square 2

Five Walls, Melbourne

June 30 - July 17 2021

Square is also a reconfiguration of art practice as collaboration, something that the non-objective artists of the early 20th century aimed at and yet in some ways did not succeed. Rather than as individual celebrity artists for whom possession of the work as both “made object” and as “idea” is complete, self-contained and completely coherent, square artists accept the four squares as aesthetic providence and respond with their practice.

Square begins with a group of artists and an aesthetic platform or “Standard” upon which each artist improvises.The artists use four 40 x 40 x 2.5 cm timber panels. There are effectively no limits on how the panels or their dimensions are used - a range of two- and three-dimensional approaches, colour, texture, construction and reduction appear in the exhibition. The artists have met regularly to develop possible directions and exchange ideas in a collaborative, conversational approach or to use a term from music; as an improvisation.