Close Contact
Close Contact, curated by Firstdraft, presents five new commissions by Tom Blake, Jazz Money, Amy Claire Mills, Athena Thebus and Leo Tsao.
Each artist traces zones of contact that intersect with our present moment: the new relationship between public surfaces and public safety; the deep histories and practices of First Peoples landcare displaced by First Contact; the politics of touch and those marginalised from the embrace of the public sphere; skin, the biological interface that both binds and separates us; and finally, the choreographies of resistance that drive bodies together and against each other, and against power.
Tom Blake
Tom Blake’s practice draws on fragmented moments, looped imagery and recurring motifs as potential sites for contemplating the psychological, architectural and technological frameworks that surround us. Tom has exhibited in Australia, Japan and Italy, and has undertaken residencies with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Museo de Arte Moderno Chiloé (MAM), Fremantle Arts Centre (FAC), North Metro TAFE, Sapporo Tenjinyama Art Studio, and Parramatta Artists Studios. He was a 2013 recipient of a Clitheroe Foundation Mentorship.
Tom Blake, Holding on the the stream, 2021, vinyl drawings, dimensions variable, installation view, No Show, Carriageworks, Sydney. Commissioned by Firstdraft. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.
Holding on to the stream, 2021
Tom Blake’s Holding on to the stream is a series of fragmented drawings that appear in various glass and mirrored surfaces around the site. They have been conceptualised in direct relation to their context – in proximity to the beams of light and columns of water that stream through the portals and public bathrooms of Carriageworks.
This site-responsive work emerges from an expanded drawing practice – where lines and form are intuitively fragmented and reconstituted into different linear compositions across a range of mediums. These elements recur across Tom’s practice, from one exhibition to another across time and contexts. The loop and the stream are also generative forms – sometimes appearing as pairs of videos, looping side-by-side; meeting each other in new moments; and here, materialising, mirage-like, in new surfaces.
