2006

2 0 0 6

AUTOMATED LOGIC

NEW 06

CURATED BY JULIANA ENGBERG

AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (ACCA)
MELBOURNE

"Like an engineer, Natasha Johns-Messenger sets up mirrors in optically diverting passages. She also cuts through the gallery wall to reveal a kind of painting in the arrangement of metal studs behind or board. She has only to glaze it with lights and behold, a formalesque "composition".

Her mirrored constructions relate to the picture-space of Western tradition, a rectangle of peculiar curiosity because reflecting on an illusionary world beyond our own. In her maze of mirrors, you experience picture-spaces of an imponderable nature, unfathomable and eerie.

In one, the simple device of seeing your own back accompany you around the glassy ambulatory seems to allegorise your appreciation of art in a gallery: no matter how fresh the art, you're always accompanied by your own background."

review 1
review 2
review 3
review 4

2 0 0 6 AUTOMATED LOGIC NEW 06 CURATED BY JULIANA ENGBERG AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (ACCA) MELBOURNE "Like an engineer, Natasha Johns-Messenger sets up mirrors in optically diverting passages. She also cuts through the gallery wall to reveal a kind of painting in the arrangement of metal studs behind or board. She has only to glaze it with lights and behold, a formalesque "composition". Her mirrored constructions relate to the picture-space of Western tradition, a rectangle of peculiar curiosity because reflecting on an illusionary world beyond our own. In her maze of mirrors, you experience picture-spaces of an imponderable nature, unfathomable and eerie. In one, the simple device of seeing your own back accompany you around the glassy ambulatory seems to allegorise your appreciation of art in a gallery: no matter how fresh the art, you're always accompanied by your own background." review 1 review 2 review 3 review 4	VIDEO DOCUMENTATION IMAGES
2 0 0 6 UNTITLED 2006- SITE-WORK SATELLITE PROJECT OF SHANGHAI BIENNALE 2006 CURATED BY LISE LI (CHINA), SU BING (CHINA), KAREN HUNG (HONG KONG) & RICHARD THOMAS (AUSTRALIA) SATELLITE ART PAVILLION NO. 2218 YANGSHUPU ROAD, SHANGHAI, CHINA “In Untitled 2006, Natasha Johns-Messenger's site-determined work for Satellie Shanghai, a fountain-pump recycles water through the existing rusty pipes of the site in a continuous loop. Water shoots and deliniates the space from an old pipe into a 44 gallon drum like an inverted fountain. Tiny droplits of water escape the drum leaving a permanent puddle on the floor remaniscent of leeks in the building when it rains.”
SYNOPTIC 2006 COLLABORATION WITH LESLIE EASTMAN (XYZ) CURATED BY KIRSTEN RANN MIR11 GALLERY LEVEL 11 , 522 FLINDERS LANE MELBOURNE GALLERY HOURS 10-5PM MON-FRI EXHIBITION ENDS FRI JUNE 2nd This installation builds on their previous collaborations and comprises two parts. The first acts as an ‘intervention’ with the architectural, material and spatial construction of the MIR11 Gallery space via an architectural/sculptural installation. The second entails the audience – or in this case ‘participant viewers’ – who wear video glasses and a surveilance camera on their head which feeds live-video of the space into the glasses as they move through the space. The viewer will thus experience a collision between virtual space and real space. Some degree of spatial disorientation is to be expected as viewers move through and view both virtual and real elements integral to the structure of the space and adjust to the terms of the inversion of virtual and real worlds.
IF YOU LEAVE ME CAN I COME TOO? CURATED BY BEC DEAN AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY (ACP) SYDNEY Turning-in to a zeitgeist that is up-on-the-downside if you leave me, can I come too? brings together contemporary Australian artists that convey a sense of humour-tinted melancholy through their work. Taking its title from the deadpan irony of a Mental as Anything break-up song, this exhibition considers broad social themes from personal failure to environmental disconnection, across a range of photomedia. review 1 review 2