Guest curator Glenn Barkley selected the artworks in brick vase clay cup jug by typing the words of the exhibition title into the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ online collection database, retrieving objects linked only by a word or medium. Unlike the typical approach to making an exhibition, where works are grouped conceptually according to meanings or historical associations, this selection process is non-hierarchical and echoes the random groupings seen in gallery storage. Usually guided by pragmatic considerations—maximising space and access or caring for the collection—these incidental groupings can create inspiring and surprising links between disparate objects, art-handling equipment and exhibition furniture.
Barkley has then taken cues from these search results, either aesthetic or conceptual, to cast a wider net through the collection, creating new connections—many of which are personal, visual, intuitive and emotional—between artworks.
In addition to the 270-plus collection objects, the exhibition also includes a new iteration of The Wonder Room, a house decorated with terracotta tiles made by communities of the Shoalhaven, NSW in a project with Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, Nowra. A video work by Dean Cross, Untitled (self-portrait as water and clay) 2015, on loan to the Art Gallery, is projected inside this space.
