| 19 January - 21 February 2009 | |
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SLOT has presented in excess of 50 art exhibitions since 2003, viewed from the street 24 hours a day. To celebrate its fifth anniversary, SLOT will re-create some of those installations in empty shop windows along Regent Street, stretching from Wells Street to Henderson Road and creating an art walk of about one kilometre. This stretch of rundown shops will host a survey of SLOTs interaction with its neighbourhood. A feature of this project will be a clustering of art works at a site with seven windows at Red Square, that funnel of traffic from Cleveland Street to the hub of Redfern’s ‘twin towers’ at Redfern Station. These shops have a similar pedestrian and commuter audience to SLOT. Together they create ‘book ends’ to a passage of art works along the street. |
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This project has been supported by The City of Sydney with a small grant, InnerCity Arts and Art Monthly Australia. Most important, however, is the support of the artists and Redfern’s shop owners who have lent their space.
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WINDOW 1: TONY TWIGG Shop 1 / 95-99 Regent St, Redfern This exhibition “Fish Boxes” was made in Malaysia while Twigg was on residency at Rimbun Dahan. Each unit is constructed from 3 crates found at the side of the road in a local market. Twigg said of the work, “...it was like jamming with another maker. I had to respond to the aesthetic decisions already made.” This exhibition was shown in Kuala Lumpur and in Singapore before SLOT in October 2006. |
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WINDOW 2: MAI LONGShop 1 / 95-99 Regent St |
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WINDOW 3: IAN MILLISS Shop 1 / 95-99 Regent St Ian Milliss’ installation “Darwin in Wallerawang” was a highlight of SLOTs program for 2008. Originally set against a lime green backdrop, this tower of everyday stools examined the evolution of an object. Milliss’ installation was prompted by discovering Charles Darwin’s 1836 diary entry describing the flora and fauna of his home town of Wallerawang. |
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WINDOW 4: MARINA DEARNLEY Shop 1 / 95-99 Regent St SLOT is proud to have launched Marina Dearnley’s exhibiting career in 2005 with the exhibition “Tribal Tapestries”. This installation recreates that show. The images fuse road signs that convey messages of obedience and conformity, hieroglyphically as an urban language that Dearnley digitally assembles and presents mosaic-like as inkjet prints on canvas. |
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WINDOW 5: SCULPTORS OF ILOILO Shop 2 / 99 Regent St First exhibited in March 2007, these hand-painted tin doors come from the Southern Philippine island of Panay, where a tradition of religious sculptors flourish on the city’s side walk, offering their wares for sale. Like SLOT, art in Iloilo is about an engagement with the street and those who pass by. At night these closet-sized studios are shuttered behind painted icons. |
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WINDOW 6: THE ANONYMOUS SIGNWRITER OF SOUTH SYDNEY Shop 2 / 99 Regent St These ‘advertisements’ selling second hand white goods are a fixture of our neighbourhood. For two months during 2004, SLOT director Tony Twigg documented and collected these signs presenting them in the exhibition “Home Made Modernism”. The aesthetic consideration in the placement of these objects speaks to a larger history of ready-mades and found objects. Click for more |
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WINDOW 7: CONSTANTINE NICHOLAS Shop 2 / cnr Regent and Wells St Constantine Nicholas’ work considers post-colonial issues and cultural identities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. His paintings inter-weave astronomy with indigenous cultures of the Pacific and first explorers. This painting “Endgame”, shown at SLOT in 2004, hides the words “Make No Mistake”. It warns us of peril using delicate shellac and metal leaf as a metaphor for |
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WINDOW 8: RITA BILA Medium Rare @ 70 Regent St In support of SLOT, Medium Rare will present a new work by Rita Bila, an Orient rug that she has cut up. |
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WINDOW 9: TRACY LUFF 151 Regent Street, Redfern Goulburn artist Tract Luff transformed SLOTs window with her exhibition “Rising Tension”, five suspended knots constructed from recycled cardboard, to coincide with the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. Luff’s alert spatial reading is again spot on with this new window piece “Pivotal 6” (2008), made for this project. In March Luff will be part of the international festival, ‘10 days on the Island’ in Hobart. |
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WINDOW 10: MERILYN FAIRSKYE 138 Regent St, Redfern Between 1992–2000 Merilyn Fairskye photographed one thousand people. Each one was asked their first name, their occupation and their country of birth. In 2004 three of them were shown as lighboxes in the exhibit “Exposure”, engaging the evening commuters passing by SOT. It was the first time the portraits had been presented in a horizontal format and so tightly cropped. |
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WINDOW 11: RUARK LEWIS Gan N Go service station @ 10 Botany Road, Redfern This work high on the facade of Gas N Go was first shown in 2005, “Banalities for Babel”, is a companion piece “Banalities for the Perfect House” that Lewis installed over the entire two storey |
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WINDOW 12: JUNYEE SLOT 38 Botany Road, Redfern “Separate Reality” was designed for SLOT by Junyee, the preeminent installation artist of the Philippines. It was originally shown in 2004 and resulted from a conversation around the kitchen table about the image of a woman pressed against SLOTs window. For Twigg, it evoked Australia’s phobia of a crowded Asia, pressed hard against our boarders. For Junyee it was an expression of identity without racial demarcation. |
And join SLOT with window projects Grant Pirrie 66 Wells Street, Redfern |
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Locksmiths Project Space6 Botany Rd, Redfern |
