TEXT by Matt Glenn
Artereal Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Sydney artist Criena Court.
For her exhibition inside the project space, Court continues her investigation into systems and measurements of human perception, by presenting a series of sculptures and mixed media works using the lunar image as their anchor point.
The lunar image, and the deconstructions applied to it by Court, allude to an adoption of mathematical enquiry in attempting to understand and rationalize our relationship to space, scale and the vastness of what lay outside of reach. The pursuit of these enquiries offers insights not only in relation to our interaction with the immediate physical world, but also the concept of the macro universe and the psychological resonance this environment evokes- the tipping point where scientific reason must be reconciled with our experience of our self, our understanding and realized limitations- the inherent collisions of greatness and smallness, played out in limitless parameters.
In Court’s icosahedron structures, the mathematic attempt to construct/deconstruct is initiated. And while these systems of understanding may be mistaken for a desire to control, the artist, to the contrary, delicately applies them as a framework to illuminate the poetics of scale, and our fragile place in a cosmos of unknowable wonder. The beauty here is not in the knowing but the not knowing. The delight, as Sebald would suggest, in realizing that while the complexities of infinity and eternity lay outside of our ability to experience, they are things that we can fleetingly grasp.
At the dawn of the 16th Century, a Hunt-Lenox globe of the known world bore a phrase to mark what lay unexplored and uncharted. It read "Hc Svnt Dracones". It is in this fashion that Criena Court’s work plays a role in accessing the concerns of what exists outside our control. For "Hc Svnt Dracones"… ‘Here Be Dragons’.