For this exhibition, Shane Nicholas will place objects within the Arcade gallery spaces and then pour polyurethane expanding foam over them to loosely trace the objects within space.
The free-flowing foam mixture will find the path of least resistance, responding to both the objects and the architecture within the gallery, until it expands and freezes in place. The initial objects will then be removed, leaving the polyurethane moulds behind. The inaccuracy of these moulds combined with their rigidity causes the moulds to become objects in their own right.
The smooth, candy-like forms serve as innocuous replacements for the original form, making this newly created reality an aesthetically rich but unnerving experience.
Shane Nicholas is a current Masters of Fine Art Candidate at Victorian College of the Arts. He has been undertaking practice led research into the relationship between virtual worlds and physical reality, in the context of digital technology having substantially transformed how we interact with our surroundings.
Nicholas' research investigates this relationship with emphasis on the interdependent nature of neural networks, extended consciousness and online surveillance. His body of work responds to the use of surveillance technology by focusing on gaps in information and distortions in representation that occur through poor filtering of given and assumed information. The works question the nature of online surveillance from a posthuman perspective and explore the potential problems that can occur with the adoption of cavalier attitudes towards these technologies.
This project has been aided by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship
Image credit: Brent Edwards
Exhibition details:
Opening Wed April 5th - 6-9pm
continues to April 22nd
