Into The Quadrangle

9 – 27 May 2005

Marie Hagerty
Mathew Holt
Jonathan Nichols
Derek O'Connor
Peter Vandermark
Stephen Zagala

images

Derek O'Connor

Peter Vandermark

Jonathan Nichols

Marie Hagerty

Essay

…I don't think I have a best friend, nor do I wish for one (there's something juvenile about it as well: a need for self-confirmation beyond the lighter touch of normal friendship; in other words, it strikes me as above all egocentric). Clearly, with this group, this is not what we have in front of us. It's not love (in the classical sense at least: a dissolution of the individual parts into a new whole), nor is it the high state of demand, duty and the constant process of (re)affirmation involved in being 'best friends'. So, like you, I am interested in something more oblique—or 'indirect', which, for better or worse, is one of my favourite words/concepts at the moment.

I have been using it to look at abstract art recently: to try and rediscover both the categories of form and content (with form being, in this case, content itself, as it were) but also to reopen the connection that work based on form has with society, politics, etc. That connection is always indirect, which doesn't mean there is no such connection (it's not hermeticism) but that that connection is always very difficult to read…

I think this is a way of thinking friendship—it might also be a way of crossing from the idea of friendship in the personal, everyday sense, to that of the way in which the artwork is related to its context and to other works, etc. But perhaps the most important friendship to arise from this exhibition will be between the works themselves.

MATHEW HOLT, email 6 November 2003

…How does it make you feel when someone describes you as their 'best friend'? Maybe this is an opening question, but let me unravel what's behind the question ...For me, being described as someone's 'best friend' always feels like a demand of sorts. I'm more interested in a type of friendship that is more obscure; that doesn't need 'order words' or proclamations. Something that has more to do with tolerance than expectations. I'm thinking of Blanchot's idea of an infinite patience between friends who don't necessarily have anything in common. And maybe this is a good way to think of the formal fissures that separate our four artist friends.

STEPHEN ZAGALA, email 5 November 2003

Catalogue

Acknowledgements

Marie Hagerty is represented by Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne and Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney

Jonathan Nichols is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne and Kaliman Gallery, Sydney

Derek O'Connor is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne and Legge Gallery, Sydney

Peter Vandermark is represented by Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney