Collect + Combine

Curated by siblings Lucinda and Kirilly Barnett, COLLECT + COMBINE is an investigation into the phenomenon of collection and hoarding – of tangible objects and of memories. Four young female artists with backgrounds in photography, architecture, graphic design and drawing have contributed new works that unify the ideas of collection and combination within their respective artistic fields. Students and artists Tacy Lowe and Scarlett Mellows, together with the Barnett sisters, have contributed the works that make up the collection.

The exhibition consists of a photographic series, collage, digital prints and installations. The figurative collage work by Lucinda Barnett is colourful and effervescent and the use of book record slips as flesh lends a note of whimsy to this element of the exhibition. The collage division is youthful – perhaps too youthful to make an impact of unequivocal depth but the figures (for example picnicking girls in indiscriminate brogues and plain dresses) have the sort of unidentifiable charm that wouldn’t look out of place on an art student’s bedroom wall.

Opposite the collages, Scarlett Mellows’ series of painted animal skulls hang face-out. The skulls are brightly painted in the styles that reflect their own personal mythology (when alive) and the original donors vary wildly in size, from the large Water Buffalo to the mid-sized Coyote and tiny Blue-Tongued Lizard. Their vivid colour and celebration of the transient nature of life are a stark contrast to the twee figures reposing opposite them, and are of a different, more aggressive note than the rest of the exhibition.

Tacy Lowe’s digital print series Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known is a collection of single word statements in block shades of soothing pastels. The words are bundled to form the above-mentioned quote from Chuck Palahniuk’s 1990 novel, Invisible Monsters. Coming from a graphic design background, Lowe’s interests are meaning and typography, and through the characteristics of the typefaces and varying colours the multi-part work has taken on traits which would be voided by a monochromatic palette and singular use of font.

Kirilly Barnett’s photographic element of the show is a study of internal private spaces such as bathrooms and bedrooms. An architecture student, Barnett has an interest in the private, flawed spaces of buildings – not the ‘the perfect architectural hero-shot of a building’. The hazy quality of the works reiterates the feeling of nostalgia that permeates the whole collection, excluding of course, the vivacity of Mellows’ painted skulls. The skull-installation is both attractive and successful yet its dynamism disrupts the unity of the show as a collective.

Conversely, as the exhibition is an exploration of individual collection and experience, perhaps the works’ aura could stand to be a further differentiated from its neighbours. The subject matter(s) depicted, though personal, are lacking in a true consideration of what impels us to hoard and collect – traits that continue to be on the rise as commodification becomes increasingly prevalent.

COLLECT + COMBINE
Curated by Kirilly Barnett & Lucinda Barnett
Artists: Lucinda Barnett; Kirilly Barnett; Tacy Lowe; Scarlett Mellows

No No Gallery, North Melbourne
September 15 – October 1