Polytechnic
Tristian Koenig, Melbourne
15.03.2018 – 14.04.2018
Curated by Tristian Koenig
Taking aesthetic cues from outmoded art-and-design text books, science teaching aids, 70s amateur photography magazines, educational films, and inaccurate perspective drawings, Ali McCann’s suite of photographic works function as compressed visual representations of the technical and aesthetic devices used in picture-making. The still-life photographic works of Polytechnic also serve as an visual paean to the progressive shift in educational reform in Australia during the 70s, when the amalgamation of visual art, design and industry was undertaken with vigour and new-found optimism.
Ali McCann is a Melbourne-based artist and art educator. Her current work explores a spectrum of human experience that inhabits the liminal phase between learning and knowledge, and the abstract modes through which we acquire, synthesise, and modify our understanding of the world. From the found artefact to the sourced archive, McCann is interested in the ways we acquire knowledge either by chance or volition. Salvaging materials from technical-college storerooms, workshop bins, libraries and family archives, she compiles photographs, text books, film reels, VHS tapes, workshop off-cuts and teaching aids to form the basis to her photographic, sculptural and filmic arrangements.
Installation images courtesy of Tim Gresham
Polytechnic (Figure 3), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 16), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 1), 2016
Polytechnic (Figure 10), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 9), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 13), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 7), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 19), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 14), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 11), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 15), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 2), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 6), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 17), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 5), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 18), 2018
Polytechnic (Figure 8), 2018