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JamFactory Biennial 2003 The JamFactory November 15 - February 25 2004 
Group exhibitions are comparable to compilation CD's in that no matter how much you love a particular musician sometimes alternating between music is refreshing and makes you realise why your favourites are your favourites. The JamFactory Biennial of 2003 is (of course) an exhibition of high quality work (you wouldn't expect anything less coming from the selected JamFactory studio artists) and if it were a CD would rate as one of my more listened to. This is not a group show where one or two artists hold it tightly together: all the furniture, metal, ceramics and glass have worth and value that has been imbued in the making process. However there are still pieces I felt drawn to and in these cases it was due to the memories they invoke. Honor Freeman's porcelain replications of Tupperware in Save Waste, Taste and Space and Tupperware - the nicest thing that could happen to your kitchen! could be drawn from any of the kitchens cupboards I have witnessed growing up: an array of multi-coloured cups, multi-shaped storage containers with the lids strewn nearby. The differences noted in the colour and the order. I don't recall appealing pastel coloured Tupperware; ours were green and various browns still hanging over from the seventies. Also Freeman has displayed these with the sense of chaotic arrangement you would find at a more organised garage sale; lids within reach and similar containers stacked into one another. The transformation of these symbols of domesticity into delicate and beautiful objects reminds me of the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses". Simultaneously, Freeman has emphasised the beauty of an everyday object, making the viewer look more closely at the objects that surround them. Enlarged to function as a bangle, Katrina Freene has also recreated another item many would remember from childhood: a signet ring, in Double Heart Signet Bangle. In gold and another in silver, these well-crafted bangles equate to something opposite to being a kid and dressing-up -perhaps with a twist of a Tim Burton style movie thrown in where all is slightly surreal. Along the same line, Freene has also used found costume jewellery (such as half a best friend charm) set in resin to form memory invoking, quirky bangles. I enjoy the cyclical resolution that is formed when discarded jewellery with personal histories are bound together to make a larger piece of jewellery. Shizuko Somodari's community of glass pieces in Roots, Michael Searle's LED lit blanket, Tom Moore's sketched-cartoon-like blown and solid glass pieces and Sue Lorraine's Vitrine with Moth Eaten moths are further works to be noted. The JamFactory Biennale 2003 is a good chance to see a well crafted range of ceramics, metal, furniture and glass by emerging and established artists of Adelaide. It is also a great chance to get practice in for visiting exhibitions before the Fringe officially begins.  |
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