2018 | Obsessive Impulsion | Canberra Contemporary Art Space  |  Gormon Arts Centre | 27 April to 23 Jun 2018

Obsessive Impulsion curated by David Broker, featuring Jodie Cunningham, Michele England, U.K. Frederick, Ann McMahon, Suzanne Moss

Impulsion is a driving force; the impetus, the motive or influence behind an action or process. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition that focuses on desire as it is revealed through the methodologies of five diverse artists. In both concept and technique, each practice reflects an obsessive flamboyance that drives the artists to produce work with an appearance of excess and yet, such are the skills at large, there is no sense of overreach. Jodie Cunningham confesses to being a “chromophile” with an obsession for colour, circles, pattern and “the delights of Perspex”. U.K. Frederick delights in the tensions created between flannel shirts that might have been worn by Kurt Cobain and the abstracted light passing through the fabric in her evocative series of photograms. In the dextrous hands of Ann McMahon, recycled bread bags index domestic ritual through complex colour field weaves that mirror the grid of a thirty-one day calendar. Alarmed at inexorable environmental degradation, Michele England blends activism with domesticity in eccentric works where kitsch household objects carry the “great moral challenge” that faces the planet. Suzanne Moss’s commanding paintings underscore an essentially egalitarian approach to notions of creativity, which she sees as an inestimable force that might seize the author at any moment. Painting, gardening, cooking, doing repairs, for instance, all inspire moments of creativity. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition in which each of the artists presents work based on personal obsessions and we, the audience, are able to follow the lengthy, painstaking processes through which they come to realise their ideas.

Text: David Broker CCAS Website