NADINE CHRISTENSEN, SAM JINKS, BRICE RITCHIE/ALESSANDRA ZEKA, PAUL SLOAN, RONNIE VAN HOUT

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH
–

Main gallery

Catalogue text by Ole Jørgen Ness and Angus Backburn

Presented as a project of the UKS Oslo Biennial — which took place at a number of places around the globe simultaneously, including Oslo, Hong Kong, Yokohama and Melbourne — Ignorance is an Empty Space brought together the work of Norwegian artist Ole Jorgen Ness and Melbourne artist Angus Blackburn. With macro and micro proportions, and a disorienting sense of scale, Ness and Blackburn’s room-scale video and sculptural diorama created a bio-physical landscape with a search for the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger as its point of departure. If navigating the work was akin to a walk through the forest, the discursive journey followed in the footsteps of colonists - listening for the echo of Gondwanaland, and critically gazing on the ‘civilising’ enterprise of the natural history museum and its contemporary scientific and consumerist progeny.

Presented as part of the 2001 UKS Biennial, Supported By UKS Gallery, Oslo, Powerstation and Corporate Initiatives