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Opening 5.30pm, Thursday 11 April 2024
Jhana Millers presents 'Molecular Motel', an exhibition of recent works by Denys Watkins, featuring ceramics made in collaboration with Bronwynne Cornish. -
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Notes on Molecular Motel by Denys Watkins
Unhinged days these. Associations closed, minds stultified.Information? Barriers up. Thank god for this archaic practice.Shining a light in the landscape and small moments.WILD MOUNTAIN THYME.1985.Entering Canberra down the main two lane entrance and exit.The lush grassed median strip. Ordered planting of flowering shrubs,interspersed with the conical spray of sprinklers, under which,chattering musk lorikeets, ringnecks, king parrots and lovebirds,stroll about in unhinged shuffle and dance, surrounded by charcoal hillsfrom recent fires, soon to be green shoots of regrowth.Later in the day, I'm at the downtown cinema, Fritz Lang's 1927masterpiece METROPOLIS, remastered and restored by Gorgio Moroder.GROUNDWORKThese are visual components, possibly unrelated, locked into my filing cabinet ofmemories. These vignettes are recalled over a period of time as a referencewithout context to events and places.You cast the net at art history, somethings get caught in the net, others slipthrough the mesh, returning at a later time. References can be unrelatedin a moment, or time, just there, low humming in the stored memory bank.I'm just there, hoping that by manipulation, works will gain a life of there own,entities of themselves. Not an easy activity, you can't predict the outcome.Everything is the result of receptivity.CANT BUY A THRILLThis process engages me in the ongoing, unpredictable challenge, of unknownoutcomes. Engaging in layered forms, transparencies, shallow space, tone, hues, solids.Small openings that leave a crack in the door where the light floods in.No obvious narratives, some natural forms. Fragile associations.Why should this make sense.That's the fetish.The world I knew
it has vanished and gone
leaving this forest of stone.
Ewan McColl
Denys Watkins, Molecular Motel, Online catalogue
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