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

Alex Gawronski (with Jelena Telecki): Objects in the Mirror, 2016

(Watercolour on watercolour paper (Oil on canvas paper))

‘Ex Libris Fisherarium’, Fisher Library, Levels 2,3 and 4, the Univesity of Sydney. Curated by Michael Goldberg/ Sydney College of the Arts

This exhibition consisted of a series of ten book titles removed from their original contexts. Each title was chosen because of its uncanny or humorous connotations once removed from its wider context. Considered collectively these titles suggested a type of quasi-Dadaist poetry whose combined effect hinted at alternative even pataphysical, readings. Graphically the original layout of each book title was retained although each was rendered in watercolour as a ‘painting’. Furthermore these works referenced the importance of text in contemporary art and the work of artists as diverse as Ed Ruscha and Marcel Broodthaers. Accompanying these text works were figurative paintings by Jelena Telecki. These all responded to the book titles. Together the appropriated titles and their figurative interpretations, established an open dialogue of fairly infinite suggestability. ‘Objects in the Mirror…’ (may be closer than they appear – as the warning goes) spoke of how texts and images continually interpolate one another while remaining fundamentally differentiated. The juxtaposition of text and image in this instance may have been considered a type of improvisation drawing out the latent possibilities concealed behind the most ordinary words and the words that underlie the most stubbornly elusive representations.