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The Body is a Big Place
November 2011 CarriageWorks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Development of collaborative art project 'The Body is a Big Place' with Helen Pynor Peta and Helen spent two months at SymbioticA - Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts at the UWA where they aimed to learn as much as they could about the human heart. The more they grappled with and examined this most wonderous organ, that is the more they understood it's physiology, the more complex and ungraspable the heart became. Meaning that the heart is beautiful, complex and incredible from both an anatomical and cultural perspective. Helen and Peta learnt that the actual heart itself possesses anatomical heart strings, also called the Chordae tendineae. This most complex and incredible organ is a prime example of the inseparable nature of the body, mind, self and other. During their residency at SymbioticA, they explored the metaphoric, conceptual, and technical possibilities of maintaining paired animal hearts and lungs in a ‘functioning’ state in vitro, using an organ perfusion system. Peta and Helen will return to SymbioticA in the middle of this year to continue their research and will keep you posted. The starting point for 'The Body is a Big Place' project has been an investigation of the processes and practices of organ transplantation. Helen and Peta's interest is in the complex and ambiguous ways that organ donors and recipients, and their loved ones, personalize the organs that are involved in organ transfer, and in the capacity for organ transfer to call into question notions of the unitary subject. exploring possibilities for developing an empathic language of the interior body. The research will question whether it is possible to present the interior of the body in a way that avoids gore and sensationalism, but which also avoids the objectification of the interior body through its over medicalisation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GROUP EXHIBITION 'What Surrounds Me' Works on Paper Including works by the artists: Dominik Mersch Gallery 8th until 24th December, 2010 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESIDENCY SymbioticA - Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, University or Western Australia Peta Clancy is currently undertaking a residency at SymbioticA with Helen Pynor, where they are working on their collaborative project 'The Body is a Big Place’.
‘The Body is a Big Place’ is an ongoing collaborative project between Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor that is exploring possibilities for developing an empathic language of the interior body. The research will question whether it is possible to present the interior of the body in a way that is not ‘horrific’, but which also avoids the objectification of the interior body through its over medicalisation. The starting point for the project has been an investigation of the processes and practices of organ transplantation. The researchers’ interest is in the complex and ambiguous ways that organ donors and recipients, and their loved ones, personalize the organs that are involved in organ transfer, and in the capacity for organ transfer to call into question notions of the unitary subject. During their residency at SymbioticA, Pynor and Clancy will explore the metaphoric, conceptual, and technical possibilities of maintaining paired animal hearts and lungs in a ‘functioning’ state in vitro, using an organ perfusion system. The researchers hope to experiment with the possibilities and limits of ‘personalising’ the organs they work with, and to grapple with the conundrum of the domination of the technological interface in the experience of in vitro organs, both during the experimental phase and when presented in a public context. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residencies/residents2/peta_clancy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRANTS Peta has been awarded a New Work Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. She will create two series of photographic/wax works "Skin as Shifting Surface" and "The Aurelian Project". For "Skin as Shifting Surface" Clancy will continue exploring the paradoxical qualities of skin in photographic portraits by embedding the prints in wax to reflect translucent and opaque qualities of skin, both visually and metaphorically. For "The Aurelian Project" (the title refers to the transformation of a chrysalis) she will explore the impact of human habitation on the lifecycle of butterflies in Australia by photographing specimens of the 26 species listed as threatened in the Action Plan for Australian Butterflies at Museum Victoria, Melbourne and Australian National Insect Collection, Canberra. These works will symbolise the fragile state of survival of each of the species and evoke a sense of renewal. Peta has also been awarded an Australia Council for the Arts New Work Grant, in collaboration with Helen Pynor. This grant will fund their collaborative project "The Body is a Big Place". This funding augments other support for the project for which the artist's have received an Inter-Arts Board Project Grant from the Australia Council. Peta and Helen will utlise the funding to undertake a 3-month residency at SymbioticA in Perth to realise a large-scale video and sculpture installation at Performance Space in 2011. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXHIBITIONS 'Imagining The Everyday' 10th Pingyao International Photography Festival19-25 September 2010 Imagining the Everyday presents the work of 20 Australian photographic artists in a major exhibition featuring in China’s largest and longest running photography event: the Pingyao International Photography festival (PIP). These works do not deal in ‘straight’ documentary. Australia is here represented not in the visual equivalent of ‘hard facts’ but through more than 150 images by some of the country’s most creative photographic artists. Australia is visualised as the expression of minds not bounded by the limits of the real; minds that fly outwards to the very edges of ‘what might be’ and dig deep into the interior realm of personal experience. The vivid, diverse visual narratives created by these Australian photographic artists map out an inspiring expressive journey, as they explore the ideas and associations suggested by Chinese numerology. From yin and yang through metamorphosis, luck and prosperity to longevity and rebirth these images will surprise, delight and inspire you. The exhibition features the work of: Narelle Autio (SA), Pat Brassington (TAS), Peta Clancy (VIC), Rebecca Dagnall (WA), Marian Drew (QLD), Peter Fitzpatrick (ACT), Hayden Fowler (NSW), Murray Fredericks (NSW), Petrina Hicks (NSW), Garth Knight (NSW), Bronek Kozka (VIC), James Mellon (WA), Denis Montalbetti & Gay Campbell (NSW/Canada), Deborah Paauwe (SA), Polixeni Papapetrou (VIC), Scott Redford (QLD), Luke Roberts (QLD), David Stephenson (TAS), Lyndal Walker (VIC) and Bronwyn Wright (NT). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peta is showing her new suite of works "Wither" at the Melbourne Art Fair 2010 with Dominik Mersch Gallery 4 - 8 August 2010 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RECENT PAST EXHIBITIONS "The Outsider" Curated by Michael Brennan Including the artists: Aaron Martin, Anne Kucera, Brendan Lee, Caroline Durre, Fabrizio Biviano, Juan Ford, Michael Brennan, Nicholas Ives, Paul Batt, Peta Clancy, Tamsin Green & Yvette Coppersmith Trocadero Artspace Level 1, 119 Hopkins Street, Footscray, Vic 5 May - 22 May 2010 Standing on the beach with a gun in my hand / Staring at the sea, staring at the sand, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Agenda" Including the artists Marion Borgelt, Peta Clancy, Elger Esser, David Fried, Tim Johnson, Helen Pynor, Stefan Thiel and Beat Zoderer Dominik Mersch Gallery 21 January - 20 February 2010 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESIDENCIES Peta has been awarded a three month residency at SymbioticA Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia located in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology. Peta will undertake the residency at the end of 2010 with London/Sydney based artist Helen Pynor which will include learning microsurgery techniques for their collaborative project 'The Body is a Big Place'. This project will explore the phenomenology of organ transplantation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ARTIST BOOK "PAPER THIN" PUBLISHED FOCUS ON SHOP FEATURE @ CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY (CCP) Paper Thin $30 60 page full-colour artist book, images and text by Peta Clancy with an essay titled 'Skin Deep' by Dr Melissa Miles. For Paper Thin “Peta Clancy considers the surface properties of paper – in this case, photographic paper – and the surface or skin of our bodies…In this artist’s book – an artwork in its own right – the art historian Geoffrey Batchen is quoted as suggesting that photography sits ‘between vision and touch’. I think of the immediacy of family photographs, as they are thumbed through and viewed over and over; and of the work of the hands which direct the camera, then develop the prints, selecting and cropping, framing and displaying them for us to look at…These works consider the relationship between hand and eye, body and representation. Sensual and imperfect – a far cry from the perfection we have grown accustomed to through media imagery – these faces map the passage of time and experience, and are rendered timeless through the act of photography.” Rachel Kent, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art – for the opening of Peta Clancy’s exhibition Paper Thin at Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, 3 December 2009 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOCTORATE COMPLETION During 2009 Peta completed her PhD in Fine Art in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University. Her project titled 'Amorphous Bodies - the space between' explored the theme of the fragile and mutable human body. Informed by artist residencies in genetics laboratories, and archival research on the artist Helen Chadwick, four series of photographic artworks presented unique visual representations of the body in relation to medical and feminist discourses. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
