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
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 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.
Settlement & the Gatekeepers
Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
VIEW ︎︎︎
Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
VIEW ︎︎︎
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.
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.
