Behind the James and Eleanor Avery moniker are two artists with quite distinct sensibilities and artistic pursuits. When they do operate in unison, this collaborative duo are best known for their large-scale and multi-sculptural installation projects which engage the viewer in the physical and emotional terrain of ‘armchair tourism’. Glossing over their combined CV, the pair have enjoyed most their accolades, financial bursaries, residencies and exhibitions here in Australia. Themes of movement, diaspora, alienation and expatriation central to the pair’s roving careers and personal lives ties in all too well with their key conceptual concerns: “notions of days out, armchair tourism and cult ideology, mixed up with a science fiction aesthetic.”1

That science fiction-cum-futuristic aesthetic is achieved through vinyl monoliths that contort and stretch to the ceiling like inanimate interplanetary visitors that find themselves personified as the awkwardly tall man in a low-ceilinged room. Some figures buckle and arch to fit themselves into the gallery space while others simply sit steady on the gallery floor, resembling a human or animal more overtly. A black cloud suspended from the ceiling by visible wires, machine-gun-like object protruding from its underbelly, hangs menacingly above the viewers head, invisible from sight if viewed from certain vantages just like Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet. If it is a future that the Avery’s are referencing, it is a depraved and empty one, where shiny surfaces conceal deadly spikes, visual illusions are created with mirrors, and supernovas need steel frames to support their gross weight. 

The concept of mass is central to the Avery’s work. A strange and twisted version of gravity prevails, where large objects appear to float while seemingly hollow shapes require buttressing. This creates an outer-space feeling of mass where one is never quite sure of its true value. The perspex spire in the Supernova installation, for instance, is both physically and emotionally weighty. At once disturbingly familiar and completely exotic, this work references childhood memories of park visits and one of the tourist’s stereotyped experiences of a foreign city. The topiary we might expect to find in the centre of the circular seating is instead a towering spike whose surfaces reflect the gallery surroundings. At once grand and sophisticated, it could equally have been created with a rolled-up piece of children’s glossed cardboard. There is a strong feeling of experimentation in all of the Avery’s work which pushes both the physical boundaries of the gallery space and the mental barriers between experience and observation. 

The Our Day Out series predates many of these surreal sculptures and is less abstract in both principle and practice; recognisable figures are cut from familiar objects and detritus. City limits (2005) employs a camping tent and cardboard, fur and vinyl to create a scaled-down model of a city. The focus of daytripper (2005/2006), my highlight of the series, is a large cable car pod. It tours a gallery floor strewn with flatpack mountains, an artificial stream, timber picnic tables and a vending machine, drawing attention to the simulacra of the vacation experience and the changing nature of tourism. This dialogue works in with conversations the Boxcopy collective have themselves engaged in on occasion, most notably in Grid North, an immersive installation piece which simulated the experience of conquering a great mountain in a very flat way. 

Site-specificity is obviously important to James and Eleanor Avery, a factor which probably made them all the more appealing to Boxcopy and all the more appropriate for their tiny exhibition space. Within the Avery’s exhibition oeuvre, two kinds of gallery space are represented: highly constricted, confined spaces that emphasis the scale of the works and large, voluminous spaces that both dwarf the sculptures and cleverly create the illusion that they might soon double in mass like a transformer. Within this oversimplified dichotomy, Boxcopy’s gallery fits with the former.

The work created for Boxcopy, The Golden Hind, is an installation consisting of three parts: an intricate golden thread drawing which weaves between two walls, a black sculptural form suspended from the gallery ceiling, and a projection work visible on the gallery floor. The pair have successfully utilised all of Boxcopy’s workable surfaces: walls, ceiling and floor to monopolise, rather than dwell, on the spatial limitations of the space. Formally, The Golden Hind is like a tasting plate of the Avery’s practice. Each individual piece is at once compartmentalised and part of a bigger narrative. The thread assemblage is perhaps the most captivating element, partly because it is not entirely visible upon entering the space. With most gathered around the moving image at their feet, it takes a minute to acknowledge the other two elements in the room. The thread feeds back and forth between two walls to fashion a porous third surface in the gallery’s far right corner. Its positioning in the gallery is reminiscent of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, resisting the Western preoccupation with the wall-mounted frame. Using the tightness of Boxcopy’s walls to their advantage, the Avery’s configuration of golden thread resembles a web - vast, loose, delicate but strong, and with that perfect randomness only objects of nature have.

This association of the thread with an actual insect’s web is given further impact when viewed in unison with the hanging sculptural work. Resembling a chrysalis that some ominous flying creature might hatch from, its black reflective surfaces are eery. The projection site counterposes these two minimal, industrial elements by projecting images of lavish religious iconography and repeated crucifix motifs. Use of a screen allows for clarity of image (uninterrupted by the lines and grain of the hardwood floor) and is installed to be flush with the floorboards underfoot, giving the projection a sense of innateness with the building. I don’t know the origin of the images or their intended purpose (apart from the obvious reference to cult ideology), but when viewed with the Avery’s Our Day Out series in mind, one might identify them with the recently-returned traveller’s never-ending slideshow as well as the arbitrariness of iconography and the numbing effect steady repetition can achieve.

“This is as good as it gets. An armchair tourist fantasy. A spectacle in irony. Better than the real thing. We’ve reclaimed the landscape, made it ours, yours, something to share.”2

1 http://www.schwartzgallery.co.uk/site/?p=2008

2 http://www.ourdayout.org/projects.html