Casey Chen + Damian Dillon
1/6/23 - 15/6/23
Exhibition Text
Nostalgia is the capture of a sentimental angle on a moment/phenomena that, naturally, skews revision. The nature of nostalgia is that the angle is configured such that it lives within a mega story about ourselves and our intended reality. Nostalgia is a filtered retrospective mood.
Mood is maybe the primitive form that assembles an amorphous cloud of phenomena - but still precedes the medium and symbols used to communicate it. The medium being the tool that then signals how this phenomenon is to be remembered.
‘Mono’ is maybe about the intended compression of all of these facets of mood into a story of singularity but also the persistence of the tension of artifacts that tell otherwise. The way that a single channel of information is actually laden with both the data (physical, cultural) and the negative of data excluded.
Here, these artists peer into the institution of memory-keeping, the loom of tradition and heritage and the threat of its dissolution. The way that memory is an active process of revision and responsive to its changing contexts.
The post-modern acts of addition and fusion; and the desire and momentum to create new origins and rituals out of ones that precede it. The way that an archive is actively reconstructed each time we engage with it.
The haunt of projects yet to be realised ; attempts to seduce and subdue the ‘wild’ and conversely the overtly tame. The weight of an archive and its knowledge of what it produces.
The ‘mono’ being a polyphony of inextricable voices that tell stories about how something is all at once
Forgotten, remembered, cherished, decaying.
- Elesi Atsu