BRIDGET CURRIE Regulators

Opening 6pm Thursday 6 August. 7 Aug – 5 Sept

Artists Gallery Talk 3pm Thursday 13th August
Curated by Melentie Pandilovski

Photo by Sam Roberts

Regulators, Bridget Currie’s new work at the EAF, will include a sculptural installation and fragrance. The exhibition seeks to incite the cycles of death, decay and life in the regulation of the ongoing order of things. The artist has been working with JH Lever to produce a perfume delivery system that will result in a subtle, changing experience of scent throughout the space. Currie’s brief to the leading Australian perfume company was '…joining the earth and the sky: decaying on the ground, the warm smell of leaf mould and floral honey in the tips of the tree' (Artist’s notes).

'Every little thing needs a bit of help to get by'. Plant matter has formed part of Briget's material repertoire for sometime. In Regulators the Japanese practice of altering the structures of plants – either by crutches or selective pruning – has incited a set of thoughts around the way the dead hold up the living.

The EAF installation is a large-scale extension of ideas developed by the artist during a 2007/08 residency at the CCA Kitakyushu. Portable ends (things under pressure) is the title of the work made and exhibited during that time. The artist’s fascination with Japanese methods of pickling food (tsukemono) led her to think about the 'weight of tradition, preservation (states of decay and aliveness), and time.' The artist's take on time saw the inversion of the architectural foundations of the everyday – the familiar planes that make the structures we perform on and in became rooted, even founded, in the age old tradition of preservation of food with salt and ritual. The ancientness of human practices for living and socialising – here the processes that preserve the bounty of the harvest for barren periods – were signalled with traditional pickle-making ceramic jars and vessels fashioned from throw-away packaging. The odour was overpowering – of seaweed, fermenting cabbage and umoboshi (pickled plum).

→ bridget currie regulators, a film by Jess Wallace AeAF documents, artist-in-residence

  download the interview with Bridget Currie by Cath Keneally on Arts Breakfast, Radio Adelaide (mp3)

  The artist thanks JH & Lever & Associates Fragrance Design Studio for developing the fragrance, and Rob May at Carrick Hill for the tree.

BIOS

Bridget Currie (b.1979) is a South Australian artist working predominantly in sculpture. In recent years her work has exhibited at Artspace, PICA, 24HR Art, CACSA, Loose Projects, Bus and other regional and artist run spaces. 2008 saw her return from a seven month residency in Japan at the CCA Kitakyushu