Dasein

Local Walyalup/Fremantle early-career artist, Mandy Hawkhead, announces her first solo exhibition. The immersive exhibition considers the human relationship with time as a felt experience and how one might reimagine their connection to it.

Time by the clock or Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) provides an armature for the pressures and pace of life in the contemporary first world. Using water as her primary material, Hawkhead gestures toward an alternative that explores how one might be present and move with time rather than against it.

The mesmerising exhibition invites the viewer to engage their senses and reflect on the concept of flow, gesturing towards the idea that these principles may be extended to life outside of the white cube, encouraging reconciliation with temporality.

Hawkhead’s artworks draw on the powerful positive affect that water and watery sites can have on the mind and body, a claim supported by environmental psychology theories, and familiar to all those who gaze out to the ocean, delight in the patter of rain and relish the sensation of diving into a pool.

The desire to recontextualise and share the experience with her audience inside the gallery space introduced many challenges. Overcoming these obstacles, Hawkhead uses many varied and sometimes unconventional ‘secondary’ materials to support and present the liquid, including irrigation parts, light, clay, wool, rubber and water pumps.

Hawkhead describes her aesthetic as minimalist, working with elemental materials such as water, sand and light, appreciating their capacity to change state and/or move, hence marking time with change and movement.

OPENING NIGHT: Friday 15 March at 6pm
EXHIBITION RUNS: Saturday 16 - Sunday 24 March, 11am - 4pm Wed – Sun
All welcome. Free event. Wheelchair access. Instagram.com/mandy_hawkhead