Shape Shifter
'Nigredo'
Second Space Projects, Melbourne
October 2016
Curated by Bon Mott
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Photo - Jonothan Griggs, (left to right on wall) Hedi Yardley, Steaphan Paton, Rebecca Delange, Bon Mott, (forground) Simon Pericich
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Nigredo
Tessa Blazey & Alexi Freeman, James Bowen, Kim Bridgland, Jane Burton, Tara Elizabeth Cook, Rebecca Delange, Nicholas Flood, Danny Frommer, Linsey Gosper, Jonathon Griggs, Jaden Hastings (USA), Bridget Mac, Bon Mott, Steaphan Paton, Simon Pericich, Romy Seven (Scumwitch), James Tunks, Jordan Wood, Heidi Yardley. Nigredo showcases a diverse collection of artists engaging in a dialogue with the curatorial premise of the Alchemical Nigredo-decomposition or putrefaction- opens the Thursday before Halloween. Nigredo is evocative of melancholy, chaos, the shadow and the dark night of the soul. The notion of the Nigredo has haunted us from when we first began to fear the darkness of night: from Shakespeare’s sonnets despairing of “the ghastly night” to the ominous, black liquid of Jonathan Glazer’s film Under The Skin, or the alluring shadows of The Death Room at MONA. In Western alchemy, black is the first of the four colours used within the alchemical process of creating the Philosopher’s Stone and is produced through the heating up and cooking of different forms of matter, which then transmutes into a uniform black substance. Carl Jung paralleled Nigredo to the unconscious and the psychology of Transference. French philosopher Gilbert Simondon theorised Nigredo in relation to duality and the transformative processes that enable new beginnings and the convergence between the binaries of life and death, male and female, past and present, and the machine and bodily. Nigredo consists of 20 artists, comprising of 9 female, Indigenous, Transgender and emerging and midcareer artists working across the disciplines of fashion, sculpture, kinetic sculpture, photography, video, drawing, performance, and painting.
Text - Bon Mott and Katie Paine
Tessa Blazey & Alexi Freeman, James Bowen, Kim Bridgland, Jane Burton, Tara Elizabeth Cook, Rebecca Delange, Nicholas Flood, Danny Frommer, Linsey Gosper, Jonathon Griggs, Jaden Hastings (USA), Bridget Mac, Bon Mott, Steaphan Paton, Simon Pericich, Romy Seven (Scumwitch), James Tunks, Jordan Wood, Heidi Yardley. Nigredo showcases a diverse collection of artists engaging in a dialogue with the curatorial premise of the Alchemical Nigredo-decomposition or putrefaction- opens the Thursday before Halloween. Nigredo is evocative of melancholy, chaos, the shadow and the dark night of the soul. The notion of the Nigredo has haunted us from when we first began to fear the darkness of night: from Shakespeare’s sonnets despairing of “the ghastly night” to the ominous, black liquid of Jonathan Glazer’s film Under The Skin, or the alluring shadows of The Death Room at MONA. In Western alchemy, black is the first of the four colours used within the alchemical process of creating the Philosopher’s Stone and is produced through the heating up and cooking of different forms of matter, which then transmutes into a uniform black substance. Carl Jung paralleled Nigredo to the unconscious and the psychology of Transference. French philosopher Gilbert Simondon theorised Nigredo in relation to duality and the transformative processes that enable new beginnings and the convergence between the binaries of life and death, male and female, past and present, and the machine and bodily. Nigredo consists of 20 artists, comprising of 9 female, Indigenous, Transgender and emerging and midcareer artists working across the disciplines of fashion, sculpture, kinetic sculpture, photography, video, drawing, performance, and painting.
Text - Bon Mott and Katie Paine
Shape Shifter
shifts and slips in meaning. movement, change – shape shifter. an arrangement that nods to the past.
transformation can occur with subtle gestures. civilised - tamed and balanced. unity - geometry. I can’t see the
future. an equation of sorts - dualities. a duel. the past informs the present. mind, matter, motion.
Rebecca Delange 2016
shifts and slips in meaning. movement, change – shape shifter. an arrangement that nods to the past.
transformation can occur with subtle gestures. civilised - tamed and balanced. unity - geometry. I can’t see the
future. an equation of sorts - dualities. a duel. the past informs the present. mind, matter, motion.
Rebecca Delange 2016
