Doomscroll the Masthead: Res Artis Project Space

Juan Ford

13 Oct - 12 Nov 2022

Rend the surface, producing an ensign to annulment. Counterposed dualities hang, concentric notions set in contrast and suspended from arboreal extremities. These represent our willingness to rationalise ourselves away.

No nation billows under these banners. National flags wrap the citizenry’s minds, and thereafter their bodies upon expiration, but these endure no such aspiration. These personify the schism, a discordant understanding of collective contradiction. These draperies represent dissonant fables; of our separation from the megacosm, from the verdant fecundity from which we are inseparable.

They serve no jingoistic purpose, but rather as pennants to a collective of implausible thought. The rational actor is a myth, for no lucid personage would elect this existence.

Doomscroll the Masthead can be seen as an investigation into the life of an artwork after it leaves the hands of the artist. Produced for the 2019 Young Congo Biennale, Ford sent a selection of works to Kinshasa in 2019. Unable to obtain a visa to the DRC, Ford was unable to accompany the works and they were lost in transit. In an odd act of resurrection, Ford has re-created the works for exhibition in the Res Artis Project Space.

It’s interesting to reflect on what trajectories they might have had, away from my control, in central Africa somewhere. The premise of that biennale was one of hope, and the recreation of these works is something of a hopeful act.

— Juan Ford 2022

Project Space hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm.
Access to the Res Artis Project is through Gertrude Glasshouse gallery, 44 Glasshouse Rd, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia. Access is via a flight of stairs at the rear of the gallery space.