Notes from the Fall was a show of acrylic drawings at the Silver Spoon Gallery in Balmain, dealing with notions of falling and failure. The diagrams from the exhibition contrast various myths and ideas about falling in an investigation of the fundamentally broken nature of humanity.
Hans/Icare compares the tragic death of the artist Bas Jan Ader with the Greek myth of Icarus. Parallels are drawn between their ill-fated journies, and the critical roles played by each of their fathers.
Valt – Manque is the elucidation of two familiar conceptual structures, the Judeo-Christian understanding of God’s plan for salvation and the psychoanalytical concepts of the lack and the death instinct. Each diagram emphasises the idea of a paradise lost and then regained, of life as a period between two states of grace.
Black Tree is a black triangle painted, point down, on the wall. The form of the work relates to Malevich’s suprematist shapes and evokes his spiritual concerns. These concerns are echoed in the title, drawing on a wealth of biblical and mythological sources, such as the revelation experienced by Odin as he hung from Yggdrasil, the world tree, or the disastrous enlightenment granted to Adam and Eve through their consumption of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Tom Isaacs 