The exhibition
Paper Trails reflects on a dialogue between the work of artists Victoria Reichelt and Carly Fischer. Developed as separate works, Reichelt’s paintings and Fischer’s sculptures share the exhibition space at Dianne Tanzer Gallery/Helen Gory Galerie to explore a common vocabulary. They begin the conversation with a shared interest in the peripheries; the discarded objects that accumulate in forgotten places, gathering dust. In Reichelt’s paintings it is the boxes of paper archives that gather dust inside archive storerooms, while Fischer’s sculptures reference the kind of detritus dropped in the desert, sprayed with red dirt. Zooming in on these fragments, both artists re-present the peripheral as a kind of Paper Trail that leads to the broader cultural concerns of their contemporary context. Reichelt and Fischer both reflect on the precarious medium of paper by creating propositional monuments that seem to mirror each other inversely in the space. While Reichelt concretises passing paper archives in paint, Fischer fabricates transient desert trash as scale paper models. No longer the original fragments but generic replacements, both Reichelt’s paintings and Fischer’s sculptures are like replicas of precious cultural artifacts to be placed in a museum. They have been elevated from margin to centre along a Paper Trail as perfect but precarious propositions, with their traces erased behind them.
Fischer’s sculptural series
Total Eclipse of the Heart references the potent yet peripheral place of The Central Australian Desert through its detritus. Reflecting on the complex relationship between its stereotypical representation and some of the harsher realities experienced through journeying there, Fischer suggests a place littered with complexities and contradictions. As an artist-in-resident, tourist and pseudo-ethnographer, Fischer explores The Central Australian Desert from postcard to place, intertwining magical preconceptions of hauntingly empty landscapes and ancient spirits with the more mundane trash accumulating in a contemporary context. Ripped beer cans, dusty plastic bags, fast food containers, bottle caps, straws, red rocks, dead leaves, grass, barbed wire, kangaroo road signs, kitschy tourist souvenirs and desert art and craft are remixed and represented as hybrid 1:1 scale paper models. Shape-shifting between ethnographic artifacts, souvenirs, desert art and craft and roadside trash, they are propositions from a place that is somewhat unsure. As carefully crafted fabrications, the sculptures reflect on the perfect yet precarious construction of The Central Australian Desert at the heart of Australian national mythology. Placed atop fabricated Besser Blocks as makeshift pedestals, they are provisional rather than permanent. Between representation and reality, magic and mundane, trash and the treasure, they each suggest a contradictory moment as a monument, a Total Eclipse of the Heart.
In the past Reichelt’s work has focused on the shifting fortunes of books, magazines and printed matter. She is now extending her focus to consider broader library and archive spaces, and the uncertain future that they currently face. Her works in Paper Trails document the quiet unrest and potential redundancy of traditional archive methods and spaces. Similar to her earlier works that positioned animals in libraries, these new works suggest a changing landscape as people increasingly move away from physical and towards digital environments. As spaces that accumulate traditional paper information are becoming outmoded, their susceptibility to physical damage (as opposed to digital archives) is becoming more apparent. Here, archive spaces and archived documents show the early signs of encroaching water damage. Darkened cardboard at the base of boxes hint at the doomed soggy mess within. A small puddle creeps ominously from underneath a shelf. As water sneaks in to threaten these objects and spaces, these works invite the viewer to consider what we would lose with their absence and the implications of the digital’s transcendence over the physical.
Press release courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY.