BENJAMIN CROWLEY (QLD) - ENCOUNTER DOUBT

Opening - 5:30 PM - Wednesday, 1st June

Artist Talks - 6:00pm

Running - 2nd June 2016 - 18th June 2016

Benjamin Crowley is a Brisbane-based contemporary visual artist whose practice is primarily concerned with themes of existentialism and identity. He engages viewers through moments of ambivalence, often presenting work that is dichotomous or of ambiguous intent to provoke doubt and self-reflection. Using qualities of induced scepticism Crowley approach topics such as identity, masculinity, philosophy, the absurd and the transcendental in contexts of Contemporary Art and Australian culture. Crowley uses visually reductive process and studio outcomes most often take the form of video, text, installation and object-based work.

Encounter Doubt will showcase work extending on ideas surrounding doubt and the transcendental through the context of the art-horror genre. ‘The fantastic’, a term coined by Noel Carroll in, The Philosophy of Horror, is associated with a particular kind of narrative that involves floating the suspicions of protagonists and viewers between naturalistic and supernatural conclusions. Crowley is interested in how the doubt that these narratives imply stems from a thing that, if it may exist, violates established philosophical proprieties and that this violation is fearful.