Introduction

Observations, propositions and re-presentations
 
Thea Rechner, curated by Andrea Bell

Welcome to the Observations, propositions and re-presentations blog! This is where we will record the process of the residency at Alterations over the next three weeks. Below is the text we prepared as a press release to introduce the project, and photos taken by Amit Charan:

Beginning the first day after a New Moon, Thea Rechner’s residency at Alterations will operate as a workshop over three weeks in February. Working within the spectrum of the visible, Rechner’s practice examines art’s role in framing and re-framing what can be seen or experienced, and how these often ephemeral phenomena can take on significance beyond the everyday.

Starting from the premise that ‘all art is a process of framing,’ and drawing on the ephemerality, provisionality and duration of the everyday, the project explores how we make meaning through techniques of observation, proposition and re-presentation. During the first week of the residency Rechner will make a series of observations, imaging her local surroundings via a range of recordings, mappings, chartings and drawings. In week two Rechner will work through a series of propositions, experimenting with raw and collected material such as refracted light and plants, to explore growth and movement through everyday situations. For the third and final week Rechner will re-present and recontextualise these observations and experiments in a range of media as a means of generating new encounters, experiences and meanings. 

Over the course of the exhibition Rechner and curator Andrea Bell will use a blog as a means of documenting and reframing their investigations in the gallery and beyond.