masterpiece - Assembly Point
Ellen Sharkey
I’m not sure how, but I had totally forgotten about the Assembly Point vitrines. The five glass boxes in Southbank that I would traipse past on my daily pilgrimage to Cafe Godot while I was at the VCA. I even curated a show in the boxes myself in 2021. I feel like I haven’t heard about the alternative art space in a while, which is why it slipped my mind. However!! I started a new job in Southbank in December, and my tram, the ever faithful route 1, takes me straight past them twice a day like clockwork. So of course when thinking about what to write about for today’s Lowbrow post, the convenient option took my fancy.
The current show at Assembly Point has been curated by Lani Seligman & Kiron Robinson, and it moves in relative silence. Heralded by the title of the show ‘masterpiece’, the artists, and curators are named, but no other information is present on the scene. The works themselves aren’t credited individually, there’s no exhibition text, and there’s nothing online I could find about the show. After being initially frustrated about this, as it’s admittedly a bit hard to write about art when you know nothing about it, I came round to liking the lack of information (although I did message one of the artists eventually, just to find out whose work is whose). It allows the work to speak for itself, and feels more like public art than any formal kind of exhibition.
When walking in from Sturt St end the first box contains Casper Bergman Carthew’s work, which I enjoyed for its understated simplicity. These two largely white works feel like a pause, and I was drawn into the photography which peaks from behind the cut wooden shape on the wall mounted work. The next box features Ellen Sharkey’s installation of neon pink plastic squares, soft office tile felt squares, cast bronze objects, and little cut out organic shapes. This feels like a 3D shape unfolding to become 2D, falling outwards and becoming more as it changes, expanding beyond what it was. It reminds me vaguely of a game called bloxorz we would play on coolmathgames.com in primary school when our teachers had given up on actually engaging us anymore. Or like the folded flat net of a cube you would try and hold together with your hands, as it kept fighting to stay flat as a piece of paper rather than the object you wanted it to become. The neon reflection of the pink squares leaning against the window of the vitrine allows this work to come out beyond the confines it has been hemmed in by, expanding even beyond the glass and into the space that surrounds it.
Sharkey’s work even expansively folds itself over to the third vitrine and embeds itself into the is a collaborative work between all four artists. This installation feels like a snapshot of a messy bedroom in a way. Randomised objects trip over each other and interact with one another. I can see Carthew’s hand in the paper mache-esque objects, and Dalziell’s hand in the blue velvet planks. I assume I see Taouk’s hand in the cut paper that folds onto itself. I think this collaborative work is the weakest of the five boxes, it feels like these artists have been thrown together to fill this space and to allow the other four vitrines to have some cohesion. I feel the show would’ve been stronger if there had been another artist in this space, rather than this collaborative work.
The next box was my personal favourite, Molly Dalziell’s velvet covered planks. Resting upon one another, haphazardly balancing. Almost as if a mighty structure has been reduced to lush rubble, or like there’s some kind of anthropomorphised creature emerging from that rubble. Is this my way of saying this work felt alive in some way? The oversized crown-like object resting on the floor felt tongue in cheek and playful in comparison to the velvet planks that may move at any second. This work is fun! I would love to see how it would expand beyond this presentation. The final box across was Val Taouk’s long paper (?) roll. Held up with industrial means, and weighed down with practical ones. This work flowed through the largest box and invited me to flow back the way I came through the five boxes and back to the tram stop on Sturt St before continuing my journey home after work.
The real disappointment, and simultaneous joy, of this exhibition for me was the filthy dirty windows. It made the work hard to photograph, and felt like the display was distancing me from the installations, proving there was glass between us. Which is where this disappointment comes from. Yet the joy comes from the fact that these windows are the vehicle to allow these works to be seen 24/7, come (dirty ash filled) rain or shine. Hopefully
To reiterate, this show moves in silence, and I have no idea when it’s on until. So head to Assembly Point sometime soon to make sure you catch it before it's gone.