Ex Libris Fisherarium Archives

Exhibition: ‘Objects in the Mirror’

Posted on 24 June 2016 by Library Communications

Come and check out the final 2016 installment of our Ex Libris Fisherarium Series featuring students from the Sydney College of the Arts curated by Associate Professor Michael Goldberg.

When: 20 June – 31 December 2016

Where: Fisher Library F03; Levels 2,3, and 4

This exhibition features Alex GAWRONSKI and Jelena TELECKI. It consists of a series of 10 book titles removed from their original contexts. Each title was chosen for its uncanny or humorous connotations once removed from its wider context. Considered collectively, these titles suggest a type of quasi-Dadaist poetry whose combined effect hints at alternative critical, playful and/or possibly even pataphysical, readings.

Graphically the original layout of each book title has been retained although now each has been rendered in watercolour as a ‘painting’. These works further reference the importance of text in contemporary art and artists as diverse as Ed Ruscha and Marcel Broodthaers. Accompanying these text works are figurative paintings by Jelena Telecki. These all respond to the book titles. Together the appropriated titles and their figurative interpretations, establish an open dialogue of fairly infinite suggestability.

‘Objects in the Mirror…’ (may be closer than they appear – as the warning goes) speaks of how texts and images continually interpolate one another while remaining fundamentally differentiated. The juxtaposition of text and image in this instance may be considered a type of improvisation that draws out the latent possibilities concealed behind the most ordinary words and the words that underlie the most stubbornly elusive representations.

Ex Libris Fisherarium: Persons of Interest

Posted on 23 November 2015 by Library Communications

23/11/2015

PhD candidate Glenn Wallace and UNSWAD academic Dr Katherine Moline give us an intriguing insight into the machinations of ASIO and the Cold War era, writes Dr Michael Goldberg.

When: 2 November 2015 – 2 December 2015

Where: Fisher Library F03 Levels 2,3, and 4

For over 40 years, Australia’s Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) seized books that were deemed subversive in raids on the homes of people suspected of conspiracy. In recent years ASIO files documenting the activities of certain ‘Persons of Interest’ have been released.

For this iteration of Ex Libris Fisherarium, ‘Era of Surveillance’ maps where confiscated texts are located in Fisher Library. Viewers are invited to explore the Library as a space where art, architecture, politics, knowledge and power converge.

Era of surveillance: Persons of interest / Family — Artists: Katherine Moline and Glenn Wallace

#Asio

#sureveillance

#Sydney_library #ExLibrisFisherarium

Ex Libris Fisherarium: Ontologías y Códices

Posted on 7 October 2015 by Library Communications

Sydney College of the Arts proudly presents:

Ontologías y Códices

Artist: David Corbet

Curated by: Dr. Michael Goldberg

When: 22 Sep – 29 Oct 2015

Where: Fisher Library F03, Levels 1,2 and 3

“This exhibition is inspired by my adventures in the worlds of hispanic literature, poetry, song and art-making. Drawing from diverse sources, it is a personal homage to the vitality and richness of the worldwide cultures expressed and celebrated predominantly in the Spanish language – la lengua española. Such an assemblage constitutes, in a sense, a series of indices or, in a library context, codices. Among the random we seek order and likeness, we may find seriality and continuity of meaning. My studio practice and research into language systems has pursued this notion of seriality, subtitling an earlier exhibition ‘Ontologies for a small planet’. Among these disparate references my own studio work is interspersed, largely on paper, ranging from etchings and drawings to notebooks and notations.” – David Corbet

The exhibition is made up of three parts:

Level 1
“Entre irse y quedarse”
(English: “Between going and staying”)This display is inspired by the text of a poem by the late Mexican Nobel Laureate Ocavio Paz, and the late Catalan printmaker Antoni Tàpies.

Level 2
“Las vidas de otros”
(English: “The lives of others”)This display is a collection of works, books and objects obliquely exploring our human power relationship with animals, through ontologies of classification, patterning and adornment.

Level 3
“La lotería de la existencia”
(English: “The lottery of existence”)This display celebrates ontologies of chance, of religion and mysticism, and of altar-making. It explores how objects can become imbued with ritualised power through their organisation, and transformations of meaning brought about by context.

Exhibition: Ex Libris Fisherarium (14 Aug – 17 Sep)

Posted on 18 August 2015 by Library Communications

Ex Libris Fisherarium

Curated by Michael Goldberg

When: 14 August to 17 September; during Library opening hours

Where: Fisher Library, Levels 2,3 and 4

The fool dʌθ bounce, the speculator dʌθ fall and the esopterodactyl?

ExLibrisFishDorey 3_72dpi — Nicholas Dorey

Artists:

Nicholas Dorey: Poisons on the people’s path (PPP)

Shane Haseman: CALL 688.7 3

Richard Kean: Dimensional Poetics

Have you ever had a conversation with someone where you knew what they were saying was objectively interesting but you couldn’t for the life of you figure out what on earth they were talking about? Art often creates languages which preclude the uninitiated. This could be called Art for it’s own sake or even intellectual terrorism if you’re prone to hyperbole. But Art’s role is not to polish society’s low hanging fruit. It is to cut down the fruit forest to build a synthetic fruit scent mausoleum for the fruit, which was once everyone’s, and now belongs to a rich old white man in order for him to prove how rich he is through the acquisition of something inherently worthless. Makes sense? No? Good!

All three artists have a tendency to confound, not through their disregard or contempt for a populist audience but simply by the fact that they have very particular interests. This befuddlement will no doubt continue in these small glass cabinets. Richard is matter doodling like Pythagoras with the intersections of Fibonacci number theory through the design process of electro magnetic coils and energy recycling gliders. Nick will cobble together something which seems vaguely mystical if not a little smug and overly esoteric, and Shane will round it out with something equally perplexing and erudite but in a cheeky and delightful suede patches on the elbows kind of way.

Shane, Richard and Nick are all bona fide artist with real university degrees who do real Art things all the time but more importantly they are good people and isn’t that what really matters?

Enquiries: Michael Goldberg 0416 287 283

New exhibition: ZEEN by Leigh Rigozzi

Posted on 8 June 2015 by Library Communications

This exhibition in Fisher Library is the next in the ongoing series of art projects Ex Libris Fisherarium curated by Associate Professor Michael Goldberg. The projects comprising work by staff, alumni and associates of Sydney College of the Arts are themed around the idea of ‘the book’ in all its historical and contemporary manifestations. Read more >

Exhibition: Ex Libris Fisherarium art series

Posted on 2 March 2015 by Library Communications

Ex Libris Fisherarium is an ongoing series of art projects curated by Associate Professor Michael Goldberg. The projects comprising work by staff, alumni and associates of Sydney College of the Arts are themed around the idea of ‘the book’ in all its historical and contemporary manifestations.

Project: Data Retention by Gianni Wise

Artist’s Statement
With the proliferation of data networks, the human mind always find ways to ‘wire-up’ new connections between itself, objects, ideas, events and the world. I use wires and books as a form of ready-made art that work as props for memory. Objects external to the mind can trigger memory and make connections. I am interested in this interplay between mind and external world. When Umberto Ecco claimed in the Name of The Rose (1988): “Wanting connections, we found connections always, everywhere, and between everything” he refers to a world ‘exploding’ in a whirling network of interrelationships where everything (appears to) point to everything else, everything explains everything else.

Curator’s Statement
Gianni Wise’s installation has its menacing aspects. The title, ‘Data Retention’, might well refer to current government policies regarding the retention of metadata – the harvesting from telecommunications networks of personal information by law enforcement agencies – ostensibly to protect the public from acts of terrorism. Indeed, the installation itself displays a number of sinister ‘packages’. Perhaps they hold data. But they also disturbingly resemble IEDs (or ‘improvised explosive devices’). The ‘connections’ Wise refers to carry the potential to penetrate deep into our personal lives, challenging privacy and potentially violating fundamental rights. In this sense, the installation reflects on the threat of data retention exposing our personal lives ‘like an open book’. Wise’s use of ambiguously wired devices may equally suggest the mind’s desire to invent ‘paranoid’ connections where there are none.

Dates: 23 February to 26 March 2015
Where: Levels 2, 3 and 4 exhibition cabinets, Fisher Library North
Cost: FREE and open daily to the public
Times: Opening times vary, please check the website

For details of past and current projects, connect with Ex Libris Fisherarium on Facebook.