Beyond Measure

Research project, residency and group exhibition 2019

Praxis Gallery, Bowden, South Australia April 11 – May 10

Beyond Measure builds off research and residencies of the Centre for Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing to explore beliefs, experiences and misconceptions about frailty and ageing and to provide alternative conceptualizations to these perspectives. Featuring artwork by Mandy Archibald, John Blines, Amber Cronin.

You take an object from your pocket and put it down in front of you and you start. You begin to tell a story.” - Edmund De Waal (The Hare with the Amber Eyes)

As part of this research, Amber Cronin made weekly visits as artist in residence to Southern Cross Care West Beach across six months. As relationships with residents developed, she became particularly interested in their collections of objects and the specific memories that these keepsakes triggered. Through her time in residence Amber has been intrigued by the theory that objects and people co-construct each other. Cronin believes just as people exert an influence on objects, so do objects exert an influence on people’s thoughts, actions and memories.

In Things Beyond Measure Cronin introduces a body of work that reframes objects as mediators– a conduit between us and the world. Her anthology of images and artefacts examine the value we place on the things we collect through a lifetime. The site specific weaving work, Conditional State, was produced in collaboration with John Blines and Mandy Archibald in response to the research, and seeded with Cronin’s use of black rope.

Full Exhibition Essay by Ash Tower available here.

All installation images Sam Roberts Photography and Video www.samroberts.photo