Ideas Platform Opening | Parramatta Artists Studios: 'to look each other in the eye'

Join us for the opening of to look each other in the eye in partnership with Parramatta Artists Studios in the Ideas Platform.

to look each other in the eye is the seventh annual Parramatta Artists Studios (PAS) presentation at Artspace. Featuring Owen Leong, Ali Tahayori and Jodie Whalen, this edition explores the relationships between desire, intimacy, personal histories, and altered states of being

Alluding to the proverb ‘the eyes are the windows to our soul’, the exhibition invites the viewer to pass through portals or membranes to look inwards (and outwards) into our internal and introspective landscapes. Through sculpture, video and photography, the artists remind us of the role of optics and positionality, and that how we each see the world is distinct and able to morph, fracture or transform. To look someone in the eye is to hold them in a reciprocal exchange. Sometimes this connection is within the lens of intimacy and sometimes of power, or both. To gaze is to see and be seen, to have oneself reflected and refracted back in an act of comfort and discomfort. Offering both moments of revelation and concealment, the works offer thresholds into the ways we see ourselves and each other.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing partnership between Artspace and PAS that sees the two institutions work together to support artists in Western Sydney. Each year the exhibition in the Ideas Platform is launched alongside the annual NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging), reflecting the creative synergies of contemporary practitioners working across New South Wales.

Opening night
Thursday 4 July, 6–8pm
Artspace, Sydney