Canberra, Tuesday 22 January 2002
ATTENTION ARTS WRITERS
Icon Interior: Howard Arkley & Juan Davila
The Honourable Mr Bill Wood, ACT Minister for the Arts, will launch the
Drill Hall Gallery's 2002 program by opening the exhibition, Icon Interior:
Howard Arkley & Juan Davila, on Thursday 7 February 2002 at 6pm. Icon
Interior will be presented with other collaborative works by the two artists,
on loan from Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art.
The installation, Icon Interior, is the outcome of a decade of fruitful
collaboration between Arkley and Davila. United by their interest in pop
culture and kitsch, and their status as major Australian artists over
the past 25 years, Chilean-born Juan Davila and the late Howard Arkley
have created an interior space which is both playful and provocative.
Juan Davila, based in Melbourne since 1974, has a reputation as an iconoclast,
thanks to the controversial content of his work. Howard Arkley became
fascinated with notions of suburban bliss and the domestic interior; his
untimely death in July 1999 makes, Icon Interior, a poignant memorial.
Icon Interior was initiated in 1994 following earlier collaborations
between the two artists. The installation is constructed as a set of screens
and cut-out furnishings which adorn the interior. Central to the installation
is the canvas, Icon Head, painted by Arkley and "ruined" at
his request by Davila.
Whereas Arkley questions modern popular culture by wholly embracing kitsch
and pop with his stencilled lace-work, wood-grain and patterned Benday
dots, Davila starkly challenges such modernist imagery by introducing
his own "foreign" decoration and offering an aesthetic alternative
to contest the hegemony of European modernism. The visual play between
the artistic styles and content of Davila and Arkley is echoed in the
installation by the relationship between flat and three-dimensional objects
and illusionary and real space.
This exhibition is part of the Drill Hall Gallery's program on Latin
American art in 2002, supporting the ANU Humanities Research Centre's
focus on Latin America this year. The Gallery will present a series of
major exhibitions by Latin American artists during 2002, including a solo
exhibition by Juan Davila in September.
The Drill Hall Gallery is located on Kingsley Street (off Barry
Drive) ANU, and is open Wednesday to Sunday from 12 noon to 5pm. Admission
is free. For photographs of the works in this exhibition and further information,
please contact Tony Oates, Exhibitions Officer on (02) 6125 5832.
08/2002
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The Australian National University.
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Last Modified Tue, July 16, 2002
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