Provision Manifesto
Text for Provision Manifest!
Cathedral Cabinet, 2024.
Provision Manifest! installation view, Cathedral Cabinet, 2023.
Photo courtesy of Cathedral Cabinet.
Photo courtesy of Cathedral Cabinet.
There is something uncomfortable here. You can’t distinguish it through sight, taste, or smell, but there is an overarching abject sensation that can’t be ignored, a type of aesthetic displacement that contradicts the nature of the space. As you sit and wait, you slowly drift into a dissociative state, the cold breeze dances across your skin developing goosebumps on the back of your neck drawing you back into reality. It smells like bread, and wine, and coffee. The amalgamation of these comforts-cum-turnoffs, is softened through the shuffling of shoes, the clanking of glassware and the jarring laughter that rises from murmurs of conversation. The sounds accumulate, not climaxing at a crescendo, but layering with intensity until they meld together to form one sustained indistinguishable sound. Sitting at a wobbly table, you are served prawns drowning in butter with tiny scorched tomatoes, while you were really craving a cauliflower with ashed ancho pepper and some mole thing. You wouldn’t say this is an opulent experience, instead, it seems quite hedonistic (in a licking melted butter dripping down your arm kind of way). While fumbling for your fork you stare at the Commercial Palazzo’s ceiling–stained glass and leadlights form a highly detailed arch leading to a central dome. The basilica-esque ceiling is contrasted by the ceramic tiled floor and detailed wood-panelled shopfronts.
The arcade has become a cherished haunt for creative types and those in their orbit, serving as a place for communion and philosophical debate. Disassociating mid-bite, your gaze is affronted by the tradesperson purchasing a footlong, half obscured by the green and yellow “Eat Fresh” decal in the window opposite you. Searching for a reprieve from advertising your eyes drift to the couple seated next to the slogan, they’re drinking pét nat’s while discussing sincerity, affective states and modernist concepts. As you eavesdrop, they reference the artworks hanging in the glass cabinet. You turn your head to the right–the circular hang of small works in sight. You agree.
The works seem connected through a sincere sensibility, an earnest curiosity to work with and through the material and place faith in the process. Layers of textiles are abstracted through the repetition of lines while images are distorted through the movement of curves and light. Found plastics such as polyurethane and polystyrene are recontextualised with dust fragments and hastily painted primary colours to accentuate the material's texture and resilience to time. Collages of confectionery, kawaii cat stickers and pulped paper all suggest a kind of consumption and transformation–eating and regurgitating hyper fixations of ordinary commodities. Amongst the layers are paintings, uncanny depictions of Scheurich pottery and ethereal premonitions of spiritual visions. You can’t quite locate your position, you aren’t looking into another world but it is otherworldly, eliciting the paranoia of someone watching you, watching it. There seems to be an oscillation between materials, a dialogue that garners a harmony of tensions, an electric friction of sorts which holds the works together suspended mid-conversation.
You find it difficult to identify a politic, an anchoring point, or an argument among the works. Resisting any form of rumination their relation to the arcade seems fitting, calling attention to the paradoxical nature and history of the white collar-cum-artistic community building. The union of works and their slippages in form and materials challenge the liminality of the arcade and ask you to be still and present. You’ve finished your buttery prawns, the temperature has shifted and you just heard someone knock their pét nat off a wobbly table.
ARTISTS: Charlotte Armstrong, Tarquin Charlesworth, Sueann Chen, Abella D’adamo, Britt d’Argville, Edie Duffy, Jieun Ha, Hattie Hester, Helen Hughes, Jennifer Hunt, Clara Joyce, Margarita Kontev, Josh Krum, Pip Lennon, Anais Lesage Baker, Aden Miller, Loqui Paatsch, Koastas Pavlidis, Teagan Ramsay, Lilly Skipper, Kristina Tsoulis, Daniel von Sturmer and Annie Wallwork