Jeanette Stok and Michelle Vine

POP Gallery, Woolloongabba

27 January – 12 February, 2017

Quadrat explores the relationship between a scientific way of seeing the world by measuring, quantifying and collecting and the inherently subjective nature of human endeavour. It demonstrates how art and science can inform each other in order to create meaning and further knowledge. Both artists are facilitating and brokering unique flashpoints between the disciplines of art and science and the way in which knowledge is made. Their chief materials are knowledge practices, rather than the content these practices generate. It is actually the process of generating knowledge that is their fascination and site of inquiry. The works and performances they have created for this exhibition put the practice of knowledge formation in the limelight.

Works included:

The Scientist: A record of action, 2015, Drawings, each 97 x 219 cm; Photographs, each 105 x 10 cm.

Duplicate (Bella), 2017, Performance, drawing pen on paper, single channel video projection, lab coat, dimensions variable.

Eight-hour drawing, 2016, Pen on chart paper, chart recorder and single channel video (11.22 min), dimensions variable.

Kerrilyn: Four actions (306, 308-310), 2016, Drawing pen on rice paper, each 12.5 cm x 91 cm.

Louise: Extraction, 2017, Drawing pen on rice paper, 12.5 cm x (68.5, 54, 25.5, 45.5, 100, 74.5 and 31.5 cm).

The Secchi Drawings, 2016, Charcoal on tracing paper, acrylic and rope, dimensions variable.

Artist Statement

Scientific labour is inherently connected to production of knowledge and discovery. However, the physical actions and movements of scientists are often divorced from the science they are undertaking. I explore the relationship scientists have with the environment they work in and the way in which they work. A systematic way of observing the world is often reflected in the physical actions and movements of the scientist in their environment. As a trained scientist myself, I understand that scientists are taught to see and interact with the world in a methodical and rational way. This scientific ‘way of seeing’ can be very foreign to the traditional artist. I employ artistic techniques such as performance drawing, photography, video and installation in concert with scientific methodologies to produce a distinctive perspective of the physical actions of scientific discovery. This approach reinforces the fact that science is a human endeavour and that the people involved in this process and their physical actions and integral to discovery and knowledge.

Catalogue Essay -Dr. Amy Hickman quadrat-catalogue-essay