Collective Breath
22 July 2023 - 24 September 2023
Curator:
Artist(s): Nikhil James Arlo, Phoebe Kelly, and Chloe Arnott
Location: The Atrium
This exhibition explores the synergy and transference of breath between body, material and architecture. Through these exchanges of energy and the embodiment of alchemy—the processes of changing atmosphere and elements into something else pure—is regarded by the artists as a Collective Breath and the exhibition itself as a living vehicle for this exchange.
Utilising the conductivity of copper, artists Nikhil James Arlo and Phoebe Kelly have etched flame-like and gestural markings to charge the metal with the memory of touch. The copper sheets have been embraced by the artists family and loved one’s bodies. Each person was instructed to take a single breath, leaving a physical or somatic relief. This breath becomes solidified when the copper plates are treated in baths of chemicals and acids, following traditional etching processes. Rather than being printed on paper the copper itself becomes a sculptural form. Suspended in the Atrium, the copper objects appear as the lungs of the room, with connected copper tubing forming tracheas that extend from the architecture.
The genesis of this exhibition also draws inspiration from the previous uses of the architecture of the gallery. Functioning as the Essendon Incinerator from 1929-42, the rear building was designed to burn waste. The resultant heat of the burning reverberators was harnessed in the front building to power steam kettles that sterilised hospital equipment and bed linen. Bitumen boilers ran all day long, thereby transforming waste into energy.
In medieval alchemy, the notion of transmutation was the magical change of one state of energy or matter into another form. Such as from lead into gold or—as this artwork suggests—from breath to copper.
Dancer Chloe Arnott will activate the space with gestures of holistic resonance. Cycles of generation in the body will transpire, as movement and breath hum in a visceral exchange to one another and in response to the plexus of copper plates.
The dancer and artists envisage this recording of bodies as an alchemical transference of energy, shared with the audience as a collective and continuous breath.
Participants:
Patrick, David, Alex, Jacinta, Peter, Chloe, Nikhil, Phoebe, Ingrid, Tabitha, Ollie, Janni, Tay, Liv, and Jess.
The opening night will be held on Friday, 21 July, from 6pm at Incinerator Gallery alongside exhibitions Lomiga Lua: i Luga ‘o le Moana (Issue Two: Over the Ocean): Leitu Bonnici and Alt/Text
Nikhil James Arlo
Nikhil James Arlo is an Anglo-Indian artist based in Naarm. Working through sculpture, photography and performance, they explore relationships between, place, object and body, and the intra-action of these elements, or forces. In a chosen site, they seek out histories and functionality to host these traces and implicit presences. Through this they amplify and channel the situational site to explore their energy, identity and sense of dimensionality.
Phoebe Kelly
Phoebe Kelly is a visual artist and photographer living and working in Naarm. Through photography and sculpture, she explores the potential to translate the intangible into the physical through experimenting with various ways in which memory and time might be documented or captured through material forms. She has exhibited locally across Melbourne and Australia and also works professionally as an arts worker.
Chloe Arnott
Chloe Arnott is a movement-based artist living and performing in Naarm. She has worked locally and abroad with artists including Sandra Parker, Stuart Shugg, Russell Dumas, Phoebe Robinson, Linda Sastradipradja and Oliver Savariego. The physicality of her practice is heavily underpinned by her interest in somatic practices and studies in holistic health, responding to and with the shifting potentials of the body and exogenous fluctuations that influence our waking form.
Live performances will take place in the Atrium by Chloe Arnott, activating the space with movement and gestures of holistic resonance on the following dates:
- Friday, 21 July, from 7pm
- Saturday 26th August from 12pm
- Saturday 23rd September from 2pm