Early Bird: Indiana Audunsdottir, Owen Bullett, Turnhurst

About

Early Bird celebrates the visual wit of three diverse and inventive young artists. The comedic requires a hint of narrative potential, Audunsdottir acts as protagonist in short film format. Bullett and Turnhurst treat the sculptural object as an active subject with some sort of an independent presence and/or aspiration, which allows us enough identification with it to sympathise with its predicament or revel in its gravity defying poise. Indiana Audunsdottir's videos explore myths of femininity and its refusal in a quasi—ridiculous way. They star herself, in costume, enacting scenarios that could be extracted from ‘Carry On Performance Art', with a serious demeanour that makes the muscle-suit wearing woman posing on a mountain-top seem a more dignified figure than she might otherwise be. This awkwardness is pivotal to her process and intention. Audunsdottir's ambiguous treatment of mythical or heroic figures reflects her passion for the ‘secondary' — the legend stripped of all but its titillating consumability (Greek Amazons portrayed in popular culture as babes in bikinis). Analysing the process down into its structural elements of manipulation, exaggeration, sound effects, makeup and costumes, Audunsdottir amplifies these techniques — aiming towards an extreme version of a once acceptable ideal. As a viewer, the space she places us in is both humorous and discomfiting, making us revisit our own prejudice and desire. Owen Bullett uses humour in three dimensions. His sculptures convey a sense of great poise and elegance but enjoy a visible current of the absurd in their gravity questioning angles. Balance, and particularly the manner in which objects hold themselves, has always been central to Bullett's work. Often translating a plane into a three dimensional form through the actions of twist and bend (imagined and painstakingly remade in beautifully crafted wood), the attention is refocused on the ‘flat' surface by the application of coloured lacquers that contrast with the bare wood of the sandwiched planks. His trial and error approach in the studio harnesses unpredictability, and allows for a sensitivity to the unexpected, which ultimately heightens the precariousness and wit of the finished pieces. Turnhurst are Charlotte Turner and Rosa Tyhurst. Their collaborative practice encompasses sculpture, performance, video and photography. Their work has often explored the nature of collaboration, artistic production and artworld gossip. One sculpture was made on the premise of a double blind (neither knowing what the other was making). Their two-screen video piece Artist Charades sees them playing charades to the audience — Turner and Tyhurst separately and competitively performing actions to describe their work — after a name is called out to them. Since graduating last year their work has taken a gratifying step into making for its own sake — for the indefinable pleasure of a satisfying shape, the delirious possibilities of cheap and diverse materials. Their work is low-fi and irreverent, hinting at an ready humour, but not in a laughing way, more of a head scratching, looking at twice way.