Glenn Walls

13 July - 6 August 2011

Glenn Walls - Project 2011

This exhibition extends the concepts developed in my 2007 exhibition Superlost held at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne. The title refers to our current level of consumer-driven consumption and the idea of being lost in our super houses filled with super things. The intention of the work in the show was that all objects exhibited would have some connection to the period in which Italian architectural group Superstudio was active (1966–78) but would be placed in a contemporary context.

In the exhibition was the work I am one of God’s mistakes (2007). The text is taken from American photographer/filmmaker Larry Clark’s (1943– ) photograph of a girl holding a book titled I am one of God’s mistakes. The image appeared in his book Tulsa, which was released in 1971.* In the work the mirror surface of Superstudio’s The Continuous Monument: an Architectural Model for Total Urbanization project in 1969–71 was used. Their use of the mirror was to blend their monumental building with the natural environment. However, the intention of using a reflective mirror was to give back a distorted image of ourselves. Many of us are fundamentally concerned with the image we give to others. By looking into the small cut mirrored text we are unable to see an image of ourselves. Our reflection is broken, indicating that we may indeed be ‘one of God’s mistakes’.

Utilizing the modernist designs of architectural and text book covers from the 60s and 70s, the use of Superstudio’s mirrored surface is continued in Superlost again. Again we see a reflected image of ourselves as we read the clinical titles altered in order to create an emotional or narrative connection with this form of design. In modernist architecture we consume things to humanise the space. Within books my interest in the humanisation of modernist design and theory is manifested in these covers in which I injected a quote from English writer Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) that counteracts the seemingly accepted view of the world the original titles perpetuates. This continues my interest in how society has and continues to humanise modernist/minimalist theory and practice to reflect a true interpretation of the individual.

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