Exhibitions
Black Sheep - 4th Annual Google Exhibition
7 - 25 September, 2010
Black Sheep is Hardware Gallery's fourth annual exhibition that attempts to address the various social, academic, and creative upheavals that have occurred as a result of a single, six letter word: Google. Since its inception in 1998, the Google search has rapidly become a central component of understanding in everyday life in the 20th and 21st Century. Seldom is a question posed today without a nearby automaton muttering its usual tri-syllabic response: Google it. And so this brings us to our current exhibition. Four years ago, Hardware Gallery posed the question: How do you make art? This is a difficult question, with infinite, more difficult answers. So what then? We Googled it, naturally. Three exhibitions later (the first was for the master, the second for the dame, and the third for the little boy living it up in the lane) and we have arrived at the fourth Google show, for which the concept is Black Sheep.
In its new incarnation, Google 2010 has joined forces with The Sydney Fringe Festival, which this year is conveniently subtitled: Be a Black Sheep. In addressing both the notion of the outsider and the generation of answers and ideas, Black Sheep attempts to engage with a crucial, creative discourse about how the arts are not simply consumed but also fuelled by the immersive realm of online space.
The brief is quite simple: Hardware Gallery curators choose a phrase, select 13 artists and then have them all google the phrase - on the same day at the same time. From a single page of results each artist has to select one website and use that site as their sole source of inspiration for a body of work. As with every other year, the results are surprising, witty and sometimes confounding as we push the artists outside their comfort zone in the search for inspiration.
Black Sheep - The 4th Annual Google Exhibition opens on Tuesday 7th September and runs until 25th September at Hardware Gallery, 263 Enmore Road, Enmore. During the exhibition period, on Friday 24th September Hardware Gallery will host Sound Series #7, the latest in a series of monthly nights of exploratory music and performance which was launched in early 2010. Sound Series sees sound based performance and installation across a broad range of styles, where experimentation is always encouraged.
Artists included in Black Sheep: Lila Afiouni, Yolanda Elkhouri, Andrew Ensor, Andrew McNeill, Mark O'Ryan, Timothy Preston, Deborah Redwood, JD Reforma, Ken Simpson, Kurt Sorensen, Deborah Wilkinson, Susannah Williams, Mark Wotherspoon
This project was supported by funding from Marrickville Council