Our response to art works is guided by what we are shown. This exhibition has set itself up to examine a certain type of ‘showing’ that the artists engage in, a self-showing. It goes beyond using the self as subject (as in portraiture) but rather positioning the self as a vector, a space in between the object and the subject that is simultaneously in contact with both. The intentionality is not so much to-be-individual as to-be-iconic. It is a self conscious positioning that is considered and deliberate and pertains to the structures of appearance.
The broader theme within which is situated the decision of which artists to invite is a self awareness by the artist, a consciousness of 'being among beings'. A presencing of artists in and through their work in an environment that is urban and edgy. Recognizing the diversity of positions the exhibition sets up series of dialogues on the overlapping themes that emerge from the juxtaposing of a group of individual artists.
A house of mirrors is an uncomfortable space where a visitor is confronted by distorted images of themselves. They are forced to experience views of themselves, and if we play with words – their views – reflected back at them but changed. The exhibition will attempt do something similar by creating a space in which a viewer has his or her views, opinions, thoughts, ideas reflected back at themselves but differently, through another interpretation (sometimes humorous and at others satirical, nasty, ironical)