#05 OUT ISO/GROUNDED | Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro

Titled Don't Shit where you Eat, the work draws inspiration from the 1974 Surrealist comedy Phantom of Liberty by Luis Buñuel and Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century Decameron, ruminating on social cues, conditions and consequences of pandemic induced isolation.

Healy and Cordeiro are Australian artists who reclaim and transform the fallout of consumer society in their practice. Combining a playful sense of humour and an engagement with art historical precedents, their work is characterised by the deconstruction and reinvention of prefabricated structures and the assemblage of accumulated objects into extraordinary sculptures and installations. Their practice reflects a preoccupation with the dynamics of global mobility—the networks, standards and financial systems that enable and restrict the movement of people and goods in the modern era. Creating tensions between order and disorder, their works are shaped by traditional sculptural concerns such as mass, form and scale, however they also incorporate the expressive potential of motion, speaking to the way things move and change over time.

In-conversation with Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro available via Apple Podcasts here or Vimeo below.

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EXHIBITION INFO

CLARE HEALY + SEAN CORDEIRO
Don't Shit where you Eat
2021
polyvinyl chloride, acrylic paint, cardboard

DSWYE is a common enough aphorism. Vaguely speaking it requests the listener not to cause trouble within situations that affect one’s life position. The phrase has been interpreted within a range of meanings from ‘Treat the earth with kindness’ to ‘Don’t have a romantic entanglement in the workplace.’

The idea of an office romance during the work from home era of covid isolation is laughable. An illicit affair with one’s spouse sounds like a comedic episode from the Decameron. Yet it may be Boccaccio’s 14th century plague-era tale that best teaches us about our own pandemic circumstance. Broadly speaking, the Decameron was an expression of the masses’ loss of faith in the church due to its ineffectiveness against the ravages of the Black Death. Will there also be a similar post-pandemic loss of faith in the institutions of our contemporary age?

The digital concertinaing of work life and home life has thrust our industrial-age routines back into a cottage industry existence: toiling away at home with children under foot, while #BLM and the #MeToo movements have rattled the hegemony of White Patriarchy.

What will be the long-term effects of this virus? Right now, there is a possible branch of a future reality that takes the iconoclastic lessons of the Covid era and forms a socially and ecologically sustainable framework to live within. Our ability to change and adapt to our circumstances is proof that we have what it takes to face the challenges of our age. The world has gone topsy turvy but we are still standing (just).

It is with this spirit that we question current social mores: A half-eaten takeaway pizza lies abandoned in a bathroom. This vision creates a schism in our mind like a scene from Luis Buñuel’s 1974 Phantom of Liberty in which a party of guests sit upon individual toilets while chatting around a table, meanwhile down the hallway, a man furtively dines inside a concealed closet. Something breaks within our mind, and we wonder ‘what the hell am I doing?’

The stress and strangeness of this pandemic-age just might cause us to snap out of our collective Stockholm syndrome and finally admit that the Emperor is in a state of undress….

Courtesy of the artist.

claireandsean.com
@clairehealyandseancordeiro

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Cordeiro and Healy live and work in Sydney. The duo each received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) (1997) and a Master of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. In 2005 Healy and Cordeiro were awarded Australia Council residencies at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, and Tokyo, Japan. In 2006—2007 they were Guest Artists at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, having been both awarded the Samstag Scholarship. In 2010 they participated in the residency program at the Akiyoshidai International Artist Village, Japan. In the same year they took part in the inaugural Art Setouchi Festival, Japan. In 2017 they were invited by Massey University to undertake a 6 month residency at Te Whare Hēra in Wellington. In 2018 they were Asialink funded artists in residence at Tenjinyama Studio in Sapporo. Their Solo exhibitions include flatpack at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2006, The Paper Trail at the Art Gallery of New South Wales 2007, PREMS at La bf15, Lyon 2009, Are we there Yet? at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC 2011 and a survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2012. Healy and Cordeiro’s installation Life Span was part of the Australian representation at the 53rd Venice Biennale. They took park in the 5th Auckland Triennale, curated by Hou Hanru. In 2018 they exhibited two major new works at the Australian Biennial of Art in Adelaide. In 2018, they debuted their major public installation Cloud Nation in Green Square Library, commissioned by The City of Sydney. Most recently, they unveiled their latest commission Tower of Power at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 2019. Upcoming Public Artworks include Place of the Eels for Parramatta Square, 2022. Upcoming exhibitions include a new commission for The 2021 Oku-Noto Triennale in Japan and a solo presentation scheduled Post-haste for The Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.

Cordeiro and Healy are represented by N.Smith Gallery, Sydney.