Installation Contemporary thinks outside the booth

Sydney Contemporary’s Installation Contemporary program returns to the fair this September with a diverse array of ambitious installation works presented throughout Carriageworks. Spanning painting, sculpture and ceramics through to sound, installation, video and performance, the program is designed to think outside the booth and bring another dimension to the traditional art fair space.

Nina Miall, Installation Contemporary’s 2018 curator explains: “Installation Contemporary gives artists the opportunity to look beyond the spatial limitations and commercial considerations of the fair booth. To play with scale, work in more experimental or ambitious ways, or make work that responds directly to the industrial spaces of Carriageworks.”

Installation Contemporary will include more than 20 works by artists working across the region and beyond. Yhonnie Scarce’s powerful installation ‘Strontium – 90’ continues the artist’s investigation of the British Atomic testing carried out in the Maralinga area during the 1950s and 1960s. Also on show will be Jean Dubuffet‘s four-metre-high ‘L’Incivil’, which highlights the artist’s continued interest and support of art brut.

Other installation works include Penelope Davis’s ‘Sea Change’, an installation suspended from the ceiling like a swarm of jellyfish that evokes the precarious beauty of the ocean environment and the human impact upon it; Robert Jahnke’s ‘Kaokao’, a light installation of a tukutuku chevron pattern found in Maori tribal houses that signifies fortitude and virility; Abdul Abdullah’s ‘Call me by my name’, which addresses accusations of failure directed at younger generations by older generations; and two of Lindy Lee’s ‘Four Innumerables’ works that use light to create an immersive installation experience.

Performance Contemporary runs alongside Installation Contemporary. Participating artists include Emily Parsons-Lord, who will present her new commission exploring the elemental connections between earth and the air in a pyrotechnic performance. Lauren Brincat presents ‘Brava, Bravi, Brave’, a site-specific response to the architecture of Carriageworks via a rhythmic duet between two drummers; while Michaela Davies investigates human limits and the nature of agency using electric muscle stimulation to both obstruct and extend our human capabilities.

The two programs join more than 80 participating galleries presenting work by more than 300 artists at the fair, set to transform Carriageworks into one of the largest concentrations of contemporary art in Australasia.

Image: Installation view of Yhonnie Scarce’s ‘Stronium – 90’, 2016. Courtesy: the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Janelle Low.