Past exhibitions

AGNSW Contemporary Project

The Gallery’s entrance court is its most public space, traversed by hundreds of viewers every day. But whose space is it? Is it ours or is it yours? In her wall-to-wall project for the entrance court, American artist Kay Rosen conjures with these big questions of possession, occupation and cultural territory.

Rosen has emblazoned one side of the entrance court with YOURS OURS, a vast word painting in which two pronouns – ‘yours’ and ‘ours’ – struggle unequally for ownership of the available wall space. On the even larger facing wall, Rosen takes a small detail from YOURS OURS and blows it up to colossal scale. Called AREA OF DETAIL, this work was inspired by the maps of global trouble spots and disaster zones that appear in newspapers, which often feature an ‘area of detail’ magnifying the site where the action is.

The result is a floor-to-ceiling triangle of blue whose corners are occupied by the letter A, R and E. Read clockwise in a continuous loop, they at once stake out and spell out this piece of disputed territory (A-R-E-A spells AREA). Rosen does not declare who this piece of the map belongs to, but its scale makes clear, as she says, that it is ‘the site of something happening’.

Part puzzle, part proclamation, and part concrete poem, Rosen’s project is the latest addition to the Gallery’s long-running series of contemporary projects. Rosen is also represented in the Gallery’ collection by the recently acquired wall painting BLURRED.

Note: The opening date for this exhibition has changed to 12 April 2015. The Gallery apologises for any inconvenience.

AGNSW Contemporary Projects are supported by Andrew Cameron