w-Hole
Titus Kaphar, Stripes 2014, oil on canvas and nails, 149.8 x 128.7 x 11 cm (variable) (installed), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased NGV Foundation, 2015. © Titus Kaphar, courtesy of the artist and Gagosian
Taking modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s fascination with masses, voids, piercings and hollows as a point of departure, this exhibition explores the enduring interest that artists have in the phenomena of openings and absences. In both a material and metaphorical sense the works on display address modes of representation and abstraction. Holes, perforations, and apertures are often bound with the desire for wholeness, completeness, and freedom from lack, but also relate to liberation and cutting through boundaries, oppressive forces or the limits of knowledge and perception. Hepworth’s sympathetic use of natural materials and biomorphic forms suggest possibilities for a magical inner life. Like a portal into a new world, wHole will draw upon the manifold expressions and approaches to ‘the opening’ in art to contemplate the multiple dimensions of space-time, experience and imagination.
wHole draws together a diverse range of transhistorical and transnational artworks alongside an exciting series of new commissions by leading contemporary Australian artists.
Exhibition artists include: Rushdi Anwar, Kushana Bush, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Lucio Fontana, Mira Gojak, Rubaba Haider, Robert Jacks, Anish Kapoor, Titus Kaphar, Lindy Lee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Noriko Nakamura, S.J Norman, Rosslynd Piggott, Norma Redpath, Ricky Swallow, James Tylor.
