I collect discarded and manufactured objects, found while walking, and combine them into assemblages, mobiles and carefully catalogued collections. These works are explorations of material culture, or a kind of archaeology of the present that investigates the use and tactility of everyday objects. My work can be understood in the context of psychogeography, the mapping and exploring of urban zones with a slow-paced, curious and non-linear approach.
All you could hold is an assemblage of objects found in the city and the desert, and a cast bronze vessel. Each element in the assemblage is a record of action and gesture. The found objects were picked up on walks, and are archives both of places I explored, and of their own former lives. The bronze vessel, shaped in the hands with corrugated cardboard before being cast as a unique object, is a momentary gesture made permanent.
Rebecca Gallo is an artist and art writer working on Darug land in Sydney, Australia. She is a 2018 artist in residence at Parramatta Artists Studios, and has completed studies at UNSW Art & Design and the National Art School. In 2018 her work was included in From Here to There: Australian art and walking at Lismore Regional Gallery, and other recent group exhibitions include Near x Far at Casula Powerhouse and World Material at Darren Knight Gallery.
From 2014-15 Gallo was a co-director of Archive_ ARI in Newtown, and will co-direct Pari, a new artist-run initiative launching in Parramatta in late 2018. She is also an art writer, and one half of the artistic collaboration Make or Break with Connie Anthes. Make or Break has presented work at Artbank, Firstdraft, Underbelly Arts Festival and Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial.
cast bronze, found concrete, photograph, stone
25 x 10 x 10 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2018 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Michael Lynch AO CBE (Australian Arts administrator, former Director of Sydney Opera House and former CEO of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong) and Amanda Love (Director Loveart, independent Art Advisory).
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