This exhibition was the culmination of a five year PhD project entitled Inhabiting Thresholds: Encounters in liminality through material sculptural practice. Exhibited at RMIT Site Eight Gallery, Melbourne.
All photos: Michael Quinlan
Abstract: This practice-led research project investigates notions of liminality within the context of a studio-based sculptural practice predicated on material research and investigation. The project explores how the liminal can function in the production of and encounter with sculptural objects to offer new knowledge about gendered material domains.
For this research project I develop and produce a series of material experiments, sculptural objects and site-specific installations through the investigation of a critical palette of materials. Alongside more traditional sculptural materials such as plaster, metals and fibres, I employ gendered materials associated with the intimate body, sourced from personal and found contexts and chosen for their cultural inferences as well as for their mutable material properties, ranging across soap, salon waxes and lipstick, crystals, filings, amalgamates, fasteners and fittings. Studio and installation processes that embody the indeterminate and the contingent are employed with an emphasis on material agency as the generator of process and outcome. The research is undertaken through studio-based activities in relation to specific modes of public encounter and exhibition. I consider how studio actions and installation practices can disassemble, reconfigure and re-inscribe the received meanings and cultural contexts of materials and forms, engaging the viewer through a liminal experience where perceptions and meaning may be disrupted and transformed. This investigation into liminal processes in sculpture provides insights into how experiences generated through art practice can produce new knowledge about everyday materiality, disruption of received cultural meaning, and critical engagement with political and cultural significances of gendered material domains.
Inhabiting Thresholds is situated within a context of historical and contemporary thought around liminality and materiality as well as dialogue around the meaning in materials and studio processes, and the encounter with the art object; from Victor Turner’s (1990) characterisation of the liminal as the production of fructile chaos and transitive space to Arpad Szakolczai’s (2009) depiction of an embodied, transformative experience. Inhabiting Thresholds draws on post-minimalist and contemporary sculpture, building on key works by artists such as Eva Hesse, Janine Antoni, Rachel Lachowicz, Karla Black and Mona Hatoum. The project researches the potentialities and capacities of the liminal within sculptural practice and the relationships between liminality, materiality and the encounter.