Chapel Perilous was erected on the blacken’d earth of bushfire country; red brick sanctorium girt by charred stumps that encroach upon the northern shore. Light cracks through the garage door, as the tyranny of distance releases its chokehold on the new century.
We prepare an altar in this suburban Sydney garage, unable to distinguish between coincidence and intervention. Gawain arrives as the Black Hand douts the lonely flame. You seek refuge here en route to the Final Boss and await the passage of the storm.

Five artists gather at the steel-line roller doors, bestowing offerings to an uncertain present. iPods laid upon a Noguchi table as iDols to Aphrodite/Aphroditus, Samsaric cycles of un-beginning diagrammatically rendered in Picsart, a UE Boom suspended from paracord - camera cum (lol) phallus, the Angel of Air beseech’d in After Effects.
Yet did these black Salomon XT-6’s in ancient times / dance upon the Invocation for Clout?
Or scuff their gore tex heels on the concrete,
and singe their mullets on naked flame.
We are unsure.


Featuring:

Invocation for Clout in the Sydney Art Scene 2k21
by Felix Ashford

Invocation for Clout is a ritual of desire. Clout is the vital elan that sustains my Being. The galleries I name drop here are sacred (non)-sites of totemic power. Meditate upon them like they’re the 72 names of God.

you’re in the scene but are you like...in the scene tho lol

Pray for the scene. Light a candle for the ones you love. Light another for the ones you envy.
The concrete beneath your triple black Solomons is hallowed ground. Stand before the Bacchanalian altar and drink of me me me.
uhhh yeah mate can I just get the Young Henry’s please. Cheers.

...for this is the blood of the everlasting covenant.

Invocation for Clout presents an (attempted) cosmography of the entire Sydney art scene, splayed out across the garage floor like a yantra (Sanskrit trans. literally "machine, contraption".) Every gallery from Campo to Parra is ordered according to Clout, framed as different stages of spiritual progress in a transcendental system -

but lo! progress towards what ?

Be silent at first. Kneel before the scene. Let these places become names. Let these names become incantations.
And then, finally, dance upon the blacken’d earth of this scorched temple. Trample over these goetic sigils of social influence. Link and (re)build. The work is not a static subject of contemplation but an active instrument of ritual and performance.

agnetha
by Jorja Rynne

i know it without a picture in my mind,
there is a reciprocity of being held and holding,
it is
the mysterious pull,
the thread of resonance
that moves through all things,
a transmutation into softness,
and a vocation to the liminal,
i drop into a place of knowing,
and it holds me,
i drop into a place of knowing,
and i hold

or is the camera merely a phallus?
by Lara Wilkinson

‘or is the camera merely a phallus?’ explores the relationship between photographer and photographed, and is really more of an ongoing contemplation of the language we use around photography, to take a picture, to shoot someones image, than it is an answer to anything. The title of this work comes from a line from Orson Welles and Oja Kodar’s film The Other Side of the Wind, in which a character poses the question “is the camera eye a reflection of reality? Or is reality a reflection of the camera eye? Or is the camera merely a phallus?” The film toys with idea that the camera takes something from a person, aids in their decay the more their image is captured, until their whole being, their whole essence lies within the gelatine and silver and plastic of a cameras film. When you are the subject of a photo are you taking or giving? Are you penetrating or being penetrated? Do you lose something when you are captured, or does the camera not capture you at all? Do you steal something from your subject? Do you take its life? Where does its life lie now? Or did it not have any at all? Do you infuse your subject with vitality? Does the camera change you?

diagram research project
by Simon Harris

A diagram is a type of image that is an oscillator, the diagram is all images (all images are diagrammatic?) A type of image that if diagrammatically represented would overlap between report, architecture, art, narrative.

Imagine all the “categories” of culture, art, architecture, pop, science, music, myth, conspiracy, memes, etc. etc. etc. as layers in a monstrous pastry. The diagram appears to cut diagonally across this map of categories linking them all and pointing to a realignment of all of these categorisations.

the hopeful part of this all (hope is important) (pandoras box has been opened?) is that like (dada diagrams, conceptual art, etc etc many pivotal exceptional and privileged moments in history) diagrams are indicative of something new, something, unknown, a hidden potential energy out there that can be captured, drawn out and used to nudge and shove out of the "end of history", "entropy" and find the new?

Untitled (date night triptych) (the hosted body, my dinner guest, my newfound lover) (finding you in the throwaways of passion, congealed, a mass, a meal, satisfyingly substituted) (desperate whispered silence finds its way through my fingers, embodying projectile tension blowing into the ear drums) (love, love, and love itself)
by Lukas Kalos

Noguchi coffee table, iPods, in ear headphones, charging cables, glass ashtray
Dimensions variable

Tracing the moments before love as well as its beauty, grandeur and exclusivity, has always eluded people, artists and musicians throughout human history. Understanding these moments is to always reference past experiences; this projects a uniqueness of the moment, but never its viscerality. The work seeks to allow the audience to enter a narrative structure conducive to ‘love’; through masculine and feminine binaries found in popular culture, music, movies etc as well as memory holding objects like the iPod. Providing insight into the states of love, simultaneously happening, leaving them and beginning. Being with the space, then reacting to feelings within its existence and activities, then removing oneself and being left in silence, holding on to the memories until you find a space like it again.