The Facility began as a glimpsed building along Gnangara Road, one whose purpose was unclear.
It lingered in Elliott’s memory so he travelled back to Gnangara, and its infamous pine plantation on the outskirts of Perth, to view the site once again. The building was gone. He tried to recreate it in models and paintings, to remember its form and to guess its purpose.
Elliott created seven sculptural models of the building, each one becoming more tenebrous and bleakly gothic than the last. Painted studies followed, often using the models for inspiration, and then the inhabitants, inmates and overseers, appeared as separate portraits. The landscapes that housed the facilities are unstable; in the major painting of the show (Tunguskan Facility) an exuberant growth of succulents fills the foreground. In others a fevered spawning of detritus surround the facility lit by sullen skies. A series of battered trucks to service the facility were sculpted, then a causeway for them to travel upon. Three legged chairs were crafted, some sprouting strange growths, that seem imbued with the personalities or stories of the facility. A series of brooding collages, based on these works and combined with found images, were created along the way. These strangely compelling images have been collated into a DVD slide show. Together these works form The Facility, an installation of misshapen memories and dark visions.
"The Facility is an abbreviation of its working title 'Memories of The Facility'. The work is intended to read almost as forensic material, gathered for unknown purposes but all relating to multiple 'remembered' experiences at a facility of some kind. These recollections have common denominators but vary wildly from straight but odd documentation to the darkly fantastic. The purpose or machinations of this facility are not clear, nor are the roles of those whose fragmented recollections are here exposed. In keeping with my ongoing concerns with that of fakeology, that is, the development of utterly fictional museum-like artifacts and images, it could be said that The Facility exists as a form of poetic abstraction of places in the actual, or at least perceived, world." (Elliott, July 2012)
A 'facility' implies a kind of official status, an architecturally defined, discrete precinct dedicated to a set of nominated activities. Nuclear, training, medical, scientific, defence - all these offer a reason, perhaps a context, but not an explanation. In this show there is the suggestion that the facility intimately involves people, there are few facilities that do not, but not what that involvement might have been nor to what end.
The images and objects contained within this show are about presenting a body of common but sometimes conflicting presentations. The buildings and their environments may be documentary, they may be manifestations of disconnected memories or indeed they may be more about emotionally enhanced reflections. The hybrid animal/vegetable structures might be Dr GM-like actualities or they may be fevered imaginings. The Facility is perhaps ultimately about the nexus of fact and belief, the vividness of experience in tension with empirical review, and concerned with the plasticity of memory and its subsequent effects.
Stuart Elliott prefers to live outside the city centre, locating himself in rural Bakers Hill for several years, and more recently to Parkerville, about 36km from Perth. His work has had little exposure outside of Western Australia, exceptions include the 2007 Focus exhibition at the MCA in Sydney, a 2006 solo exhibition at the Depot Gallery in Sydney and a sculpture triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria. The number of group exhibitions he has been included in since 1976 is over 150 and his solo exhibitions now number 19. In 2011 he won the Cossack Art Award and he was awarded a major Creative Development Fellowship in 2005 by the Department of Culture and the Arts. Many important collections house his artworks, including the Art Gallery of WA, Sanyi Museum Taiwan ROC, Curtin University, University of WA, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University, WA School of Art & Design, Alexander Library, City of Bunbury, City of Perth, Royal Perth Hospital, BankWest, Kerry Stokes Collection (Australian Capital Equity), L&L Horn Collection and the Holmes a Court Collection.
Stuart Elliott is also a highly respected local visual arts lecturer, curator and writer. His enormous contribution to the arts in Western Australia was formally acknowledged in 2010 when Artsource presented him with the inaugural prestigious Life Time Achievement Award for Visual Arts. This is not to imply that Stuart is anywhere near the end of his artistic career, but he is definitely one of Perth’s most important senior artists.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
This website is an archived record of the exhibitions and artwork shown at the gallery. - Turner Galleries acknowledges the Whadjuk Nyoongar people as the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters where Turner Galleries is situated, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
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