Jamin
INERTIA / FORCE / CHANGE / INERTIA
CRITERION Gallery
August 7 – September 6, 2008
Opening 5.30pm Thursday August 7, 2008
CRITERION Gallery, Criterion Street, Hobart, Tasmania.
Political identities come and go in a ceaseless procession …
… their time spent in office marked by contributions made towards solving or exacerbating political problems, for better or for worse. These identities are like a veneer, a thin patina that covers the substrate beneath. This substrate is constructed from the political parties to which these identities pledge allegiance, the economic and business interests of the day and the deals cut by predecessors, forming a complex web of relationships that span an array of bodies, institutions and entities. Enmeshed within the patina of these identities are their words, actions and beliefs as presented to the public, offset by the perceptions of others, whether it is a commentator’s opinion, a private conversation between friends or a boardroom discussion. This substrate and its patina sit upon the ground of history, of wars, feuds and alliances, of environmental catastrophes, of past misdeeds and valour.
Our relationship to these identities is mediated. Through daily occurrences in newspapers, television and the Internet these identities become like old friends (or enemies) in much the same way as do pop stars and newsreaders. A bond develops whether of affection or disapproval and these identities become ‘known’ to us through their image, their gestures, their manner of speech and their professed sentiments. In some cases these identities can become more familiar to us than some family members. However, this is only the visible patina, the surface skin, that conceals an underbelly of staged press releases, choreographed photo shoots, scripted speeches, spin doctors and image makeovers. Somewhere amongst this contrivance is the real identity behind the patina.
In Jamin’s new works the only physical marks made by his hand are via the knife-cut lines that dissect the work, a process of ‘reading between the lines’. The rest of the painted surface is applied from a distance, ejected from a spray can, through a voluminous haze of solvents and paint particles. Real and definitive gestures exist in the work, but are hidden in the process. These deliberate slippages create a tension between form and content, between the process of painting and the nature of what the works discuss. Sourcing imagery from the mass media and quotes from historical texts, Jamin collapses these elements into a homogeny of muted tones and speckled surfaces, representing a shift away from the bold and saturated colours of assertion and protest. These works are an exploration of mottled and diffused surfaces, of possibility and uncertainty, locked into the rigid lines and angles of stencils. They are a comment on the hopes and concerns that we, the voting public, place in changes of government; the hopes we place in the patina of identity.
Change #2, Jamin, 2008, spray enamel on coated steel, 110 x 110 cm
Force #1, Jamin, 2008, spray enamel on coated steel, 110 x 110 cm
