The same crowd never gathers twice

Test the limits of the ‘arena’.

Arenas are the physical spaces where we come together to witness—and participate in—public life. Figuratively speaking, they embody a multitude of ‘fields’: zones of interest inviting active or competitive engagement. Every arena holds a sense of possibility or uncertain outcome, yet its activities are shaped by specific conditions. Strategically positioned barriers separate spectators from participants. Vantage points delineate roles. Hard structures screen ‘backstage’ areas from public view. Implicit codes, temporal cues and choreographies guide individual interactions and group dynamics. Whether looking on or joining in, we take comfort in knowing the rules. 

Spanning moving image, sound, sculptural intervention and performance, The same crowd never gathers twice tested the limits of the arena. The artists considered the social and structural architectures that define these spaces, and by extension, the elastic relationship between performance and reality, audience and participant, public and private. Like theatres, sports stadiums and ‘the media’, the art gallery was an arena subject to its own specific conditions. Unfolding over five months, the exhibition invited visitors to consider their own roles, expectations and ways of being inside this space.

Gallery

Exhibition Artists

Cate Consandine, Angela Goh, Riana Head-Toussaint, Laresa Kosloff, Yona Lee, Taryn Simon, and students from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

Hear from the Artists

Yona Lee’s site-specific installations use the material language of the public realm: industrial plumbing, electrical conduit, handrails and barriers that guide, support and restrict movement through shared space.

Watch the video to hear more about how the artist explores and twists the language of space, blending public and private in this new commissioned work for Buxton Contemporary.

Working across film, performance and sculpture, Cate Consandine’s practice explored the physical expression of psychological and emotional states, centring on the relationship between bodies and their contingent registers.

Hear Cate discuss her film, RINGER, which invites the viewer to grasp at the forces and encounters that reach toward the outer limits of the visual field.

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