Press Release
Following acclaim her international debut at the XLY Museum of Modern Art in Chengdu, China, Melanie Irwin presents Distension at the ACAF Arts Space from 18th June till 3rd August.
Melanie exhibited in the 1/2 Scene Exhibition, a joint project by Australian artists and the North Village Independent Workshop arts group in Chengdu sponsored by ACAF.
Her work was seen as the highlight of the exhibition and a truly refreshing approach to contemporary art. Her exploration of the relationship between ourselves and our environment struck a chord with both local and international visitors. Both the beauty and sheer physicality of her performance art held visitors in awe.
Using sculpture, drawing, performance and photography, her work addresses the complexities of relations between urban bodies, objects and structures. Through post-minimalist, provisional and performative gestures, her aim is to provide new possibilities for thinking about the effects of architecture, infrastructure and the accumulation of objects in the urban setting on our experience of space and our connections to site, to objects and to other bodies.
Distension is part of her ongoing investigations into the potential for constraining parameters to provide a framework inside of which creative possibilities can be tested and expanded, and, furthermore, from where they might ultimately distend, producing protuberant sites of intensity. In this series of sculptures, the frame impacts on the curvature of the membrane to the point where asphyxiation, dissection, bulging and distortion occur: a state that is excessive and aberrant.
Distension opens on 18th June and runs to 3rd August. You are invited to meet the artist between 12pm – 6pm on the 19th and 20th June at 164 High St, Prahran.
