Holding Up

Holding Up is a three dimensional ‘question’ posed in the gallery space. Like a question, it is incomplete and uncertain, and nestled within it is the possibility of a surprise.

Holding Up consists of two timber braces standing-to as if buttressing a form which cannot be seen. It is this suggested unseen element which captures the attention and unnerves the viewer. Where one expects to see the object being supported, there is nothing. The effect is similar to missed-beat syncopation in a musical phrase (where a rest is substituted for an expected note) or incomplete cadence (where an ending is melodically incomplete, suggesting there is more to come). It is an interruption, an intervention in the ordinary order of things.

Nothing in the gallery space provides a clue to help answer the question: ‘holding up what?’ Only imagination can provide an answer, but because the possible answers are many, the experience rapidly transforms from one which stimulates curiosity to one which provokes frustration, discomfort and suspicion. The work becomes a test of one’s perceptual staying power.

Contemporary society oscillates between two poles of existence: on the one hand, obliviousness or a state of being unknowingly unconscious of reality; on the other hand, complacency or a state of being knowingly unconscious of it. Holding Up employs a strategy to recover sight, to provoke the viewer to experience a present and conscious awareness of reality. When the ‘question’ has been puzzled to the point of exhaustion, the viewer is confronted with a pair of timber braces in the gallery; nothing more, and nothing less.