AUT - Semi Permanent 2007
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Semi Permanent 2007
SEMI PERMANENT 2007
Design Exhibition curated by Kelvin Soh
Opening August 7, 6pm
August 7 - 15, 2007
Gallery One & Two
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Terms Of Use
Semi-Permanent Design Exhibition 2007
There is a funny scene in Michael Winterbottom's film, 24 Hour Party People, where a young Peter Saville is shown arriving with a gig poster which is presented to Wilson as the door opens for the event. The poster is therefore useless for advertising the gig, a situation to which Wilson responds, "It's absolutely bloody fantastic, but it is also useless... Nothing useless is truly beautiful...” A similar situation occurs later in the film with some 'advance’ tickets which, again, arrives far too late to be put to any use either. This time however, the more experienced Saville character attempts to offer some consolation, “I’m sorry they’re a bit late ... thought we could use them as a souvenir or something?”
Often said to be situated at “the intersection of commerce and art”, the practice of contemporary graphic design involves juggling 'use value' and 'artistic value' in the mediation of culture. Graphic design’s ephemeral quality, expressed in the multiplicity of editions, promises the imminent diminishing of 'use value' over time - when things designed to communicate no longer function in accordance to their intended purpose. Its residual value, however, is unclear. For some, they are easily discarded as rubbish. For others, they are archived or indexed for their nostalgic, cultural or aesthetic significance, underscoring its symbolic or 'sign value’ and invite closer (re)examination.
If artists like Jorge Pardo and Tobias Rehberger are using design strategies to interrogate art by accomodating function, then this exhibition is an attempt to move in the opposite direction - the displacement or distillation of function out of design and the subsequent precipitation of affects and percepts. In contrast to client-based or 'real’ projects, this exhibition encourages 'authorship’ in a space of 'fiction’, as a catalyst to foreground subjectivity and stimulate reflexive questions about the value and meaning of graphic design in the current conditions of culture.
Kelvin Soh
The Wilderness
June 2007
Artists:
ALT, Glue Society,Made Thought, Misery, Umeric, 3Deep, UVA plus special guests: Brogen Averill, Cameron McKean, David Bennewith, Deenal Vallabh, Dylan Pharazyn, Howard Matil, Ian Wills, James Goggin, Jeff Burch, Kelvin Soh, Layla Tweedie-Cullen, Maureen Mooren with Daniel van der Velden, Max Lozach with James Cleary, Meagan Donelley, Nick Spratt with Lauren Winstone, Rachel Doughty, Richard Munro, Simon Oosterdijk, Special Problems, Tana Mitchell, Warren Olds
Curated by Kelvin Soh with Simon Velvin and sponsored by Becks