The 2004 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: SIMONE SLEE
'On' vest 2003
vinyl, foam and velcro
variable dimensions
© the artist
'On' chamber 2002
vinyl, foam, velcro and paint
variable dimensions
© the artist
'On' the lawn 2002
vinyl, foam, velcro and people
variable dimensions
© the artist
Simone Slee's preceding work derived from the deployment of the body (her own) vis-a-vis space(s), time and objects-a performance orientation. Her major project since has been the On sequence of works. These develop from her background in design offices: a range of white vinyl sculptural objects that are sculptures which combine to make installations and scenarios (for gallery, photo, poster, billboard).
The objects (futuristic, clunkily reminiscent of hospital technology and science fiction) are, through their extensions, connectable. They blend the functional and non functional, confounding the usual knowledge we have of objects. They are neither rational nor systematic but expressive of the presence of the body and of people's psychological connections. They signal and induce interdependence, trust, dependence, care: matresses with plug-in tubes, vests that connect, one to another-for sustenance, transfusion, feeding, help.
Best known are the images of Slee's suits that reveal the vulnerable stomach. This is an interesting step from gallery art into 'the social', into a social mode - to enliven, activate, social norms and links. They inaugurate a form of 'play', with its abstraction of society and society's reciprocity and conventions of trust and recognition and its innocence. The body suits also perform a levelling of the players (bracketing out their wider social role).
Slee is in the process of expanding her field of operation from installation and the sculptural to including performance-and-event, and billboard hoardings.
Ken Bolton
from his Samstag catalogue essay;
New Brew: Export Quality Six-Pack
| Simone Slee Born 1965, Horsham, Victoria |
||
| 2004 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship International Student, Stadelschüle, Frankfurt, Germany |
|
| 2002 | Masters in Fine Art (Research), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne | |
| 1995 | Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne | |
| 1988 | Bachelor of Applied Science (Landscape Architecture), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne |