Join Yona Lee and Lilian Steiner in conversation with Mark Feary and Amelia Winata, followed by opening celebrations on the first day of the artists’ concurrent solo exhibitions at Gertrude Contemporary.
Yona Lee’s exhibition, Wall, floor and ceiling is a new ensemble of sculptural works developed by the South Korean-born, Aotearoa-based artist. The artist is known for her site-responsive stainless-steel sculptures and installations that question notions of place and transit, migration and belonging, public realm and private space.
It could be suggested that her project for Gertrude riffs on the oft noted quote of revered Swiss architect Le Corbusier – ‘A house is a machine for living in’. Wall, floor and ceiling takes form as a reductive presentation of three distinct sculptural works, one presented on the wall, one on the floor and one affixed to the ceiling. These forms play with the notion of functionality familiar within Lee’s practice, exalting seemingly commonplace forms within domestic or industrial environments and rendering their functionality almost perfunctory. Of importance to the artist is a questioning as to how objects within a space may create their own interactions between each component, and the spaces in which they are presented.
Widely regarded and respected as one of the most innovative dancers and choreographers of her generation, Lilian Steiner has increasingly incorporated the language and influence of contemporary visual arts into her practice. Flesh and Diamonds expands her methodology of working and consolidates its embrace of the potential beyond performance spaces. As a discipline, dancers are frequently led by choreographic instruction, often refined in collaboration and almost invariably performed in close proximity. As a form of transferred embodiment, dancers readily engage and inhabit the movement pathways and musical dynamics from the bodies and capabilities of dancers before them.
For this first durational gallery project by Steiner, this acknowledgement of embodied transference is brought into focus as a form of homage. Manifesting as a series of 3D printed objects, developed through an ongoing collaboration with designer and 3D animator, Patrick Hamilton, the sculptural forms offer distilled yet abstracted portraits of some of the many collaborators and influences that inform her practice and shape her work.
Gertrude Contemporary
21-31 High St, Preston VIC 3072, Australia