Many of us will remember how much fun Patrick Pound’s ‘The Great Exhibition’ was at the NGV in 2017. The show provided many opportunities to discover connections between disparate objects and images and was a huge crowd pleaser. Patrick was due to have an installation as part of PHOTO2020, but COVID-19 has caused this major multisite photographic exhibition to be cancelled. However, I can’t think of anyone in a better position to embrace the current art challenge than Patrick.
I caught up with Patrick last week when he was installing his solo exhibition at STATION Gallery. He has decided to respond directly to the current situation and the specific peculiarity of presenting an exhibition that no one can attend. While the world is locked down (and locked out of galleries), ‘The museum of there, not there’ will stand alone, unvisited but not unseen. The silent and empty gallery spaces will be filled with a vast scatter-piece spread across the floor and walls.
During the installation Patrick seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He was surrounded by archive boxes containing all manner of objects and photographs. I remember when he spoke to us as a group how passionate he was about finding things online. Over the years he has amassed a vast collection of other people’s photographs, everyday kitsch objects, books and ephemera which he then arranges and ‘orders’ into telling juxtapositions to create a greater, albeit imagined, logic. Through this process, banal and quite disconnected moments are elevated to become humorous, poetic and insightful reflections on the human condition.
Patrick has been developing ‘The museum of there, not there’ since 2002 and it is perhaps his largest museum of things. As he describes it: “It occurred to me that a lot of art is essentially about representing something that isn’t actually there. ‘The museum of there, not there’, takes this as its starting point, its challenge and its limit. Rather than making things that capture the world, I set out to find things that speak of the possibilities of capture.”
The photographs and other objects in the exhibition each express an idea of presence or absence. The museum contains a constellation of objects: a portrait of a family whose heads have been cropped out, a commemorative jug for a Royal occasion that never took place, a scale model of a missing plane, coins from a cancelled currency, a VHS of the TV show ‘Lost’, a ghost image, an ejector seat, a snow dome of a long ago destroyed stadium, a mourning brooch, a rubbed out drawing, a cancelled library book, and an envelope stamped ‘Return To Sender’. The objects are an assembly of cast offs, found in the street, the opportunity shop or sourced through eBay. As Patrick says: “‘The Museum of there, not there’ is full of things that make the absent present and the present absent. It is full of apparitions and disappearing acts. Every representation is, after all, something of a conjurer’s trick.”
Included in the exhibition there is also an installation compiled from Patrick’s vast collection ‘The museum of air’, which contains photographs and objects that capture an ‘idea’ of air. It is, of course, another collection of something you can’t see: ‘air’. For Patrick: “The world is a puzzle. My work seems to say: if only we could find all the pieces, we might solve the puzzle. (It’s a folly I know). The collection is my medium. Putting things together is an art of sorts”.
As a whimsical, poignant and provocative meditation on life at the moment, it really is a show for the times. Patrick’s show can be viewed online at: https://stationgallery.com.au/exhibitions/patrick-pound-2020
Special thanks to Patrick and Samantha Barrow from STATION gallery for their assistance with this post.
Thank you so much Michael for your interesting posts.
Everyone of them is a stimulating read during these strange times.
Patrick Pound’s sense of humour matches mine. His way of seeing the world really appeals to my sense of the absurd. He uses simple but complicated ways of categorising the ridiculous ways humans interact. I agree that this exhibition displays very poignant messages for the present situation. We sure are “there, but not there!”
Much appreciation for your research and work.
Patrick Pounds’s Great exhibition was a joy and I loved taking visitors around – particularly our Art and Memory group. he has a delightful sense of humour and an eclectic mix of material that adds an other dimension to his story telling.
Thank you Michael for all of your work and your insights.