A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Untitled (Windows) 1997

Alex Gawronski: Untitled (Windows), 1997

Tin Sheds, Sydney

(Timber, MDF, paint, brackets)

Fort-dA Departure  1997

Alex Gawronski: Fort-dA Departure, 1997

Artspace, Sydney

(Timber, acrylic paint, model train, tracks, transformer, switches, electronics)

Plateaus 1997

Alex Gawronski: Plateaus, 1997

First Draft, Surry Hills Sydney

(Steel, scale model trains + tracks, relay switch, electronics)

Four model trains function collectively as a self-enclosed mechanical system, a spatially installed machine. As one train reaches its destination it triggers the next to travel in the opposite direction until the entire sequence is repeated from top to bottom. Whilst perpetually mobile, the engines nevertheless evince a paradoxical and ambient stasis just as, more broadly, representations of dynamism are always halted by the limits of representation.

Accumulator 1997

Alex Gawronski: Accumulator, 1997

Stop 22, Melbourne

(MDF, 16 x turntables – sequenced – 16 x records, speakers, amplifiers, galvanized iron, timber, wire rope, clamps)

Fourteen suspended platforms, divided into groups of four, create an architectural situation within the old tram-stop building. Fourteen individual performances of Beethoven’s ‘ode to joy’ play simultaneously, rising and decaying in the manner of a mechanised fugue. The Romantic individualism Beethoven’s era augured at the tail end of the18th Century Enlightenement, and expressed in his ode to universal ‘brotherhood’, is transformed here instead into an utterance of collective anarchy. High-idealism of the sort associated with 18th Century Enlightenement and 19th Romanticism is now represented in a broken-down version. Meanwhile, the materialty of the records as audio-reproductive units denies the possibility of unique performance while, paradoxically, presenting one.

Untitled (Collection) 1997

Alex Gawronski: Untitled (Collection), 1997

‘Gallery 4A Fundraiser’ Gallery 4A, Chinatown Sydney

(Records, cardboard, wire rope, clasps, hooks, screws, paint)

Untitled (Gatefold) 1997

Alex Gawronski: Untitled (Gatefold), 1997

’69’ 1997, Side On gallery, Annandale Sydney

(Glass, hand-cut found record sleeve, MDF, brackets, paint)