In this exhibition, a central premise developed by physicist Werner Heisenberg is adopted as a metaphor for art practice. The Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to specify the exact position and momentum of a particle of matter at the same time. For each of the practitioners in this exhibition, staff from the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, the art produced ties in with their larger research and draws attention to the experimentation integral to creative practice. Caren Florance says, “Our common ground is an interest in materiality.”
Ross Gibson uses art as a way into the spaces of meaning. His video Muttering Ovoid, 2018, reveals the ambiguity inherent in visual sequences and creates a structure around many possible readings within a framework of uncertainty.
The laminate top of a family table has curled into a form akin to a large cinnamon stick. She describes it as “a crucible or a coffin,” the work speaks of death as “a sense of pressure released, and the unknowns… why or how or even where you go”. Katie Hayne and UK Frederick worked together to create Flat Impressions, 2018, an assembly of fragments of place from soon-to-be demolished flats in Canberra. Plants grown from cuttings from this place and clay casts of walls reflect on the past and the future.
Artists in digital media, photography, painting, artist books, poetic films, and textiles come together under this exhibition banner to debate a relationship between certainty and uncertainty, knowledge and incomprehension.
The Uncertainty Principle
Australian National Capital Artists (ANCA) Gallery
29 August—16 September
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