'It’s a Jungle in There'

Media Release: For Immediate Release 7.02.06

The Show: ‘It’s a Jungle in There’

The Place: ROAR Gallery, 55 Abel Smith St, 1st Floor, above ‘Real Groovy’, Wellington

The Dates: Opening 5pm Thursday 16th February running to 5th March 2006

The Cost: Free. Nature is for everyone, explore at your leisure.

The Artist: Sian Torrington, former fashion designer, now for your experiential pleasure transforms a white gallery space into a real, living place, where you can wander in the woods, post your truths and send a postcard home.

While normal life ran along its usual paths and business continued as normal, in a little studio, far, far away, something was growing.! Whilst the beleaguered artist worked to keep the wayward drawings fixed to the page and flat behind the glass, the growing things had other plans. And in the night, a forest grew, and became the walls all around…

This Fringe, the undergrowth is emerging. Sian Torrington, in her inimitably eclectic magpie style, presents shiny things glittering amongst paper leaves and branches. She creates the chaotic forest which multiplies behind every tidy door, beneath every polished floor. Using the forest as a metaphor for the unexplored subconcious mind, and the almost obsessive repetitive practice of making as a way to explore the patterns of routine with which we attempt to order our lives.

Made of paper and cardboard, this installation explores the boundary between rubbish and treasure. It explores the notion that making art is a personal form of collection, gathering and hoarding the things which catch our eye, and by placing them togethe! r, finding some collective meaning. It also explores the idea that the things we make have a life of their own. Cut strings of leaves are allowed to fall and drape from the ceiling, throwing their shadows against the walls.

This show, in congruence with ROAR Gallery’s focus on outsider art, works with the idea that making art can be equated with making and exploring a world of one’s own. Private and solitary, the studio becomes a repository of physically expressed unconscious thought. To experience this world is to be a part of this world. The forest is all around you.

ENDS

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