BODIES OF MATTER - ONLINE NOW!

Bodies of Matter is (a)live! 
A collaborative online exhibition exploring media saturation, isolation, physical disconnection and creative conversations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Curated and developed by ANCA Gallery, Canberra.

 

“We were at once recipients of and contributors to the joy of witnessing the sudden appearance of creatures none of us had foreseen, but which we ourselves had nonetheless created.” Simone Kahn, poet

We have found ourselves in a new surreal world, one where time and space doesn't function as it did previously A world that we have created through our ignorance and disconnection with nature and an obsession to manipulate our surroundings. We experience one disaster after the other, from threats that move through our environment leaving obvious traces of devastation to a virus that remains precariously invisible.

Bodies of Matter, is a collaborative exhibition between Elaine Camlin and Julie Mia Holmes, exploring the experience of living through a pandemic, isolation, and Covid-19. This project explores the notion that everything is connected, yet the nature of Covid-19 requires us to stay physically disconnected and isolated in order to contain it.

The creative conversation stemmed from the surrealist concept of Exquisite Corpses. We are all like exquisite corpses, discombobulated and disconnected bodies. The very same experience of being in isolation. We watch numbers and graphs fluctuate throughout the day, there is an element of chance and luck, the roll of a dice, as some are mortally infected while others who are asymptomatic spread the virus undetected through our community. Our life is surreal, a game of chance.

The works combine media imagery, with popular culture, historical images, drawings and prints to create new bodies of matter. Constructing imagery in this way allowed for each artist to immediately respond to their experiences in a playful and shifting manner. The collages shaped the collaborative conversation, informing individual sustained interests. Elaine developed a series of monotypes and drawings, while Julie investigated the forms through stop motion animation.