Against the Amnesiac Lifestyle Showroom

Akira Akira, Julia Gorman, David Harley, Lara Merrett, Gemma Smith, Mark Titmarsh and Oscar Yanezerrett

Against the amnesiac lifestyle showroom was a group exhibition that reclaimed abstraction as a dynamic, critically engaged practice, ripe with the potential for transgression and change. Resisting the tendency to dismiss abstract art as the stuff of designer showrooms and modern lifestyle, the exhibition brought together seven artists from across Australia whose work challenged our notion of the gallery space, as well as the broader cultural landscape and our situation within it. Spanning painting, installation, digital prints, sculpture and wall drawing, together the works activated a vigorous dialogue, opening up a space of synaesthesia, slippage and resistance. Against the amnesiac lifestyle showroom proved an immersive, sensory, disorienting and conceptually complex exhibition that speculated on the future of art and contemporary culture with both irreverence and an incisive critical eye.