AN INTRODUCTION TO LIMINAL AESTHETICS (2017)

An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics

c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne

22.06.2017 – 16.07.2017

Installation images courtesy of Vivian Cooper Smith

AN INTRODUCTION TO LIMINAL AESTHETICS

The term ‘liminality’, in anthropology, relates to the transitional stage in a rite of passage. It is the phase of a ritual in which initiates no longer possess their former identities or social status, but are also yet to acquire the status they will hold after the ritual’s completion. This interval of ambiguity occurs between the destruction of their former practices and the restructuring of those practices with new understandings.

An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics explores the liminal phases of artistic pedagogy and art production. It examines the aesthetic disorientation often experienced during this learning process - a disorientation that creates an environment for errors, unintentional transformations and new interpretations.

The backdrops in these works originate from a collection of failed attempts; an archive of photo-sensitive paper salvaged from a photography college darkroom. The abstract, gelatin silver prints - creased and torn, marked by light-exposure and chemicals - show evidence of my students’ darkroom errors and unsuccessful experiments. In the series, An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics, these ‘failed attempts’ now become backdrops for still-life arrangements of obsolete teaching aids and other found or constructed objects.

While gesturing to the aesthetics of modernism, the works also explore photographic pedagogy and the ambiguities of interpretation. The images themselves inhabit a realm of liminality - they are neither finished nor unfinished, but rather part of an ongoing process of aesthetic transformation.

https://www.c3artspace.com.au/ali-mccann/

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Untitled 1, 2017

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Untitled 6, 2017

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