The exhibition Composing Objects opens on March 4 at the Post Office Gallery. This exhibition explores the instinctive creative desire to arrange three-dimensional objects; on a mantelpiece, in a cabinet, a shop window or in a gallery.
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Taking the simple idea of bringing objects together as a starting point, this exhibition will showcase a selection of pieces from Bendigo Art Gallery’s vast collection in various combinations including glassware, mid-century Bendigo Pottery and contemporary ceramics as well as still life paintings. The exhibition is part of the gallery’s upcoming exhibition Collective Vision: 130 years, which celebrates over a century of collecting.
Depending on personal taste, function or artistic intention, objects can be brought together for aesthetic display, as a utilitarian suite, to convey meaning or to be rendered as a still life. Throughout art history, objects have been arranged in endless compositions, according to everything from shape, colour and medium to decorative style, functional quality or symbolic potency.
Ordinary or ornate, historic or contemporary, objects are conduits of cultural, social and artistic values, with meaning and significance ascribed according to who is viewing them and in what context. Depending on your perspective, a singular object can have significance. When placed in proximity to another object (or collection of objects) however, a conversation is initiated revealing new connections, comparisons and ways of seeing and appreciating.
Traditionally, objects in a still life composition are every day, often-banal items like fruit or flowers that are artfully combined with domestic vessels and tableware including jugs, bowls and bottles.
Objects are also chosen for their symbolic potency and their ability to convey a specific moral message; a wine goblet or a musical instrument to represent pleasure, a skull or hourglass reflecting the finitude of life. Vanitas paintings, particularly common in the 17th century, were typical of this symbolic approach, salient allegories of mortality; they reminded the viewer of the transience of life and the fleeting satisfaction of earthy success and pleasure.
The simplicity of objects in still life compositions allows for clarity of message as well as focused attention in their rendering. Many artists utilise still life compositions, much like the practice of life drawing, to hone practical skills; for others it is the substance of their practice.
The still life tradition continues to engage contemporary artists, who include a limitless array of objects in their compositions from the traditional to the industrial.