DAMIANO BERTOLI, PETER BURKE, ROBERT MANGION, DAVID THOMAS

Unfinished: Décor

Curated by Peter Burke + Robert Mangion

Unfinished: Décor is an ongoing project experimenting with spatial, material, temporal and narrative structures drawn out of historic conceptual-art contexts. The project resists the traditional boundaries that govern artistic presentation and actively seeks to emphasise porosity, precariousness and doubt as strategies for reflection.

Robert Mangion and Peter Burke invited artists Damiano Bertoli and David Thomas to respond to the notion of the unfinished in art. Together they trace connections between individual work processes that engage with notions of the unfinished, dealing with the indefinite postponement of closure and making inaccessible the object of certainty. The artists attempt to establish contexts by which the art object cannot be edified or concluded. Instead, there is a bid to establish deeper ontological structures through which artworks are revealed.

Unfinished: Décor draws upon the last work by Marcel Broodthaers entitled Décor: A Conquest (1974). Broodthaers’ exhibition was spread over two rooms and formed a temporary structure that framed the artworks as objects in a precarious way. Contemplation of his installation opens various conceptual dialogues for a renewed approach in Unfinished: Décor. It expands on art’s tactile engagement with the gallery as non-space, the proximity to past and present temporal modes of presentation, the tautness between subject and object interactions, and a post-medium shift to a performative ontology as art practice. Unfinished: Décor develops a curatorial structure from this set of ideas, locating notions of contemporaneity from the passive notion of ‘being in time’ to an active notion of temporal disjunction.

UNFINISHED: FOAM PLACE ROBERT MANGION AND PETER BURKE

Performance Lecture | Friday 4 October, 6:30-7:00pm

On the opening night of the exhibition Unfinished: Décor, Robert Mangion and Peter Burke will present the performance lecture Unfinished: Foam Place. More than a curatorial floor talk, it is a sublimated appraisal, thawing the boundaries between creating, forming and experiencing art, giving way to loose associations and institutional mutations. Listen and follow the artists as they attempt to establish contexts by which the artwork cannot be edified or concluded. Think porous, not staged and certainly not completed. Audience participation encouraged, maybe.

Duration: 30 minutes, approximately.  

davidthomasartist.com.au
neonparc.com.au/artists/damiano-bertoli
peterburke.com.au
robertmangion.com