Chaos in face of uncertainty

SETTINGS FOR UNCERTAINTY – by Kelly Austin and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson Rosny Schoolhouse, Price range: $1000-$6400, Until September 18

This is an interesting one – Kelly Austin and Amber KorolukStephenson recently showed at the same time at Bett Gallery, but the exhibitions did not overlap. This new iteration explores what happens when a painter and installation maker works with a ceramics creator in a non-standard space, and it’s a revelation of sorts. KorolukStephenson keeps pushing out at the edges of her painting practice and making threedimensional objects that have much in common with traditional theatre sets or large playhouses for children. Her works are knowingly artificial, objects that exist suggest interpretation and context as important considerations. Similarly, Austin’s ceramics are carefully arranged sculptural presentations – they may look like they can be utilised but if carefully examined, it’s form that actively resists being functional. Austin’s work is particularly thoughtful and captivating; there’s a complex aesthetic being utilised here that involves objects and how they relate to one another: shape, density, material and context are all utilised to create tiny abstract vignettes. Each piece is created with great precision, and the feeling is that nothing is being left to chance, and that meaning is strongly implied. Along with her ceramic works, Austin offers some abstract collage-like images that again use earth tones and controlled shapes. Austin’s art offers a sense of stillness and even safety in its use of order – but we cannot avoid that this is artificial.

Koroluk-Stephenson’s work also dances with notions of the real and the unreal. There’s a considered kind of uncanny sensibility, but there’s also a juxtaposition between an overriding artificial sense of prettiness and order while in the background we can see fires and yachts sailing under the full moon.

Alongside these, Koroluk-Stephenson has scattered the exhibition with houses – cute, sweet little stylised images of houses that no-one lives in. It’s tempting to read this literally as anxiety about the problems of housing that confront so many in this era, but that’s too much of a limitation when so many worries and anxieties exist.

What’s being gestured to here is the order we create in our lives in the face of chaos, and how it works and how it doesn’t. We look for a way to reach for control and it works to some extent, but there is always chaos and randomness, always the possibility of disaster balanced with a hope for survival.

This show is really satisfying – there are so many potential ways to engage with it, and with the way the works inform each other. We might understand this exhibition is one that asks us about the need for order and structure in our lives, but it might also be about choices and how we blind ourselves to complex realities by making structures that obfuscate and hide reality.

It’s also just really, really good to look at: both artists are very talented, making works that both please and unsettle at the same time, and the works have been beautifully installed in the Rosny Schoolhouse.