Bleak House: Desolate Work Inspires Existential Angst
words by Phil Brown for Brisbane News
Walking into the gallery space at Metro Arts in the city, the first thing you’ll ask yourself is, “Where is the exhibition?” Look around the somewhat derelict space and you’ll notice leaves on the ground and old paint cans beside a wall. There’s an eerie sense of vacancy.
If that’s the case, artist Jarrod Van Der Ryken will be happy and feel he has succeeded - that his installation exhibition, Empty Places/With Suspicion, has hit the mark.
He will be even happier if curiosity gets the better of you and you peer through the window of the room he has built in the middle of the gallery. That’s the idea.
On the show’s opening night, he added spice to his unusual artwork by putting a sleeping figure on a mattress in the room. The figure could be just made out in the dull glow from a television set.
For the duration of the show, the room will be dark and you’ll have to acclimatize before you can make anything out. Not that there is much to make out.
When Jarrod, 24, who is in the sixth year of a three-year visual arts degree at QUT (we agree there’s no hurry), outlined his proposal for an exhibition, he was clear about what he envisaged.
“Two external walls and the ceiling of a decrepit house will be reconstructed to form an enclosed space with the existing walls of the gallery. The found walls will be built of water-stained and decaying timer paneling and will have windows through which the viewer can see inside the space.
The windows will be constructed of dirtied glass and will be partially obstructed by decaying fabric curtains,” he says.
“The space will not be accessible during any of the scheduled events throughout the exhibition.
The viewer will only engage with the space by peering through the patricianly obstructed windows. The inside of the space will be darkened and mostly empty, except for a few items of furniture.”
Welcome to the world of the ‘inferior designer’. If it feels desolate, it’s meant to. If it makes you ask questions about what is art, that’s good, because it’s meant to.
Jarrod has put a lot of work into this dour installation. The room was prefabricated at his Archerfield warehouse studio, but he erected it inside the gallery himself. He says this was the hardest he has ever worked on a piece of art.
He shows me around the work like a sort of anti-real estate agent, pointing out the grotty highlights, including the leaves he has collected - the sort of leaves that would congregate at an unused, unloved property.
“Don’t be afraid to walk on the leaves,” he says rather encouragingly. So I wade into them and peer through the window at the nothingness inside. I feel like I’m in an episode of the series Life After People, which imagines a world in which the human race has disappeared after an apocalypse or some other catastrophe.
What is left would become dilapidated, much like Jarrod’s artwork, which he says he hopes will create for the viewer “a sense of existential belittlement”. Thanks for that.
In a catalogue essay, fellow artist Ruth McConchie muses on ways of appropriating art. She suggests there’s a hierarchy on how to behave walking into a gallery space.
“Sometimes it feels like that turns into a trajectory of how we are supposed to experience art… you have to see it a certain way or you don’t get it.” McConchie writes. “It’s better if the experience is as flexible as possible, you can succumb to a special kind of confusion.”
And that may be your experience of this exhibition. If you’re confused, relax and go with it. Kick at the leaves, peer through the window, enjoy.
words by Phil Brown for Brisbane News
Walking into the gallery space at Metro Arts in the city, the first thing you’ll ask yourself is, “Where is the exhibition?” Look around the somewhat derelict space and you’ll notice leaves on the ground and old paint cans beside a wall. There’s an eerie sense of vacancy.
If that’s the case, artist Jarrod Van Der Ryken will be happy and feel he has succeeded - that his installation exhibition, Empty Places/With Suspicion, has hit the mark.
He will be even happier if curiosity gets the better of you and you peer through the window of the room he has built in the middle of the gallery. That’s the idea.
On the show’s opening night, he added spice to his unusual artwork by putting a sleeping figure on a mattress in the room. The figure could be just made out in the dull glow from a television set.
For the duration of the show, the room will be dark and you’ll have to acclimatize before you can make anything out. Not that there is much to make out.
When Jarrod, 24, who is in the sixth year of a three-year visual arts degree at QUT (we agree there’s no hurry), outlined his proposal for an exhibition, he was clear about what he envisaged.
“Two external walls and the ceiling of a decrepit house will be reconstructed to form an enclosed space with the existing walls of the gallery. The found walls will be built of water-stained and decaying timer paneling and will have windows through which the viewer can see inside the space.
The windows will be constructed of dirtied glass and will be partially obstructed by decaying fabric curtains,” he says.
“The space will not be accessible during any of the scheduled events throughout the exhibition.
The viewer will only engage with the space by peering through the patricianly obstructed windows. The inside of the space will be darkened and mostly empty, except for a few items of furniture.”
Welcome to the world of the ‘inferior designer’. If it feels desolate, it’s meant to. If it makes you ask questions about what is art, that’s good, because it’s meant to.
Jarrod has put a lot of work into this dour installation. The room was prefabricated at his Archerfield warehouse studio, but he erected it inside the gallery himself. He says this was the hardest he has ever worked on a piece of art.
He shows me around the work like a sort of anti-real estate agent, pointing out the grotty highlights, including the leaves he has collected - the sort of leaves that would congregate at an unused, unloved property.
“Don’t be afraid to walk on the leaves,” he says rather encouragingly. So I wade into them and peer through the window at the nothingness inside. I feel like I’m in an episode of the series Life After People, which imagines a world in which the human race has disappeared after an apocalypse or some other catastrophe.
What is left would become dilapidated, much like Jarrod’s artwork, which he says he hopes will create for the viewer “a sense of existential belittlement”. Thanks for that.
In a catalogue essay, fellow artist Ruth McConchie muses on ways of appropriating art. She suggests there’s a hierarchy on how to behave walking into a gallery space.
“Sometimes it feels like that turns into a trajectory of how we are supposed to experience art… you have to see it a certain way or you don’t get it.” McConchie writes. “It’s better if the experience is as flexible as possible, you can succumb to a special kind of confusion.”
And that may be your experience of this exhibition. If you’re confused, relax and go with it. Kick at the leaves, peer through the window, enjoy.