Silent Post: Marita Fraser, Matthew Higgs, Emilie Pitoiset and Chu Yun

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P A V E M E N T _ Silent Post Marita Fraser, Matthew Higgs, Emilie Pitoiset and Chu Yun 2nd July - 13th August 2009, 9am — 7pm daily Pavement is external access only. Silent Post is a group exhibition that explores themes of appropriation, value temporality and distance. The title of the exhibition is one of numerous names to describe the game of ‘successive whispers', where a phrase is passed from one person to another. In the course of its journey, meaning is gradually altered as each player becomes author of their own version. Silent Post considers the actual conditions in which artworks are both fixed and yet open to change. The artistic act of reproduction has a divergent character: it permits the original to survive, but it also entails its death. The intention of this exhibition is to reveal and highlight the artistic and curatorial procedures involved in the adaptation of past works as well as the implications in displaying reproducible art pieces. A symposium will also take place on 2nd of July, 2-5pm in Geoffrey Manton, Lecture Theatre 5. Speakers include Marita Fraser, Sam Gathercole and Francis McKee. The event is free Chu Yun is currently participating in the 53rd Venice Biennale. Unspeakable Happiness (2003) is loaned to the gallery on the premise that the work is temporal, it must be destroyed and this destruction has to be documented. Marita Fraser combines her own practise with the artist-run initiative bell street project space in Vienna. In 50 works I have never seen (2007), Fraser reproduces, in a slide format, images taken from art catalogues showing works that existed in temporary form. Matthew Higgs incorporates his art, publishing and curatorial practise with the directorship of the independent art space White Columns. The origin of Artists Say the Silliest Things (2008) lies in the language of an existing book that Higgs extracted, isolated and re-presented. Emilie Pitoiset has participated in several international exhibitions and festivals. In Damage (2006), language itself becomes the subject of investigation, through a simple re-ordering of letters, the words become distorted and yet meaning still remains.