MEETING [THE] TEXT HALFWAY

SHOW: All PAST TEXT OBJECT TONGUES TOWERS SWEAT RETRIBUTION QUEER NEXT

AB/OB/JECTIONS
NAN GIESE GALLERY//19.02.2021

Injected, ejected, rejected, subjected, objected, adjected, interjected, abjected, projected; queer artist Matthew van Roden takes their hand to casting in all its forms. Casting of characters, casting digits and casting words into the air, Ab/ob/jections continues van Roden’s longstanding meditation on bodies and texts. Wax, text and flesh are cycled and recycled, turning and returning in a land where the devil makes work for idle hands.

AB/OB/JECTIONS is a semantic interrogation of ways of being. Consider the terms ‘subject’, ‘object’ and ‘abject’. A mere prefix fixes what is in and what is out of being and time.

Often, queer bodies hold memories and knowledge of shifting between subject, object and abject positions. As designations, these positions can be both liberatory and brutal.

Whilst the prefixes ‘sub’, ‘ob’ and ‘ab’ articulate states of being, The ‘ject’ of subject, object and abject (as well as eject, reject, inject etc.) introduces dynamic movement into the question of being.

‘Ject’ speaks to throwing, jettisoning and casting.

AB/OB/JECTIONS explores aspects of being that are thrown or cast through the fluid materialities of wax, text and flesh.

AB/OB/JECTIONS
WATCH THIS SPACE//12.08.2022

AB/OB/JECTIONS travelled to Watch This Space (Mparntwe, Alice Springs). The works were reconfigured according to equipment availability and the wax fingers were installed without the video (preferable I think) and arranged on shelves in a grid. Since the first showing of the work, one of the fingers was used in a lost-wax process to create a new digit from reclaimed aluminium.

I acknowledge The Larrakia People who are the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of this land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty of Country was never ceded.