Exhibition: UNBALANCED
"Unbalanced brings together the work of contemporary artists Scott Chaseling, Cinnamon Lee, Gabrielle Adamik, Mathew Heaney, Mikey Freedom, Cobi Cockburn, Chick Butcher, Phil Spelman and Cesar Cueva. Each artist responds to the concept of imbalance, and collectively they probe its subtleties, spanning visceral unease to material instability. Working in a range of media, they reveal the intricacies and contingencies of balance by reimagining familiar forms, employing distortion and effecting surprise juxtapositions. Their inventive and sometimes-unexpected approaches compel us to question our assumptions and to consider more deeply the tension at the heart of im/balance."
Excerpt from article by Caroline Field
ARTIST STATEMENT
This exhibition offered me a valuable opportunity to reflect on a theme that not only continues to gather potency given the elevated sense of imbalance that pervades the globe at this time, but also reverberates deeply on a personal level as I grapple with my own capacity to find balance amidst it. My new work seeks to capture the volatility of this feeling; a mixture of fear and hope, a moment trapped in a kind of suspended animation.
While I have previously incorporated electrically powered light sources in my work, such as addressable LEDs, for this exhibition I have stripped away emissive technology to instead focus on the raw materiality of reflected light. These wall works use three-dimensional spherical ‘pixels’ to create two-dimensional metal images. In essence these ‘drawings’ present simple studies of light and form. The reflective surfaces of thousands of polished stainless steel balls perform as a lattice of tiny mirrors, capturing points of light against the perforated black mesh that holds them.
Drawing loosely on the aesthetics of astronomy, each panel depicts a primary solid hanging in space, rendered in a state of compromise. Like ghostly constellations they appear suspended, on the verge of disintegration…or conversely, in the process of materialisation. Depending on the viewing angle, and the light available, the intensity of each image appears and recedes like a mirage, shifting as focus is tuned both upon and through the veil-like background.
This work also explores my own interrogation of ‘unbalance’ in relation to control. My unease in response to a world out of balance is manifested in my own sense of being in control, and inextricably, the threat of losing it. In this sense the atomisation of the cube and sphere, pixelated and reduced to points of light, is an emotive response; fuelling my dichotomous internal dialogue, where instinct versus reason, expression versus technique, object versus image, and ultimately, where maintaining control versus letting go.
Cinnamon Lee
Suspended Animation 2, 2024
WHEN: 7 December 2024 - 1 February 2025
WHERE: Seven Marks Gallery - 7 Marks Street, Kiama NSW Australia
OPENING HOURS: Fridays 10am-5pm, Saturdays 10am-3pm (or by appointment)