PROJECT SPACE
Seth Searle
fragments
20 September - 31 October 2020
Through her painting Seth Searle investigates the relationship between identity and performativity. Working with imagery of cropped limbs, she considers the dominance of the hand, its connection to and escape from the body. Her tableaux also feature motifs of fabrics, foods and various containers, considering the value we place on the vessel. Motifs are arranged theatrically on and emerging from the drapery, giving a sense that there is another space, out of frame, that the viewer cannot see but is still subconsciously aware of. Within these works gesture is staged as a repetitive performance unfolding on a stage setting. Searle aims through her paintings to articulate a feeling of theatrical uncertainty in regards to the performance of self and ask the question: what parts of this performance are visible?
While Searle’s previous works were informed by performative gestures of hospitality and femininity, during lockdown these gestures have fallen away from use, becoming instead a memory of before-times. The works are therefore a documentation of these repetitive actions as they become unfamiliar.
Seth Searle is a Melbourne-based artist with a BFA from the Victorian College of Arts and a Diploma of Arts (Visual Art) from RMIT University. She has shown in exhibitions including A Droplet Of Dew, Tinning Street Gallery (2020); Friends and Family, Daine Singer (2019); It Will Always Be Like This, Boom Gallery (2019); Hideaway, No Vacancy Gallery (2017); Sento, Enough Space (2016); Ready Or Not, House of Bricks (2016); Safe Space, Egg Gallery (2015).
“Making the works during lockdown I was spending a lot of time thinking about repetitive domestic actions and how these small motions can begin to build onto identities. Repetition lends itself to devotion as well as a subversion of the identity performance.”
— Seth Searle
