Sleeper

16 April - 3 May 2014

Sheffer Gallery, Sydney

Sleeper - exhibition statement

We all have an inner landscape, a private space inhabited by our thoughts and dreams, memories and emotions. It is a space that is inextricably familiar to us, and yet, elusive as well. Sometimes we can access this space at will and sometimes little triggers take us there when we least expect it. I am interested in the little triggers – an old teddy bear, a song, a scent – the ‘artefacts’ of our experiences.

The works in Sleeper form part of an ongoing body of work concerned with the way these triggers provoke memories then couple with our subconscious to form new associations. The collages and works on paper therefore present as enduring manifestations of these couplings. Like the unconstrained and often playful expression of ideas and thoughts through free association, the artworks represent fragments of memory juxtaposed with representational and non-representational forms.

While it is the triggers that form the locus of my visual practice, the repetitive process of making hatched marks, such as those found in Troubadour (2014) and Fish (2014) is meditative and slow, allowing space for thoughts to wander and collide. Hence, these large, hatched works are like ‘physical thinking’ for me; line by little line they form an external expression of my internal meanderings.

Michelle Cawthorn, 2014