This project was made possible with support from the City of Perth.
Slackening Tension of the Soul is an exhibition of DIY furnishings by Lill Colgan and Jack Wansbrough. It includes recent textile and furniture works made collaboratively between Perth and Sydney. These are objects for slouching inwards, restless reading, and reclining without grace.
The exhibition is about domestic furniture, how we experience it through the body-mind, and how it might speak to our lived experiences. It explores the subtle, background function of these body supports. In what ways might a chair posture us towards, and naturalise broad systems of labour? What is the relationship of furniture to knowledge, attention and feelings? How else would we like to be held?Slackening Tension of the Soul follows our experience of a kind of research– one that is related to the internet and abundance – a research that is excitable, distracted, dubious, intuitive and spiralling. How does rest look against a background of abundant feeling, perpetual labour and excessive knowledge. How does it sit alongside casualised employment and compulsion towards activity, any activity, whether personal, leisurely or professional?
Lill Colgan is a multidisciplinary artist from Boorloo currently settled on Gadigal land. Their practice explores the ways normative social power shapes embodiment and considers how affects might be unpacked through transformative material play. Colgan approaches these ideas through a queer feminist lens, often drawing on personal experiences to generate work. Colgan graduated with a BFA from Curtin University in 2014. Since then, they’ve participated in multiple exhibitions and residencies nationally. Lill is currently a resident at Parramatta Artists Studios.
Jack Wansbrough is a multidisciplinary artist living in Boorloo. Working collaboratively, he uses research, replica and fiction in an eclectic range of mediums. Most recently he exhibited a collaborative installation with Oliver Hull at Private Island, he was artist in residence at Goolugatup Heathcote, presented a performance lecture at Critical Animals 2019, participated in Radiophrenia, Glasgow, and released a research/pop cassette with the Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council.