Page 18 - Famous

SCOTT CAREY

Lives and works in Lake Macquarie, NSW, Australia
ht tp://members.optusnet.com.au /~qar t /

Scott Carey’s series of installations are an exploration of the intersecting of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to
struggles over the meanings associated with space. Carey discards the signify monolithically.’(Tendencies 1994, p.8)
warp and weft of traditional textile practices and its associations with the It is this open mesh of possibilities that underlies Carey’s work particularly
uniform grid, for a rhizome-like structure. Linearity and arbitrariness are the potential to think of queer as the intersection of multiple components of
fundamental characteristics associated with semiology, which underlies identity which may include ‘the ways race, ethnicity, postcolonial nationally
the artist’s intention to associate text with a textile structure so that it may criss-cross with these and other identity-constituting, identity- fracturing
become operative in a spatial context. Consequently one of the most striking discourses …’ (Ibid, p.9)
features of his installation is the use of intersecting lines of thread that have Unlike the tableau vivants, Intersections (2003) and Submerge (2003), which
been irradiated by intense ultraviolet lighting. were visible only from the street, his latest installation Watt Space is Queer?
According to Foucault the relationship between discourse and architectural (2004), provided public access into the space itself. Presented at Watt Space
space is one of importance to the operations of power, especially the Galleries in Newcastle (Australia), the ultraviolet lighting not only activated
disciplinary function of architectural features such as walls. In Carey’s the surrounding textile structure, but also created palpable visual effects on
installations the walls are obscured by ultraviolet lighting, effectively the bodies and clothing of the viewer. Deconstructive processes were implied
shifting ones attention toward the luminous lines of an ‘open mesh’. This by the literal deconstruction and placement of shredded texts between pairs
intersecting thread in his installation has a particular alignment to the of intersecting tread. While on the walls in-between twin fluorescent light
intersecting struggles of sexuality and gender and the usage of the word fixtures were a series of phrases alluding to the deconstructive potentialities
“queer”. Queer has been used as a derogatory label for individuals who of multiple components of identity, which may arbitrarily intersect.
differ from the supposed sexual norm. Today, queer is a reversal of the Carey’s distinctive installations are a result of an art practice that wrestles
very ontological constructions specifically aligned to the binary logic of the with negotiations between texts, space and lived experience. The processes
sexual classifications of homosexual and heterosexual that immerged from of altering the appearance of these spaces were ways of performing a spatial
the late Nineteenth Century. Interestingly, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains palimpsest– to construct a new artifice over the pre-existing architectural
the word queer can mean “across” and proceeds to explain ‘that “queer” features of the gallery. Consequently his spaces create for the viewer a
can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, contemplative experience of place, in an attempt to resolve the internal/
lapses and excesses of meaning (that occur) when the constituent elements external contradictions of identity.

 WATT SPACE IS QUEER? 2004 (INSTALLATION) FIBRE/ TEXTILES AND ULTRAVIOLET LIGHTING
 SUBMERGE, 2003 (INSTALLATION) FIBRE/ TEXTILES AND ULTRAVIOLET LIGHTING
 INTERSECTIONS, 2003 (INSTALLATION) TEXTILES AND ULTRAVIOLET LIGHTING

18
FAMOUS
CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS