SRIWHANA SPONG

The purple blotter referred to in Spong’s title is that of pivotal consequence in Colette’s 1934 novella Duo, in which the simple observation of a patch of light reflected on a cheek by a purple leather blotter becomes the catalyst for a crisis that changes the lives of both her characters.

Duo is a portrait not just of two people, but of two figures inseparable from the space they inhabit – the shifting light and the objects that surround them: orchids in a vase, a blanket with cigarette burns, and love letters hidden inside a purple blotter. This is a story of fleeting moments as inspiration for change, and the inseverable relationship between bodies and their environments. Mostly however, it is about two people watching something disappear.

Spong’s major new film titled Beach Study is her first made using 16mm. In addition to the idiosyncrasies of the film stock, the use of coloured filters bring intense flashes of magenta, violet and amber that flicker and morph with the landscape they celebrate. A body responds in the form of dance, with gestures both classical and familiar, intentionally designed to escape any particular philosophy of movement.

In this work Spong makes a personal observation of disappearance – that of a once loved childhood beach to which access is now made difficult by private land ownership. Fleeting moments and corporeal recollections here form an exploration of the precarious relationship between memory and experience.

In a series of sculptures and collages Spong explores her ongoing interest in Balinese offerings, an interest spurred by the physicality of such objects - their amorphous formal quality, fragility, and use of everyday objects. In these works Spong employs a diversity of materials such as magazines, recycled packaging, silver, and thread dyed in wine.

Sriwhana Spong was born in 1979 in Auckland, New Zealand. Recent exhibitions include Raiding the Archives, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Thai Film Archive, Bangkok, 2012; Collecting Contemporary, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, 2011; Fanta Silver and Song, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2011; Scene Shifts, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, 2010; Lethe-wards, Art Statements, Basel, 2010.

Forthcoming exhibitions include Actions and Remains, the second Auckland Art Gallery sculpture terrace commission, opening April 2012.