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WORKS





Settlement and the Gatekeepers


The domestic gate representing the ongoing settlement of land in Australia







Settlement and the Gatekeepers




















All above images: Installation view of Elvis Richardson’s Settlement and the Gatekeepers on display as part of the Melbourne Now exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne from 24 March – 20 August 2023. Image: Sean Fennessy. Settlement and the Gatekeepers are in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.












Settlement and the Gatekeepers is a suite of sculptures modifying used domestic gates by removing parts, inserting words and attaching new fixtures. Flattening the gates form a line is drawn to hang flat like paintings on the gallery wall.  

Settlement #2 and #3 are modified exterior gates with the word Settlement incorporated into the gate itself united by the feminine pink blush surface which softens the weight and gravity expressed in the bends and letter forms providing the thinnest of barriers separating surface from substrate.


Exhibited alongside Settlement in Relief a series of unique digital prints, push the barrier affect further by applying a visual illusion of embossing where textures and surfaces of domestic interiors recede and advance to create the image and forensically elicit sensations of touch.

Hot Flush a set of cast bronze plaques of a carved relief profile of Queen Elizabeth II familiar to us all on commonwealth coins yup is it all about money.






























Above images: works from the series Settlement and the Gatekeepers
installed at Hugo Michell Gallery, November 2020 and Occassional Space August 2020. In the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW



[above] Settlement#7 2023 (in the collection of the Ballarat Art Gallery) and [right] Settlement#6 2023, Photo: Christo Crocker. 
Settlement #5 Establishment - Canberra Art Biennale 2022 Contour556 curated by Neil Hobbs

Settlement #5 Establishment 2022

The placing of a gate on Northbourne* Avenue, Canberra’s major road connecting City Hill with the Federal Hwy, the dividing line between the landmark Melbourne and Sydney buildings and their surrounding suburbs, a location as the perfect confluence of forces in which to express the unresolved negotiation of a treaty in Australias founding, establishment and constitution.

The double gate makes obvious how barriers, division and imbalance work, creating differing and assymetrical power, order, space, and access. Where ESTABLISHMENT sits delicately ontop like a handwritten title, a signature, a law it feels fragile. While atop its pair a TREATY flag flys from a familiar flagpole whose arms extend within where an oval shaped hole in the gate infers access, self reflection, engagement and agreement and is a reminder this is not an empty space. Pink Blush powdercoat lends the cover of femininity, playfulness and approachability yet this work seeks to also undermine the patriarchal narratives in play.


Now in the collection of the Australian National University to be installed 2025.
FEATURED & EXHIBITED



Settlement & the Gatekeepers
NGV - Melbourne Now
VIEW ︎︎︎
Settlement & the Gatekeepers 
Occasional Space
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Settlement & the Gatekeepers
Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
VIEW ︎︎︎



Settlement #4
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
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SETTLEMENT #5 (Establishment/TREATY) Contour556 Biennale Canberra
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WORKS








Generation Rent






Generation Rent 2022, continues my ongoing interest with representations of ‘home’ within political economic and social contexts that are built upon the exclusive, exclusionary legalities of public and private property. 

Generation Rent is a game, letters displayed on an ironwork embelishment can be rearranged to make new words and phrases. Accompanying works Generation Rent Rules and Score Board get the game night started.  It’s a competition and you feel like the loser when you rent in Australia where property owners have more rights and benefits and you’re a human resource.  























GENERATION RENT
Now in the Art Gallery of Ballarat collection.
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GENERATION RENT POEM 2023
Selected for the 2024 Darebin Art Prize, Bundoora Homestead
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Exhibited at Void_Melbourne
GAME NIGHT with Beau Emmett
VIEW EXHIBITION ︎︎︎








WORKS








The Gate Fanciers





The Gate Fanciers is a series of screen prints on paper reproducing drawings of three gates; the first from the Governor General of Australia’s residence in Canberra, the second Australia Gate at Buckingham Palace London gifted by Australia on the death of Queen Victoria and the third is the entrance gate to Long Bay Goal in Sydney. 

The text adjacent to each drawing is borrowed from actual online marketplace listings selling gates where gate fanciers go to scroll. The text and drawing in combination with the sellers thumbnail image, make visible the persistent narratives of colonisation found in the symbol and function of the gate whether civic or domestic.

The resulting series of prints operate in the satirical traditions of The Onion or Mad Magazine etal presenting the ridiculous impossibility that current structures of power could be reduced to a garage sale, as a joke.


 

























©elvisrichardson