Reveal & conceal investigates the psychological manifestations of abuse and trauma that reveals itself in broad and multilayered states of distress. The investigations of these three artists lead to questions about how the complexity of these issues can be navigated. The collaboration acknowledges the deep failures within institutional governance and the scale of human damage. They explore themes that articulate the disturbed, dis-associative, displaced, disaffected and disillusioned. Through text, architectural abstraction and distortion of figuration, the gallery space becomes haunted with suppressed memories and ruptured identity. At first there is a palpable sense of discovering a nightmarish truth, followed by a cathartic and liberating state of comprehension.
Amanda Laming utalises text components that are a combination of observations sourced from psychology research and autobiographical writing that constitutes a personal narrative. Laming exercises censorship by blanking and veiling some areas of text and using layering and collage as a means of revealing and covering.
Paul Candy investigates the value of articulating a psychological observation through the abstraction of sound and space. Candy has used both a narrative and anti-narrative framework to depict the tension between forms of internal and external states of being.
Simon Crosbie work is an autobiographical piece. The softness and delicacy of wool reinforces the notion of innocence and vulnerability. Underlying is the theme of nurturing, or its absence. The long tentacle like sleeves, are simultaneously delicate and grotesque. The perpetrators arms surround, smother and threaten.