James and Eleanor Avery: Supernova
GRANTPIRRIE
******
By Emma White
COURTESY JAMES AVERY AND ELEANOR AVERY/GRANTPIRRIE
Imagine you’re sitting in a quiet park
in small-town America, when suddenly
a mysterious craft bears down
from above and lands on your head.
That craft could easily be Supernova,
Brisbane duo James and Eleanor Avery’s
installation at GRANTPIRRIE.
Supernova – a stand-out follow-up
to the glittering idiosyncrasy of the
Averys’ 2007 Artspace project Our
Day Out, isn’t a reconstruction of
a meteorite or UFO as such. But its
invocation of uncanny spectacle’s
penetration into everyday life is a
scenario very familiar from the cinematic
genre of cheap science fiction.
The artists intelligently contrast
the contextual associations of
crystal, pine, Perspex, gold vinyl and
macramé to acknowledge the connotative
power of particular materials.
Within GRANTPIRRIE’s white,
clean walls are a pair of unidentifi -
able objects; part science fair project,
part Close Encounter. The dominant
construction is a large-scale, spiky,
gold polygonal form held up by
scaffolding and decorated about its
extremities with cut crystal bowls
hung from distinctly earthly macramé
plant-hangers. The intervention
of craft proper undercuts the fauxseriousness
of the structure with a
pleasantly prosaic absurdity. Any
metaphor of weightlessness is shattered
by the visible internal structure
supporting the object’s seductive
surface, and the pragmatism of the
metal scaffolding on which it rests.
The second, smaller structure is
a five-sided pine bench, topped with
a multi-coloured pentagonal Perspex
pyramid, suggesting mystical practices
in banal environments. Golden
light refracts around the gallery
space through the crystal bowls and
coloured obelisk, and the interaction
between geometries and light creates
a warm and engaging illusion of
spatial play within the gallery.
Supernova is a fabrication concocted
by the connotative suggestion of
its constituent materials, simultaneously
referencing a self-aware retrofuturism
and unreconstructed kitsch.
The Averys use their self-devised
language of “stuff” to very fl uently
create a spatial experience, fi lled
with visual and narrative pleasure.
Supernova shows until
8 Mar.
