The Charged Object. Soft sculpture and the aesthetics of touch

Curated by Felicity Martin and Paula do Prado

9 March - 9 April 2016

Gallery Lane Cove, Sydney

The Charged Object. Soft sculpture and the aesthetics of touch - exhibition statement

by Gallery Lane Cove

The Charged Object is an exhibition that explores the ‘aesthetics of touch’ and the use of non-traditional and tactile materials in the artworks of contemporary non-indigenous and indigenous Australian artists.

The exhibition aims to explore how the fundamental shift in thinking about sculpture in the 1960s has informed contemporary works in soft sculpture and anti-form. There is a particular focus on works made with fibre, cloth and plastics with traditional textile techniques (weaving, sewing, wrapping, crochet, knitting, beading) and how these methods have been interpreted through contemporary installations, sculpture and animations.

It is this idea of ‘feeling objects’ that the exhibition endeavours to explore and communicate to the audience. The use of these soft, tactile and universally recognisable materials are accessible, yet when presented in the gallery environment they become charged with meaning and fascination. The works selected embody this relationship between the materiality of the work and the body both in the way the viewer’s body is engaged by materials and how the materials themselves can be used as bodily metaphors.

‘The object feels. This is the great discovery that Claes Oldenberg has introduced to Modern Art. Oldenberg intertwines the organic and the inorganic in his sculpture, co-joining human feeling and the physical properties of objects. These new feeling objects, presented as art, can no longer be understood as detached and impersonal, rather, they have been imbued with sensuality and sexuality’.[1]

[1] Cevant, Gervano (1995), ‘Claes Oldenberg and the feeling of things’, Claes Oldenberg: an anthology, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

March, 2016