Grand comforter
Taryn Raffan is an artist of diverse talent and quirky vision. Her solo exhibition ‘Bundles’ at Podspace is intriguingly wry, and I wonder if it is by accident or design both possibilities are inherent in the work which combines the sculptural and metaphorical potential of brown paper with the ubiquitous imagery of interior advertising.
Una Rey, except from Newcastle Herald, p18, 2011.
Installation images 1-7: Grand comforter (black, white, coloured), 2011, 3 series of 3 (edition of 3). Recycled brown cardboard and cotton thread, approx. 20cm x 20cm each.
Installation images: Bundles, Podspace Gallery, 2011. Images courtesy of Podspace Gallery, 2011.
“Disguise becomes ritual, and ritual requires personality swapping. Something that was donned as a vessel becomes a cocoon... a metamorphosis is taking place...”
Robert Klanten, Post-digital Identity, Doppelganger, 2010.
With specific interest in modern ritual, Bundles explores the seemingly randomness of coupling ideas of natural selection, objects, and materiality with comfort. This conglomeration of what presents as possibly traditional, concept, fantasy and choice coalesce overtime and culture. In the meantime, a developing personality awaits, before it can reveal itself.
Endlessly searching the pages of IKEA catalogues and redrawing many different varieties of chairs Raffan reflected upon time spent travelling in North America. Raffan explores the seemingly mismatched notions of comfort from a living room chair, and online buying, to the innate comfort of one’s own mother, or even the closeness of a baby cradleboard; leading the artist to developing her work Grand comforter, 2010.
Through a process of mimicking, duplicating and inverting, these images are used to ponder and question her own ability to escape the westernised innate housewife syndrome; having no children, no husband and no home of her own, she questions 'why does she herself feel trapped and unsafe?'
By reworking a single chair into a series of three colour choices, each with additional pattern choices, they are presented like slightly beefed-up versions of an iPhone's shopping cart, ready to de/select, shuffle and reselect again.
Paired with untitled (papoose), 2010, Grand comforter presents the ease of online shopping and selecting comfort from your lounge room chair or La-Z-Boy; whilst untitled (papoose), ponders an alternative: how does one feel long term comfort outside of the maternal and capitalist frameworks?
Invoking images of being wrapped as a child, tucked away in bed, cuddled by another or even sitting feet up in front of a TV. The artist pairs an emotive comparison with a now beyond learned, innate behaviour - can we feel comfort without buying?
Exhibition text: Bundles, Podspace Gallery, 2011.