Opposite Page: Recording studio from Transmission, 2012
of the ongoing interests expressed within his practice, such as an engagement with notions of the public or private realm and themes of concealment, revelation and desire, are evident in this new work. In Transmission the participants remain anonymous, concealed from view. Similarly The Gift and the Curse consisted of portraits of young men in moments of intimate relaxation or sexual expression, but their genitalia was covered by splashes of black paint, applied by the artist directly onto the surface of the print. In the case of both Transmission and The Gift and the Curse the subjects of the works are simultaneously protected and corralled by Pettifer’s actions.
Private Lights
Drew Pettifer, Transmission Alone in a private, interior setting, a man masturbates to the point of orgasm and this moment is recorded. The sound from each of these little deaths was then adapted and the intimate audio field recordings configured into a synaesthetic movement, a score that plays out in light, across a collection of lamps in Craft Victoria’s Gallery 3. This is the pattern that illuminates the Edison globes within Drew Pettifer’s work Transmission, the artist’s first exclusively object-based and sculptural project. Each lamp is rendered in black monochrome, its surface running with poured plaster, silicone and enamel paint. These solitary objects, much like their concealed collaborators, are positioned in isolation rather than in groups or pairs. The surface treatment, although consistent across the gathering, is irregular, individual and reminiscent of the dripping, paint splattered surfaces of the portraits in Pettifer’s recent photographic project The Gift and the Curse ( 2011). Although object making is, to a certain degree, new territory for Pettifer, the concerns of his archive of photographic works resonate in Transmission. Many
Melbourne based artist and writer Kate Just described the performative act of concealment in The Gift and the Curse as a ‘form of territorial marking that approximates tar-black, congealed semen stains…[and] alerts us to the men’s liquid primacy, while seemingly threatening them with encroaching age, impotency, disease or death’.1 Transmission, by its material qualities, its colour, liquidness and its moniker, similarly shares this sense of fecundity combined with putrefaction. The tungsten bulb in each lamp flickers with life, while the fluid blackness of its surface provides a visceral counterpoint to this pulsating light. Writer and lecturer Daniel Palmer has also described Pettifer’s photography as ‘part of a recent history of intimate photography made by ‘insiders’’.2 This history is evidenced by works produced by American artists Nan Goldin and Larry Clark and locally bears immediate comparison to works by William Yang, Carol Jerrems and Lyndal Walker. Pettifer shares with each of these artists an exploration of contemporaneous culture, documenting intimate social moments and exploring notions of identity and sexuality. Pettifer’s subjects are often privileged in some way, through partial concealment or
anonymity, but they are also mediated through materials and the filter of the desiring lens or context. Despite remaining sculptural, Transmission, like Pettifer’s previous photographic works, distills the event or subject: the sound, into the twinned concepts of duration and light. The project fleshed out in distinct materials, with interior-scaled objects, electrical cords, enamel paint, plaster and silicone, also conveys a sense of loss and renewal, a study of a life cycle. This investigation and representation of the life cycle is becoming evident more broadly across the codex of the artist’s work and practice. As in past projects, themes of accumulation, depletion and replenishment recur in Transmission, through the intermittent pulsing of the synaesthetic object. A sound recording is transmuted into a fluid and transitory message that flickers across synapses. In many ways we are further removed from the actual human body and its emissions that remain the focus or impetus of this work. Instead we are given a new material body to consider, an abstract sculptural form that is a stand-in for its more fragile human counterpart. © Meredith Turnbull, 2012 Meredith Turnbull is a Melbourne based artist, curator and writer. She is currently a teaching associate in Theory of Art and Design at Monash University and Art History and Theory at RMIT. Meredith is a current PhD candidate in Fine Art in the Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University. 1 K ate Just, ‘The Gift and the Curse’ in Drew Pettifer: The Gift and the Curse, RMIT School of Art Gallery, RMIT University, 2011, exhibited at RMIT School of Art Gallery and West Space’s The West Wing in 2011. 2 Daniel Palmer writes in the foreword to Drew Pettifer, I Keep Mine Hidden, M33, Balaclava, 2011. Palmer is a lecturer in Art Theory in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University.
This Page: (clockwise from right) Detail from Untitled (Lamp), 2012 FerroWatt electric bulb from Untitled (Lamp), 2012 Sound-to-light hardware from Untitled (Lamp), 2012 Outside Page: Untitled (Lamp) Dimensions variable Wood, silicon, plaster, plastic, enamel paint and mixed media, 2012
All images © Drew Pettifer, 2012
First published for the exhibition
Drew Pettifer
Transmission
9th March-21st April 2012 Opening 6- 8pm 8th March Artist talk 2pm Saturday 24th March All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, recording or any information retrieval system) without permission from the publisher. © 2012 the artist ISBN: 978-0-9872191-1-4 Drew Pettifer would like to thank Benjamin Creek, Meredith Turnbull, Marcin Wojcik, Rohan Bevan, Geoffrey O’Connor, Scott Mitchell, Matthew Blair, Kate Rhodes, Nella Themelios, Jared Davis, Daniel Palmer, Meyers Place Bar, Mance Design, Tessa Hildebrand-Burke, Justin O’Connor, Tony Garifalakis, Warwick Baker, Sarah Bunting, his models and the staff at Craft Victoria. Catalogue design: Sarah Bunting
CRAFT VICTORIA 31 Flinders Lane Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia T + 61 3 9650 7775 E craftvic @ craftvic.org.au W www.craftvic.org.au
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Drew Pettifer
Transmission Craft Victoria 9th March-21st April 2012