Helen Grogan
2014 - 2016
Informed by studies in philosophy and choreography, Helen Grogan uses sculptural, photographic, and filmic means to approach space and observation as material(s). Her works directly engage exhibition sites as situations to be expanded and opened in material, ontological, and political ways. With a particular interest in framing what is already occurring, Grogan works from the perspective that the gallery exhibition is itself performative and viewers are implicated through the physical act of observation. Grogan's practice operates critically and dynamically with exhibition formats and institutional conditions. Works often incorporate explicit processes of flux, drift, layering, and reconfiguration as means to push or stretch potential temporalities and spatialities. By employing devices that resist fixed or prioritised points of view or points in time, her works seek an embodied attention within the ever moving present and actual.
Helen Grogan’s recent exhibitions include: THREE ADJOINING SPACES WITH MANIFOLD EDGES, WestSpace; Choreography (2014 Version) with Gwenneth Boelens and (RE)SETTING in ‘Framed Movements’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; INSIDE VIANNE AGAIN with Shelley Lasica and Anne Marie May in ‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria International; OBSERVATION PROPOSITION FOR INTERIOR OF INDICATED EDGES AS WELL AS OTHER UNINDICATED PARAMETERS ALREADY IN OCCURRENCE, in ‘2nd Tbilisi Triennial’; CONCRETE ROOM and SOUNDING OUT ART SPACE in ‘The Ear is a Brain’, Liquid Architecture 2014; THREE PERFORMATIVE STRUCTURES FOR SLOPES, Slopes; ACTION AND FRAME(S) and CONCRETE ROOM, LIGHT and FACILITATING FORM in ‘Object As Score’, VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery; ACTION AND FRAME (for Gertrude Contemporary gallery with pillar) in ‘Studio Artist Exhibition - Part 2, Gertrude Contemporary; CHOREOGRAPHY FOR AN UNKNOWN SPACE; in ‘Interpreting Variable Arrangements’ Stockholm Kulturhuset; IF NOTHING HAS SETTLED YET in ‘Re-Staging Re-Staging’, Alaska Projects;. Her recent curatorial projects include: SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.