double lives : duple trials: Another Artist (Sydney, Australia)

Concept

Curated by Diana Ali

d o u . b l e . l i v e s

d u p . l e . t r i a ls

A Visual Arts Exhibition at The Malt Cross, Nottingham.

www.maltcross.com

16 St. James Street, Nottingham, NG1 6FG.

12th-25th February 2011

Private View 11^th February 2011 630pm-late

Monday- Saturday 11am-6pm.

A ‘double life’ conventionally is a life of two identities where one is simultaneously involved in two sets of circumstances and retains the secrecy of one from the other.

The exhibition is an exploration of the two sets exposing dichotomies of fiction and reality, mirror images and opposing forces. ‘Double lives’ cater for a parallel existence whether it portrays deceiving acts or insatiable fulfillment and can as subtle as a pen name or as exaggerated as the secret identity of a super hero; ultimately why are they adopted?

Rene Descartes and Gilbert Ryle both contest from separate perspectives that our biographies- mind and body- are divided but co-exist in parallel without being the same entity.

Artists have been invited to expose their work investigating functions of duality, such as alter egos, multiple personalities, parallel universes, secret relationships but where double lives exist, privately or publicly.

With thanks to Russell Slack.

The Donor's Gift.

Donors Gift (2010) exposes the idea of giving and receiving within the context of a public institution displacing Derrida’s criteria for a free gift in relation to the function of the art museum and its benefactors. The work looks deeper into the psychological nature of this reciprocity. Jacque Derrida suggests that the notion of the gift contains an implicit demand upon the giver and the receiver. The exchange becomes an imposition for the receiver, and evenly becomes an opportunity to take from the giver.

Donors Gift questions the intentions of the giver giving for any other reason than to receive acknowledgement from the institution. The work lays out the formula that can be followed by any institution creating the individual act of giving as a marginalised and gratuitous act, by taking away the act of glorification.