Exhibits,
Lynette Smith Ambiguity (a number of drawings)
Opening: Wednesday 12 April, 6-8pm Dates: 12 April – 6 May 2017
‘A ball of paper. A picture. Hands, right and left, closing and opening slowly. Silent except for the sound of paper crumpling’. A group of four looped videos, shown on four televisions, vertically aligned and arranged equally around the four walls of a small space. The videos show four recurring events on a stage:
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A square of paper, densely covered both sides with graphite, crumpled and placed on the stage. It starts to unspring its form and a hand reaches in and takes it out. The paper is crumpled again and placed again on the stage, and so on. The hand becomes blacker and blacker with graphite as it goes on. The video ends when the hand is black and the paper a crumpled ball.
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The right hand, covered with graphite, performing a slow movement of grasping and enclosing.
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The left hand, covered with graphite, performing, independently, the same slow movement of grasping and enclosing.
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A hand placing a picture on the stage and withdrawing.
I’m interested in the ambiguity of drawing. It is both an act and the outcome of an act. To me this mirrors an ambiguity of agency–each one of us is both actor and acted upon, experiencer and the experienced (by the self and by others). More recently I have been working with video, looking for parallels between the act of drawing and the act of making an image and, even further, the act of seeing an image. While making these videos, I’ve been thinking about metaphors of meaning, like holding and grasping, and how interpretation always dirties the interpreter. We aren’t outside the world.
