The concept of the assemblage has enjoyed a flat appreciation within the art historical canon – one that focuses on a linear progression from the format of the readymade, to a debunking of traditional notions of authorship.
The act of recovering material does – to an extent – undermine grand narratives of the creatorauthor. For many the individual is a myth, a premise invented through and for the insufficiencies of consumerism. The personal is historical, and instead we find ourselves met in many moments with an inability to escape plurality. To look at the past calls into view a question asked by Denise Riley: How do we know the past is over? In burrowing out of the past – through reconstituted language, found imagery, novel processes – we assert this question. The material realities of history underscore the past as existing still now, in particular through the formation of place and identity. A suspicion around nostalgia is healthy; nostalgia is predicated on identification with the image of a past that never was. Nostalgia is a corrupted past. How much can we trust recollections, nostalgia in its artificial protectant, and the power of former narratives in conjuring our present and ourselves? The weaving of new constellations of meaning is what we can trace through the works – from a starting point of confusion that we understand as memory.
Laure Prouvost
We Will Go Far
2015
HD Video
8’40”
Simeon Barclay
With the thrust of their frames they cut new forms
2016
Triptych, 46.9 x 106.3 x 1 inches
Aluminium, blue acrylic mirror, vinyl adhesive
Simeon Barclay
The physical weight2016
Diptych, 46.9 x 70.9 x 1 inches
Aluminium, black acrylic, vinyl adhesive
Sarah M Harrison
Small and Potato Shaped
2017
73.5 x 16 inches
Jordan Nassar
Mt. Tamalpais
2015
40 x 30 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Back wall, left to right:
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 1011
2016
24 x 18 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 89
2016
24 x 18 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 12
2016
18 x 14 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 57
2016
24 x 30 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 13
2016
14 x 18 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas
Jordan Nassar
Antique Palestinian Rose Patterns 13
2015
24 x 20 inches
Hand Embroidered Cotton on Aida on Canvas