Dysfunctional Pleasures
9 October – 1 November 2021
There can be a perverse pleasure to be had from objects that refuse to perform to expectation: a broom that lacks the structural integrity to sweep, or even to support itself; a rocking chair arrested at the foremost point of its trajectory; a glossy magazine image whose thinly concealed commercial imperative is turned in on itself. The 3 artists exhibiting together in Dysfunctional Pleasures each work with the found object, applying various approaches and procedures that playfully transform our relationship to the original. Objects are released from prosaic utilitarianism by strategies that open up their latent significations, allowing new associations to emerge and develop.
Ty Locke employs processes of absurd defamiliarization, enabling us to see objects anew. Preferring to work on exhibition installs in an improvisatory manner with materials gleaned from his surroundings, Ty has produced 2 new works on-site: a garden fork has been rendered perfectly useless by having its tines sectioned and fashioned into elegant tendrils; and in the portmanteau, Spork, another example of the same implement achieves a rapprochement with a spade, now seeming to shake hands with its toolshed rival. Ty also shows a number of works from his back catalogue, including the structurally compromised, Floppy Tennis Racket.
Daniella Pink‘s sculptures are almost choreographic in the way they extend the rhythms of the objects she chooses into the surrounding space. Working with homely objects that disclose by their surfaces the histories of their prior use, Daniella recombines the elements or her sculptures, building an evolving relationship with their constituent parts. Her Chaise, a simple wooden chair whose back legs have been augmented with the gentle curves of two rusted saw blades, is both supported and constrained by these additions. Having unseated its occupant in a lurch forward, its own human characteristics come to the fore, and Chaise remains poised in an attitude of continuous supplication.
Joseph Cartwright works with the photographic image both as the producer of unique originals and as a manipulator of mass produced and mass circulation imagery. For some years Joseph has been working with material derived, among other sources, from colour supplement magazines, folding these in on themselves to produce uncanny montage-like effects. Many of Joseph’s manipulations are posted to digital media platforms where they retain a slightly incongruous old-world quality, like the crumpled issue of a badly maintained office photocopier. For Dysfunctional Pleasures, Joseph presents a selection of these as Disruptors #1-13, amplifying their physicality by displaying each in its own collapsible archival box.
Gallery DODO 