Trade-off
Exhibited at KINGS ARI Melbourne (2022)
FELTspace Adelaide (2022)
Watch This Space Alice Springs (2021)
A ‘trade-off’ is a process of balancing two desirable but opposing forces. It is an acknowledgement and agreement to both loss and gain.
There are three collaborative processes presented in Trade-Off: a suite of sculptures, a diptych of paintings and a textual response.
The sculptures are the repurposing of a collection of trophies that were donated by Dani’s partner, Thomas McCammon, a childhood tennis champion. Through an accumulative process of hand moulding paper clay, stickering and bejewelling, these trophies are transformed into amorphous forms.
The paintings presented have been developed in collaboration with Tom’s mum, Darrel West. For one-year Dani and Darrel worked together to produce a series of paintings that merge their two distinctive styles, from which these two works were selected. These paintings are a layering of familial responsibility and affinities, of agency and desire, becoming the nexus for a new intimacy to emerge, but an intimacy suffused by the risk of working together.
The final element of Trade-off is a text written by Tom. Tom writes: ‘a nut of space, clears its throat for a new situation.’ The opacity of this poetic text blurs the distinction between the exhibited objects and Tom and Dani’s relationship. This ‘nut of space’ is a precious, textured intimacy that unfolds in front of us.
Images: Aaron Claringbold and Thomas McCammon