ISABELLE RUDOLPH
DESAFINADO
30 January – 16 February 2013
Opening: Thursday 31 January, 5:30-7:30pm
Desafinado is Isabelle Rudolph’s debut exhibition (as the recipient of the 2011 ARC ONE Gallery/Monash Award for High Achievement) at ARC ONE Gallery. An installation comprised of a large central sculpture and twelve illustrations, exploring foreign scenes and memory of place. Rudolph’s central sculpture, Compass (2013) is an assemblage of hard rubbish—cupboards and furniture salvaged from the streets of Melbourne. This reflects Rudolph’s exploration of the potentiality of discarded items as new and appropriated architectural forms. Positioned in the centre of the gallery, the openings and closings of the drawers and doors form a compass that map out multiple landscapes and destinations.
According to Google Earth, each of these locations can be found at that exact axis point. For Rudolph, the installation draws on a longing for stability and a sense of worth in life; but of knowing the impossibility of such solace, thus discovering a beauty within imperfection.
Desafinado is inspired by architecture discovered on Rudolph’s travels—the extravagant domed religious and state structures contrasted with domestic dwellings such as the squats of Europe’s Roma and the favelas of Brazil. Compass reflects these two aesthetics: drawing its composition from one, material and process from the other. Rudolph’s practice engages in how the refiguring process can make the familiar appear exotic and the discarded beautiful—without denying the object’s status as refuse.
Isabelle Rudolph would like to make the following acknowledgements: I would like to thank my ever-generous family: John, Bronwyn, Sophie and James for all their help and support. Also special thanks to Phillip Meyer and Gregory Cairns for their cheerful persistence in helping throughout the many phases of production. I would also like to thank Julie Watkins, Fiona Waters, Tania Guidolin, Hannah Camilleri and John Gregory for their contributions.
For all enquiries, please contact Annabel Holt at mail@arc1gallery.com
