Cradling
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: intruder (scout and hold), 2015, series of 8 photo collages (edition of 2) on 35mm colour reversal film with plastic slide mounts and slide viewer, approx. 15cm x 15cm x 20cm; fuse and splinter #1 and #2, 2015, resin, pigment and plaster, approx. 35cm x 20cm x 20cm.
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 random manifestations which occur within individual morals, natural selection, surroundings and dwellings. This conglomeration of traditions, ideas, fantasies and choices coalesce overtime. In the meantime, the personality awaits, before it reveals its other self.
Endlessly searching the pages of IKEA catalogues (hard copies and online) and redrawing many different options of chairs led Raffan to her work Grand comforter, 2010.
Through a process of mimicking, duplicating and inverting these images she ponders and questions her ability to escape the western innate housewife syndrome; having no children, no husband and no home of her own, she questions 'why is she trapped herself?'
By completing a series of three colour choices, each with an additional three pattern choices in each, they are presented like beefed up versions of an iPhone's shopping cart, ready to deselect, shuffle and reselect again.
Paired with untitled (papoose), 2010, Grand comforter presents the crazed conversation about the ease of online shopping and selecting comfort from your lounge room chair or La-Z-Boy; whilst untitled (papoose), ponders the alternate question of how does one feel long term comfort? Images of being wrapped as a child, tucked away in bed, cuddled by another or even nestled on a soft cushion? The artist pairs the emotive comparison with a now beyond learned, innate behaviour - can we feel comfort without buying?
Exhibition text: Bundles, Podspace Gallery, 2011.