ASSEMBLY
Sept 18 – Dec 5
Fiona Tan (Indonesia), Elizabeth Price (UK), Zimoun (Switzerland)
A powerful selection of new media works from three award-winning international artists consider order, collections and sound in a changing world of technology.
A collection, a set of instructions, an archive, a regime, a system. This is the Assembly.
We recognize the power of an assembly that works, moves and thinks together, with apparent order and regularity. There is a potent force in the impressions and sounds of order; be they utopian or dystopian. We have an innate desire to control a world in chaos. The will to order is considered one of the essential forces driving human behaviour, leading to such things as laws and institutional systems, rational and scientific thought, educational systems, political and public health orders….war. Art itself can be understood as a desire to order; in the development of systems, rules and organizations. At the same time creative thought can be a powerful force with the ability to break down ordering systems And when the assembly breaks down what follows? Out of the chaos new orders are swiftly born.
Through video, sound and physical construction, the three artists in this exhibition present us with the rise and fall of ordered systems; excavating or exposing flaws (or perhaps truths) that explore how we try to make sense, maintain harmony, struggle or relinquish power over a chaotic world.
Please enjoy this review of Assembly by Culture Editor Dorothy Woodend
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/10/05/Thrilling-Tribute-Knowledge-Artifact/