This artist wants you to leave her exhibition feeling odd – and ‘squished’

Résumé détaillé

How did Warrnambool Art Gallery lure in-demand British artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley to south-west Victoria? Its director told her she could do whatever she wanted.

British artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is at the frontier of the contemporary, working in interactive installations and video games. Her CV is global: she has exhibited in prominent galleries in London, Los Angeles, Berlin, and now Warrnambool.

The last one seems incongruous. But the blurb of her new show opening this weekend at Warrnambool Art Gallery highlights that as a point of pride: it’s “a collision between artists whose practices, on the surface, seem incongruent”.

The show, titled Dreaming myself into a future that was worth living, features the work of Brathwaite-Shirley alongside two Australian artists – Sydney-based video performance artist Shaun Gladwell, and the late Birri Gubba and Darumbal painter Gordon Bennett.

Brathwaite-Shirley says she ended up in Warrnambool simply because director and curator Aaron Bradbrook reached out to her, and offered an irresistible proposition. “Aaron said, ‘Sure, you can experiment, and basically do whatever you want,’” she says. “I could do things I’ve never done before.”

The result is an energising mix of voices revelling in discomfort and atonal harmony. “I like this notion of a collision of ideas,” says Bradbrook. “I like bringing in artists who have completely divergent practices.”

Here, Brathwaite-Shirley largely steps away from her video game practice. Her main contribution is the architecture of the gallery itself: a bright-red labyrinth that disorients you as soon as you step in. The show is presented in several rooms with no order, and no labels. Paintings are hung too low. Walls are oddly shaped. Spaces connect strangely. Bennett and Brathwaite-Shirley’s works are mixed in together.

“Other people’s artwork is the medium that I’m using,” she says. “It’s like every piece is kind of interrupting the room.”

Brathwaite-Shirley cites contemporary horror as an inspiration – Kane Parsons’ film Backrooms, of course, for its liminal, eerie nowhereness; Mark Z.

One room hides two Bennett paintings, Terra Nullius (1989)…

Début de l'article, extrait de Brisbane Times. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.