Zoë Croggon
1 - 24 November 2012
Melbourne-based artist Zoë Croggon works with sculpture, video, drawing and primarily, collage. Her work brings different worlds and moments into collision, suggesting unexpected affinities of energy and form. Croggon’s collages are composed of images gleaned from sources such as sports encyclopaedias, photography manuals, film stills and dance catalogues. By exploring texture, light, and form through visual comparison and by making fluid or discordant juxtapositions and connections, she rouses the possibilities of metamorphosis and abstraction.
In the practice of collage, the identity of an object is suspended between its original context and the new conceptual whole in which it is set. An object in a collage surrenders its identity and function and undergoes an aesthetic transformation. Croggon is particularly interested in exploring the possibilities of subconscious perception and the power of suggestion over actual resemblance.
Croggon’s long-standing interest in dance and theatre leads her to use the kinetic body in relation to its environment as a vehicle to discuss the phenomenon of perception. She works toward a sense of estrangement, urging the viewer to see common things in an unfamiliar way, and therefore augmenting perception of the familiar. Her work relies on the psychological compulsion to draw comparisons, or to compose visual similes. She is particularly interested in the inclination of recognition – a kind of pattern recognition – that allows two images to communicate.
