Insignificance

Insignificance is a collection of works by Carole Best.

It celebrates the unimportant, the broken, and the transient.

Over the last few years, artist Carole Best has been photographing inconsequential things in the course of her daily life and writing small stories to reimagine their importance.

The stories are designed as metaphors for social exclusion, political disenfranchisement, prejudice and powerlessness experienced by all of us at some time in our lives. They are, in part, autobiographical, satirical, absurdist and fictional.

There are three groups of work in the exhibition.

1) Photographs and stories sorted into the five categories of:

• Wounds, scars and transgressions
• Delible and indelible marks
• Corners and inescapable places
• Lost, abandoned and set aside
• Shadows, reflections and light ephemera

2) Moon portraits and an illuminated moon orb
3) a floor projection by video artist Andrew Brettell.

Each story ties the location of the 'insignificant' event with the transit of the moon. This provides each occurrence with a 'significance' for what would otherwise go unnoticed, be forgotten or discarded.

The exhibition theme relates closely to Wabi-sabi, the Japanese Buddhist concept of existence involving impermanence, suffering and emptiness.

It also draws attention to the formalised systems and processes used by galleries, museums and cultural institutions to assign value and importance to their collections.

This process, known in Australia as Significance 2.0, influences our understanding and assessment of excellence, beauty and value.

The exhibition will be available online at Insignificance.com.au from 24 September.

Opening night Friday 27th September, 6-8pm.

Continues until Sunday 13th October.

Gallery open Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm.