gary deirmendjian selected works
 
 
 


hollow promise - casula 2014
 

 

click for album

 

details

:::: commissioned performance and installation, Subject to Ruin, group exhibition, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
:::: Adam Porter, exhibition curator
:::: installation consisting of a serving 20' shipping container filled with household rubbish salvaged from streets - including white goods, electronics, furniture, toys & other
:::: 2.6m (height) x 6.2m x 2.4m
:::: 3 tonne
:::: on 7 June the container & content were crushed using an excavator, the act was conceived as a performance and undertaken in front of an audience.


 

artist statement

The serving shipping container holds bare the actualities of our ways … STUFF ... owned and thrown ... all now of equal value ... unprejudiced worthlessness of cost and consequence.

Our anointed role as passive mass consumers in the name of global economics and the must of its growth, appears to have been coached, teased and ushered in very slow, quiet and deliciously expert ways.

In a focused act of rage at a given time during Subject to Ruin, the container and its content will be crushed in a rather heavy-footed way.
 

special notes

:::: (click) for exhibition details
:::: (click) for exhibition catalogue/education kit
 

acknowledgements

This installation and performance was enabled by the generous and somewhat courageous support of Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (CPAC).

I would like to acknowledge Adam Porter (Curator, CPAC) in particular for his innate clarity, professionalism and due care, not to mention his physical involvement.

Thank you Micheal Do (Public Programs Officer, CPAC) for your part in allowing my "making" to step forward and claim itself as a performative act.

Nathan Blackwell (Blackwell Bros, click) your experience and surgical abilities with the excavator ... demonstrated at the focal point of so many watchful eyes, was key to the success of the work. Thank you.
 

 

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre have produced a video documenting the performance aspect of hollow promise - casula.

The video is in real time (24:46); click YouTube logo to watch: