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BOX HILL 

SEAN LOUGHREY AND RAAFAT ISHAK (Five Walls Gallery 3A)

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Box hill is a collaborative project by Sean Loughrey and Raafat 

Ishak where Abstraction is held accountable to representational devices, namely photographic representation in a dialogue with a black box. 

Both artists have worked collaboratively since 1997 on a project titled Fan Flag. 

Fan Flag was instigated by a shared interest in the radicalism of non-objective art making. Whilst the work of El Lissitzky was key to the project from the outset, flags as motif, held sway in the space of negotiation between abstraction and representation. 

The core objective of this subsidiary collaboration attempts to amplify the unwillingness of abstract values to encompass representational aspirations. It is proposed as a site for great relief. A site for the expression of political will, indifference, and the privacy of self-determination. Collaboration is at once, an agreement between the artists, but further, it is intended as an exaggeration of the capabilities of abstraction to instigate a relational discourse.

Pipe Dreaming: A Tale of Two Rivers and Two Artists.

A collaborative installation project by Tracy Wise and Sean Loughrey, 2018.

Pipe Dreaming: A Tale of Two Rivers and Two Artists is a collaborative installation project by Tracy Wise and Sean Loughrey. (The Project Space, Deakin University, Geelong Waterfront)

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Both Artists highlight their connection to the Rivers and Ocean by telling their story visually through video, painting, photography and sculptural elements, including found objects.

Tracy Wise a proud Barkindji woman and artist, living in Mildura Victoria, where the Mighty Murray meets the Darling River and where Tracy was born, near Canoe Tree and Snake Island in NSW.

Sean Loughrey is an artist living in Barwon Heads, a coastal township on the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong, Victoria in Wadawurrung Country. Sean will highlight his experience of living close to the Barwon River where it intertwines through to the Ocean.

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‘Pipe Dreaming’ is an idea developed to acknowledge the future distribution of water while simultaneously referring to river systems and the containment of the natural world inflicted by Western society.

‘A Tale of Two Rivers' incorporates three parts. Part one focusing on Tracy’s personal history with the Murray and Darling Rivers. Part two focusing on Sean’s visual experiences living close to the Barwon River where it meets the Ocean. And part three focusing on the unification of both artists histories to highlight a common concern for the environment.

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Current discussion around river systems is complex. In a time of global warming and related environmental issues regarding water consumption it seems pertinent to creatively explore the related concerns. From such discussions has evolved the concept “Pipe Dreaming: A Tale of Two Rivers

and Two Artists”.

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Fan Flag 2001-

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This project began in 2001. The first installment was at Stripp Gallery, Melbourne, the second was at First Floor Artist and Writers Space, Melbourne.

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to David Rozetsky

 

Exhibition Proposal for small room- 1st Floor

 

Fan Flag

 

Fan Flag is a collaborative and continuous project by Sean Loughrey and

Raafat Ishak.

 

A sculptural component is central to this project and is in continuous constructrion. This involves each artist, in turn, adding to and substracting from its appearance. It has no final resolution, it remains in a state of flux. Its existence is contextualised during its inseption, in a gallery space, occupying the central stripe of a tri color flag; black, white and red.

The instalation is integral to the collaborative project whereby both artists

work simultaneously to present the object within the referential attributes

of the flag. Horizontally, it is the flag of Egypt. Vertically, it represents the

StKilda football club. Either way, it is abstract. The horizon an endless desert,

the vertical humiliating.

The central object attempts to amplify the unwillingness of abstract values to encompass representational aspirations. Hence, it is proposed that this becomes a site for great relief. It is a site for the expression of political will, indifference and the privacy of self determination.

The collaborative aspect is at once, an agreement between the artists, but further, it is intended to exagurate the capabilities of abstract means to instigate a relative discourse.

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