Gosia Wlodarczak installing FOUND IN TRANSLATION, Interpretation Drawing #2: SIGNS, 2015
Deakin University Art Gallery
Photo: Longin Sarnecki
The exhibition, Found in Translation: Deakin University Art Gallery is a new site-specific project by Gosia Wlodarczak and is part of her ongoing Instruction Drawing project. It explores the notion that drawing and language are coded modes of communication.
One mode of communication is language. Language is a code. When words are the mode of communication, each individual uniquely ‘remakes’, ‘interprets’, ‘translates’, ‘de-codes’ words. Another mode of communication is drawing. Drawing is a language. Like language, drawing is a code. - Gosia Wlodarczak
For the exhibition at Deakin, Wlodarczak has created a series of three site-specific wall drawings, each containing encoded texts ‘written’ from these pictorial alphabets. The first piece will be completed by the artist, the second by Deakin University Art Gallery staff using a manual provided by the artist called INSTRUCTION FOR THE MAKER, and the third piece will be a collaboration with visitors to the exhibition.
Texts selected by the artist and University staff respectively are encoded within the drawings, which may be decoded using a set of instructions provided by the artist called INSTRUCTION FOR THE VIEWER. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to contribute a word to the project which the artist will translate into a third wall drawing during a four day residency from 28 April to 1 May, culminating in a collaborative ‘concrete poem’.
For Wlodarczak, drawing is a means of capturing what is essentially a performative practice. Not only recording the evidence of the artists’ hand, Wlodarczak’s drawings trace the complex relationships between her physical senses and her immediate environment.
An opening function will take place in the Gallery on Thursday 30 April, 6pm. RSVP essential to 9244 5344 or artgallery@deakin.edu.au
In Conversation: Gosia Wlodarczak | Join Gosia Wlodarczak and curator Emma Cox for a discussion in the exhibition space. 1 May, 12.30pm.
Free, all welcome. Please RSVP to 9244 5344 or artgallery@deakin.edu.au
Wlodarczak has exhibited widely throughout Australia and internationally. Her work is included in numerous major public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art. She is represented by Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne.
Staff from the Deakin University Art Gallery installing the wall drawing, via instructions provided by the artist.
Found in Translation: Deakin University Art Gallery, 28 April to 29 May
Deakin University Art Gallery, Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway
Tuesday-Friday 10 am-4 pm. Free admission.
Website: http://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/administrative-divisions/advancement/art-gallery/exhibitions