ROUND

Wollongong Art Gallery 2023

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Catalogue Essay

Tom Loveday 2023

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Round is the third in a series of exhibitions in which artists respond collaboratively to a brief. Each of the three artist-led exhibitions involves a collective approach, with discussion among the artists. The brief is a simple description of materials or, in the case of Round, a single word; as a starting point for improvisation, much like live jazz performance yet developed within art practice.

 

Round artists:

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Andrew Christofides

Dani Marti

Hilarie Mais

Lynne Eastaway

Richard Dunn

Dan Hollier

Pollyxenia Joannou

Lisa Jones

Tom Loveday

Al Munro

Eugenia Raskopoulos

Jacky Redgate

Nuha Saad

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There are so many ways that the term round can be interpreted, including the obvious forms of curved geometry but also the less obvious linguistic complexities, figures of speech, metaphors and linguistic quirks and confusions. Despite its multivalent meaning, or perhaps because of it, round has become an oddly amplified word in English. Below is a list of just a few of the ways that the meaning of “round” expands, diversifies and becomes confused:

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• Circle, spiral, helix, spherical or simply curved or with rounded corners – not rectilinear.

• As roundness, fullness, completeness – and, like many words, it implies its opposite, incompleteness, as in “rounded up or down,” “rounded off,” or “round about.”

• As around, ‘round or around and the limits of meaning – or simply round about as nearby. The abbreviation or “around” to “‘round” has led to a merging of meaning and loss of clarity.

• As a return (or eternal return) – cycling, revolving or coming back as in “rounding on” someone of something. This meaning is often forgotten in dictionaries.

• Rondo or round in music – harmony and dis-harmony. The return to the beginning or “coda.”

• The rounded visual pun or joke, such as “Portable Hole” (McKimson) and the meaning of geometric round in popular culture, such as well-rounded, bloated perhaps or “globalised.”

• Philosophical and art theoretical terms that allude to round either specifically or in some abstract sense such as , and other theoretical approaches to popular culture and language.

• Round (or around) the bend – madness, beyond the limits of normality, acceptability or sensibility.

• Merry-go-round, motion, repetition and difference and nausea similar to round as a return.

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Of course, there are many others too numerous to list here and yet the most obvious use of Round is to think of it as symbolically curved and coded as a metaphor – the very planet we all live on. Moving in a circle which is to say around a planet as it rotates might seem like standing still but it is actually motion that is constantly changing and indeed returning the motion to where it began. And so, the curved plane of motion of constantly accelerating orbiting objects can itself be considered a dynamic ground plane where the fundamental elements of geometry are different to those of the imaginary flat plane found in the X, Y and Z of three dimensions. The curved plane is a limit to our existence in the form of the curved terrestrial horizon. To make art that embodies roundness either in a prosaic or a figurative way (or indeed both) is to make a work within the terrestrial ground plane. Why is this important? Because it embodies a sustainable form of thought – one that might help us.

It is perhaps needless to say that each of the artists in Round approaches roundness in a different way yet that difference is part of the way that the collective exhibition paradoxically also exhibits its unity. Before noting each artist’s work, I want to mention that since the art and art writing of the mid 20th century, it is no longer tenable for artists to propose that their work means what they claim it should or could mean. Artistic genius is no longer vested in the expression of prosaic meaning but instead is founded in the creation of aesthetic affect allowing the viewers to, as the theorists say, “complete” the work by discussing it. Art thereby returns to the collective and creates value for its community.