Rain, Steam and Speed

Last night was the opening of the show Re-visions: new art from old at RMIT First Site Gallery.  This is the first time that I have written about an exhibition and I wish that I had started earlier in the year.

Anyway, this exhibition featured three artists - Sarah Edwards, Helen Dilkes and Charlene King.  Sarah and Helen are RMIT students who will complete their Master of Fine Arts this year, while Charlene is an MFA graduate.  Their collective focus was on a Turner painting: Rain, Steam and Speed.

Although all of the work on show was worthy and impressive, as a gold and silversmith student my main concern was Helen's work.  These were three silver objects suspended above a plinth.  Each object was a series of ellipses conjoined to build cones. Together they suggested the train in Turner's painting.

One of the interesting things about these cone shaped forms was that they were made using the rapid prototyping process.  I have always felt that it would be difficult to create something that is expressive and unique using this process.  I was wrong.  The quality of Helen's work was impressive in it's execution.  I am privileged to have seen similar equally beautiful pieces of Helen's that were fabricated.  I believe, though, that the rapid prototyping added a clean, precision like aspect to her work, reminiscent of Turner's train and the industrial age that it came from.  As stated in the catalogue: 'The work provokes a reminder of a pivotal slice of time in human history and a new technology.'

Intriguingly, while the texture of the casting was left on the pieces to re-enforce the technology of the period, the pieces stay squarely within the twenty-first century in character and attitude.  This is not a bad thing as aping the past, as the Steam Punk movement does, can only carry work so far.  Helen's pieces evoke the past using the technology of the future.

Go and see Helen's work at First Site Gallery which is on until the 25th September.  You won't regret it.
Also, in all of the gallery spaces at First Site are equally brilliant work by other MFA students that are of interest.