Can one ‘hold on’ to a territory amidst the onslaught of rapid, indeterminate and exhausting change? What is this sensation of being located at the edge, periphery or border of perpetual disturbance and what happens if we let go? The works in this exhibition explore the conceptual, material and sensory thresholds of ‘holding on’: they grasp, retain and sustain amidst that which is fleeting, thawing and decaying.
Marek Ranis (Poland) examines the rapid and mindless consumption of energy and its effects on ecology in the video installation, Hold On, 2011. Here, the image and audio of a rapidly moving NASCAR race car morphs with the icebergs of Greenland - whose fleeting presence register this fragile ecosystem. In his site-specific sculpture, Himsaila Project, 2011, swathes of cotton fabric support melting ice forming a sublime microclimate, which embodies the disappearance of the Arctic. In Beautifully Corrupt, 2011 by Mansoor Ali (India), devouring wood termites point to the hidden and insidious nature of political corruption, while the clasped seats of power in Alliance IV, 2010 renders the notion of being held by such forces explicit. In 3 Simple Sculptures, 2011 by Josh Smith (USA), white pedestals are elevated by risers to allude to modernist ideals of architecture. Smith’s attention to the handmade is used as a means to question mass, international production and consumption.
Hamilton, Southern and St Amand working as the collaborative Satellite Bureau (Canada/UK) create dialogue between the local and global in Waterline, 2011 a site-specific installation of a vessel that formally echoes a regional fishing boat and an accompanying diagrammatic map of international trading routes. The image, which displays GPS data of these shipping paths, creates tension between the ubiquitous and disorientating properties of these oceanic paths and the specific experience of navigation. Finally, in the walking performance Vestige, 2011, Stuart Keeler (Canada) explores Mumbai’s fast disappearing green spaces and the possibilities of holding onto the memory of such territories in the world’s mega cities.
Collectively, the works form topographies of longing and an attempt to take hold in all its manifestations – sustaining or resisting, grasping and remaining, halting and inquiring.