The Mute World - Jana Hawkins-Andersen

Opening - 6:00 PM - Wednesday, 6th of August

Artist Talk - 5:30 PM

Running - 6 Aug 2014 - 23 Aug 2014

We are awestruck by beauty. We are left with withering indifference in the face of real beauty - almost like we don't know what to say. But why isn't the opposite true? Why, when perfection doesn't present itself - like when we are faced with the useless, the ugly, the dumb, the strange, the formless, the confounding, or the difficult - why don't we behave with the same awe? Why not the same sense of wonder in the face of what seems to have no value?

The Mute World is about objects that inspire awe and wonder and how these things interact with objects that are small, nebulous and useless. It aims to create a tension between the beautiful and the almost beautiful, the meaningful and the meaningless, the formed and the unformed. It celebrates the anti-heroic object and attempts to dissolve classifications and hierarchical value associated with different kinds of "things".

Jana Hawkins-Andersen is an artist based in Sydney. She is interested in objects in things that might become landfill and in things that could definitely be considered storage fodder. Her practice is concerned with the meaningfulness of objects that exist as excess and things that are surplus to need (things that could, ostensibly, be considered junk). She completed Honours at Sydney College of the Arts in 2013.