Exhibition Opening: December 5th, 2024, 7 pm
Opening Hours:
December 6th – December 20th,
Wednesday – Friday, 3 – 6 pm,
or individual appointments (closed on public holidays)
In some cultures, it is not just humans who carry a spirit or soul. Objects, too, can maintain such qualities. In November 2019, one-hundred-and-four stowaways, simplistic Russian educational robots, boarded a container ship in the Chinese port city of Shantou. For three weeks, they sat in darkness, their only certainty a variable state of undulation and a dull hum of engines pushing through water. Arriving without purpose and alienated from their intended use and country of destination, they find themselves exposed to a tropical storm outside a warehouse in Rocklea, Australia. Salvaged by the artist, time slowly passes, their bodies trapped in the stasis of storage, their sense of purpose remains unclear.
Years later, unpacked, devolved and unbounded, their constituent parts are readied to imagine new uses and possible futures. Now, their figure and voice are returned to the northern hemisphere and studied anew, an attempt to extract the unseen, the unknown, to touch what cannot be touched. Gazing upon their fragments assists in a new enquiry and allows re-ordering, an unimagined sense of becoming and, in turn, purpose.
Caress (2024) is the third iteration in the Supply Chain series.
Caress Catalogue text by Lawrence English.
Heinz Riegler lives and works on Gubbi Gubbi Land in South East Queensland, Australia.
www.heinzriegler.com
