The Prop Shop for Sculpcha Vulcha - Ben Leslie

Opening - 12:00 AM - Wednesday, 5th of June

Artist Talk - 6:00 PM

Running - 5 Jun 2013 - 22 Jun 2013

With 'The Prop Shop for Sculpcha Vulcha', I wanted to explore the idea of a 'prop shop,' wherein is stored and made-available the various prosthetics for a hypothetical artsploitation film. The title for this speculative artsploitation film, Sculpcha Vulcha, notions themes of self-referential sculpture, devouring its own history, as it tears away at the flesh of its cross-generational scenes. The aim is to allow the works to function as artefacts that generate their own origin, while at the same time occupying and sustaining themselves within a psychic space outside the restrictive constraints and limitations of a singular narrative arc.

Ben Leslie is an emerging artist and curator based in Adelaide. In 2012 he completed a Bachelor of Visual Art with First Class Honours at the University of South Australia. In 2011 he co-founded Fontanelle Gallery and Studios where he has exhibited, curated and currently works as Operational Manager. He also forms one half of the artist/curator team pinkandgold with his wife Brigid Noone, the Director of Fontanelle. In 2013 he curated the group exhibition 'Thingshow' at Fontanelle and will be presenting solo shows at FELTspace and CACSA's Project Space, amongst other projects.

Recently I have been approaching art as space for play and the studio as a site for taking this play seriously. Previously, I experimented with the Unmoment (a neologism I coined using an anagram for monument), whereby I attempted to monumentalise imbalance and collapse in a series of sculptural anti-monuments. By pushing things towards the precipice of imbalance, the potential for collapse was located as an animating condition within the work.