The National: Carriageworks

Chris Bond

30 Mar - 16 Jul 2017

This installation was commissioned for the The National: New Australian Art, a new biennial survey presenting the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian art across three of Sydney’s premiere cultural institutions – the Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Bond’s work can be seen at the Art Gallery of NSW until 16 July 2017.

Chris Bond’s practice involves the invention and embodiment of fictional artists, writers, organisations and scenarios that assist with the creative act. In his painting practice, the process finds an end in the form of painted facsimiles of imagined books, magazines, exhibition catalogues and correspondence.

Bond combines identity fabrication and closely-worked detail in order to play with knowledge and perception. His body of work in the National is meticulously crafted series of paired books and paper notes, all created under the guise of Wes Thorn.

Artist Biography: Wes Thorne lives and works in Santa Maria, California. In the late 1950s he began producing adjustments, finding objects of interest and altering them by hand. The process of adding to an object by drawing or collage, or subtracting through scraping and cutting, is driven by Thorne’s desire to free it from functional purpose, establish equilibrium, and unleash what he sees as the object’s wider potential. His work is informed by a lifelong fascination for uncovering alternate orders of truth, from his early studies in Theosophy to his active participation as a researcher and seer within the Atlantis Group.