2009 - Colliding Worlds
Colliding Worlds: Pia Borg, Nicholas Folland, Hayden Fowler, Shaun Kirby, Patricia Piccinini and Anna Platten / 15 May – 24 July 2009
Image: Colliding Worlds, 2009, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sam Noonan.
Colliding Worlds is an allegory of modern times, where 'difference' and the unavoidable collision of competing ideas and values threaten the natural order.
The works in Colliding Worlds feature very different mediums – sculpture, animation, new-media, painting and installation – and works by leading Samstag alumni Pia Borg, Nicholas Folland, Hayden Fowler and Shaun Kirby as well as Patricia Piccinini and Anna Platten.
The exhibition is a feature event of the 2009 Come Out Festival program, whose overall theme – Colliding Worlds – is inspired by a 1932 science fiction novel by Philip Wylie (When Worlds Collide) which tells the story of two fictional rogue planets that enter our solar system and cause catastrophic damage and the end of civilisation.
'It is a great pleasure to introduce the Colliding Worlds exhibition.
As a physical chemist I deal with colliding worlds every single day. Molecules and small particles collide all of the time, building new structures, many of which are truly beautiful.
Art and Science are very closely linked. Consider the briefing on this Exhibition, where you are told that "understanding is stretched and any comfort zone challenged". This captures the very essence of real scientific discovery and is what has stimulated Pia, Nicholas, Hayden, Shaun, Patricia and Anna, the truly wonderful artists whose work you will view in UniSA's marvellous Samstag Museum of Art.
Rita Levi Montalcini , the famous Italian neurologist and Nobel Laureate [1986, for discovering nerve growth factor] said: "I do not believe that there would be any science at all without intuition."
The same could be said of ART.
But I think that it is William Wordsworth who captures the essence of the matter in his 1798 poem The Tables Turned with "Enough of Science and of Art; Close up these barren leaves; Come forth and bring with you a heart That watches and receives."
May I ask you to do the same: bring with you a heart that watches and receives at this exhibition.'
Colliding Worlds exhibition (YouTube video)
Image: Nicholas Folland, floe, 2009, found glass, nylon, dimensions variable (approx 130 x 480 x 190 cm). Courtesy the artist and Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide. Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Michael Kluvanek.
Image: Patricia Piccinini, Game Boys Advanced, 2002, silicone, polyurethane, clothing, human hair, hand-held video game, life size, 140 x 75 x 36 cm. Courtesy of the Michael Buxton Collection, Melbourne. Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sam Noonan.
Image: Anna Platten, The Journey (series), 2008, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sam Noonan.
Image: Colliding Worlds, 2009, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Sam Noonan.
