Exhibits,

Aaron Butt Missed Encounter

Opening: Opening Wednesday 1 July, 6-8pm Dates: 1 – 18 July 2015

‘Missed Encounter’ navigates the act of witnessing the September 11 attacks, mediated first by video and photography and later by fiction and other creative works. ‘Missed Encounter’ examines two main references; Don DeLillo’s ‘Falling Man: A novel’ and Richard Drew’s ‘Falling Man’ photograph. Aaron has contextualised responses to these references within Jill Bennett’s ‘practical aesthetics’ and psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

‘Missed Encounter’ refers to Jacques Lacan’s conception of the missed encounter with the real, which is rendered inaccessible upon entering language and only accessible through death. The unexpected and traumatic events of September 11 were largely unable to be integrated into a psychic economy, resulting in a compartmentalisation of time and an endless repetition of traumatic dreams and memories for many of those involved. This feeling of the events being missed, for the artist, is being a result of being mediated by technology and compounded by experiencing them in childhood. Regardless of how empathic, creating works about the victims of the September 11 attacks and the act of obscurity renders Aaron implicitly triumphant and a complicit participant in the censorship of the events. It is these tensions which he is interested in exploring and navigating.

Aaron Butt is an artist living and working in Brisbane. In 2014 he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the Queensland University of Technology. Aaron has been accepted into prizes such as the Moreton Bay Region Art Awards, the Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing, the Lethbridge 10000 as well as curated group exhibitions such as Tools of the Trade, New World City and Shape of Things to Come. Aaron was also selected as a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, and recently held a solo exhibition titled Rapture at the Caboolture Regional Art Gallery Hub Space.