Nothing lasts forever

7 June – 6 July 2019

PROJECT SPACE, RMIT University Building 94, Level 2, Room 2, 23-27 Cardigan Street, Carlton

Nothing lasts forever
Chiao-Yen Hsu
PROJECT SPACE

Nothing lasts forever explores the objective and subjective qualities of home. Hsu reflectively paints floating images of architectures, streets and houses that have been re-assembled and re-envisaged through his memory and imagination. By applying thin dripping washes of watercolour and acrylic paint onto plastic sheets, he emphasises the fragility and ephemerality of both his materials and subject. And as we physically move through his works, the images drift in response to our presence. Hsu uses these quiet gestures to consider home as not a fixed tangible space, but rather something more emotional, mutable, remembered and impermanent.

OPENING Thursday 6 June
TIME 5–7pm
LOCATION PROJECT SPACE, RMIT University Building 94, Level 2, Room 2

Accumulating the Medium
Madeleine Thorton
SPARE ROOM

Remediation is the act of re-forming an object out of a material from which it isn’t usually made. Madeleine Thornton-Smith uses remediation as a method of investigating medium specificity — in particular the location where, and the manner in which, one distinct medium ends and another begins. Employing a slow process of accumulation and repetition, she uses slip-casting to bring together commonplace studio material surfaces — bubble wrap, acrylic paint, polystyrene, expanding foam, render and concrete — with archetypal forms from fine art and ceramics — vessels, plinths, canvases and tiles.  Thornton-Smith uses these mimetic and composite practices to re-evaluate material hierarchies and to raise questions about the status and value of ceramics, ‘art’ and ‘craft’. 

OPENING Thursday 6 June
TIME 5–7pm
LOCATION SPARE ROOM, RMIT University Building 94, Level 2, Room 2

Image: Chiao-Yen Hsu, Scene 05 (detail), 2019, plastic drop sheets, acrylic, filler, 175 x 375 cm