exhibition will consist of large and intimate scale projection and screen based works – silent and sound, photographs, and portable installation and sculptural work. One aspect of the exhibition is the destabilising of expectation about culture, race and gender, and to this end works will be exhibited that produce unanticipated and often unresolved emotional responses. The works will be navigated as a composition installed to invoke consideration of the material being referenced, experienced and appraised by the artists. In this way the exhibition is as much about the artists testing themselves while producing their work as it is about the audience being tested.

http://www.magsq.com.au/_dbase_upl/Update56.pdf

Locations include:

Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 14 March – 28 April 2013 http://www.salarts.org.au/
Devonport Regional Gallery – Tasmania May 4 – June 16 2013 http://www.devonportgallery.com/
Flinders University Art Museum and City Gallery – South Australia 22 Feb – 4 May 2014 http://www.flinders.edu.au/artmuseum/
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery – NSW 16 August – 28 September 2014 http://www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/Arts_Entertainment/Hazelhurst/
Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre – Victoria Feb – May 2015 http://www.bundoorahomestead.com/

Review:

Jacket, A. (2013). Testing Ground. Artlink, 33(2). http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3990/testing-ground/