exhibitions

EMMA GALLAGHER, CHRISTOPHER LG HILL, KAIN PICKEN

KNOCKED UP

Knocked Up was the result of a collaborative installation from three young artists, who engaged both personal and political concerns using materials and products derived from consumer culture. Having previously been involved with successful collaborative projects such as Fort (Next Wave Festival 2004) and Boltz vs Voltz (Seventh Gallery 2003), each artist brought their work into the gallery space, and then installed, reworked and remixed it in collaboration with the others, thus synthesisng three distinct solo practices into an organic, energetic whole. Kain Picken’s work recontextualised the cultural power and desire inherent in consumerism, and created ambiguity around everyday consumer rituals, and a dialogue between resistance and desirable power: thus referencing a cultural sensibility forever in check with itself. Emma Gallagher’s work created a utopian design world by translating the artist’s own aesthetic desires into objects. Despite an appearance of functionality, Gallagher’s objects proved resolutely un-utilitarian, and explored the problematic practices of consuming and collecting. Christopher LG Hill further examined this concept, by creating his own parallel take on personal “gain” through his interest in the ornate. Hill created a reverberation between the absurd and the natural, in seamlessly converging two worlds and creating pure, unconstrained, cathartic decoration. Knocked Up developed as a continuation of each artist’s individual practice, as well as an exciting collaboration which further investigated their collective material and conceptual concerns.