Untitled #4 SEVENTH Gallery 17 February - 04 March 2016
Photos - Becky Strong
Get Low: Zoe Knight's Untitled #4 Lisa Bryan-Brown 2016
Purposefully precarious, the objects that comprise Zoe Knight’s Untitled #4 set one on edge. Delicately balanced, a footstep too heavy or too near threatens to destabilise each assemblage. Stepping gingerly through their maze, you are not only navigating the path between sculptures but also Knight’s uncomfortably low ceiling, pressing upwards against it or crouching beneath its reach. Bookending your body thus, Untitled #4 leaves you acutely aware of your movements and wary of your surrounds, and rewards your deft navigation with intimate moments of crisp formalism.
Knight is keenly interested in the way we move around exhibition spaces, and the rules that govern viewers’ interactions with artworks and gallery environments. Her installations exploit these largely unspoken, socially codified methods of standing and looking that are particular to the art-viewing experience, seeking to disrupt them through deliberate and considered placement. For quite some time Knight’s practice has been predominantly concerned with the plane of the floor, its ranges in texture, and the potentials and limitations inherent in its dimensions. Untitled #4 continues her engagement with the intersection of these ideas, but notably is the first time she has activated the space above, building a soft ceiling into the gallery. Emphasising the lowness of her floor-based sculpture, the ceiling also allows Knight to wash the space with diffuse light, a departure from the dramatic spotlighting of her previous installations. The fuzzy glow provides an appealing contrast to the hardness of her sculptural materials; wire, slate, wood and metal.
Upright but low, Knight’s sculptures occupy their liminal space paradoxically. Assertive despite of their achingly low centres of gravity, the presence of each assemblage stems from its self-assured posture. Upright Copper Pipe with Slate stands defiantly, long and tall, flat and wide; 3 metres tape backing on Slate tile pulsates with inward tension, its ends and beginnings indefinable; Copper wire on Silky Oak off cut and Slate tile stretches languidly, finding its stability in a resting point on the floor. Each piece radiates confidence, at once giving the impression that it simply fell that way, candid and natural, while simultaneously seeming consciously crafted, each curve carefully constructed and placed just so. Knight’s gift as sculptor is for this poetry of individual form, each assemblage a stanza punctuated by a cadence of space.
Knight’s relationship to her materials is as important as their formal qualities, if not more so. Working exclusively with things she has found or been given, she is drawn to repurpose that which has been discarded by others. Intuitively unifying line and shape, colour and texture, Knight’s sculptures develop through a playful process that privileges rhythm and tension. Applying the same approach to the arrangement of her installations, she seeks to balance the push and pull that occurs between each construction and the space it occupies.
An ambitious new work, Untitled #4 extends upon several of Knight’s long-standing concerns, pushing them to new extremes. The coalescence of her use of light, spatial alteration, and field of objects all function in unison to entice and direct the gaze and path of the audience. Carefully structured and poetically rendered, Untitled #4 deftly articulates Knight’s conceptual and formal concerns, and marks an important shift in her engagement with the space above, while demonstrating with clarity her aptitude for materiality and abstract form.
Text by Lisa Bryan-Brown: Get Low: Zoe Knight's Untitled #4
Purposefully precarious, the objects that comprise Zoe Knight’s Untitled #4 set one on edge. Delicately balanced, a footstep too heavy or too near threatens to destabilise each assemblage. Stepping gingerly through their maze, you are not only navigating the path between sculptures but also Knight’s uncomfortably low ceiling, pressing upwards against it or crouching beneath its reach. Bookending your body thus, Untitled #4 leaves you acutely aware of your movements and wary of your surrounds, and rewards your deft navigation with intimate moments of crisp formalism.
Knight is keenly interested in the way we move around exhibition spaces, and the rules that govern viewers’ interactions with artworks and gallery environments. Her installations exploit these largely unspoken, socially codified methods of standing and looking that are particular to the art-viewing experience, seeking to disrupt them through deliberate and considered placement. For quite some time Knight’s practice has been predominantly concerned with the plane of the floor, its ranges in texture, and the potentials and limitations inherent in its dimensions. Untitled #4 continues her engagement with the intersection of these ideas, but notably is the first time she has activated the space above, building a soft ceiling into the gallery. Emphasising the lowness of her floor-based sculpture, the ceiling also allows Knight to wash the space with diffuse light, a departure from the dramatic spotlighting of her previous installations. The fuzzy glow provides an appealing contrast to the hardness of her sculptural materials; wire, slate, wood and metal.
Upright but low, Knight’s sculptures occupy their liminal space paradoxically. Assertive despite of their achingly low centres of gravity, the presence of each assemblage stems from its self-assured posture. Upright Copper Pipe with Slate stands defiantly, long and tall, flat and wide; 3 metres tape backing on Slate tile pulsates with inward tension, its ends and beginnings indefinable; Copper wire on Silky Oak off cut and Slate tile stretches languidly, finding its stability in a resting point on the floor. Each piece radiates confidence, at once giving the impression that it simply fell that way, candid and natural, while simultaneously seeming consciously crafted, each curve carefully constructed and placed just so. Knight’s gift as sculptor is for this poetry of individual form, each assemblage a stanza punctuated by a cadence of space.
Knight’s relationship to her materials is as important as their formal qualities, if not more so. Working exclusively with things she has found or been given, she is drawn to repurpose that which has been discarded by others. Intuitively unifying line and shape, colour and texture, Knight’s sculptures develop through a playful process that privileges rhythm and tension. Applying the same approach to the arrangement of her installations, she seeks to balance the push and pull that occurs between each construction and the space it occupies.
An ambitious new work, Untitled #4 extends upon several of Knight’s long-standing concerns, pushing them to new extremes. The coalescence of her use of light, spatial alteration, and field of objects all function in unison to entice and direct the gaze and path of the audience. Carefully structured and poetically rendered, Untitled #4 deftly articulates Knight’s conceptual and formal concerns, and marks an important shift in her engagement with the space above, while demonstrating with clarity her aptitude for materiality and abstract form.
Text by Lisa Bryan-Brown: Get Low: Zoe Knight's Untitled #4
