Peter Vandermark Lux ductor (triptych) 2014. Image credit: www.ccas.com.au
Vandermark’s exhibition Modulations features plywood constructions in bright acrylic colours, bringing to mind the smooth laminex chips collected from the hardware store for kitchen renovation. The wall structures in particular look almost like precariously stacked blocks, provoking a desire in the more order-obsessed viewer to correct them, and an impulse to play with them for the less anal retentive among us.
The artist’s use of mirrors is a less subtle allusion to the human influence on these constructions and their original inspiration. The mirrored panels nevertheless enable the artist to incorporate aspects of the viewer’s surroundings into the constructions themselves. This enables the viewer to interact with the work by altering its appearance, a great source of satisfaction.
Larger floor pieces and hanging works further highlight the pleasure of construction for its own sake, which seems to be an outcome of Vandermark’s human scaling. The exhibition provides a strong contrast to the other two exhibitions currently in the Gorman House space, 14 Queensland Nations (Nations Imagined by RH Mathews) by Archie Moore and Between Coming and Going by Heike Qualitz.
Canberra Contemporary Art Space
Gorman House.
10 October – 15 November, 2014
