Exhibits,

Vittoria Di Stefano Deep Time Receiver

Opening: Wednesday 9 May, 6 - 8pm Dates: 9 May - 2 June 2018

Deep Time Receiver is a new sculptural installation that explores the poetics of liminal states of transition and transformation as experienced through materiality. In this tableau, materials associated with the personal body such as lipstick, soap and wax are utilised alongside industrial waste products, found objects, growing crystals and an audio soundtrack, to depict a hybridised and entropic landscape existing simultaneously in a state of growth and decay.

This project draws on a disparate range of influences, from science fiction cinema to new materialist considerations of material agency to feminist critiques on canonical notions of temporal linearity and permanence. It considers states of disquiet and disorientation brought on by the inevitable breakdown of systems and speculates on the transformative and generative quality of uncertainty.

Vittoria Di Stefano’s research centres on material investigation as a method for examining notions of liminality - or transformative in-betweenness - in sculptural practice. She employs temporal, marginal and contingent processes to investigate a range of materials as a means to explore the alchemical and transformational properties of the sculptural object.

As well as traditional sculptural materials she employs gendered substances associated with the transformation of the body such as salon waxes, soap and lipstick, transgressing their use value to disrupt approaches to making and viewing. She considers the forces of attraction and repulsion through the inclusion of magnets in her work, and investigates the possibilities of growth and decay through the use of crystals and industrial waste. This choice of materials reflects an interest in the collapsing of binary considerations and a desire to explore the relationship between form and formlessness.

Di Stefano has taken part in solo and group exhibitions nationally and is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University, where she also lectures in Art History and Spatial Practice.

Catalogue
“Deep Time Receiver”
Text by Dr Julian Harris
2018