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Germany opens its eyes to us in HELP ME, I AM BLIND
What’s familiar and what’s different about Australia and Germany? What can a
German photographer and Austrian architect and writer tell us about our urban
environment? How can technology bring us closer together despite being
geographically apart?
These are all questions that Heidi Specker and Theo Deutinger ponder in their new
exhibition at RMIT Gallery, HELP ME, I AM BLIND, which opens tomorrow (29
July) and runs to 11 September.
An award-winning, Berlin-based photographer, Ms Specker’s work features in
international museums and galleries. Based in Rotterdam, Mr Deutinger has an
international reputation for his provocative essays on globalisation.
The collaboration between artist and writer is the result of an intense exchange of
images and text via email over 28 days, while Ms Specker was in Sydney in 2009
as an artist-in-residence. Photographs of her immediate prosaic experiences
spurred Mr Deutinger to speculate about this unseen life – resulting in the poetics
of divergent responses.
RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies said HELP ME, I AM BLIND provided
unexpected juxtapositions of Mr Deutinger’s texts, which transports Ms Specker’s
quotidian images into speculative realms.
“A luminous blue plastic bag on a sink, the glistening oil slick on a road, an
abandoned supermarket trolley or a plate of scones, jam and cream set for
afternoon tea, are given fresh resonance and prompt the viewer to consider how
very strange the familiar can be,” she said.
“HELP ME, I AM BLIND is about the creative dialogue between two artists, and
creative trust as neither artist had the full picture of what the other was doing. Yet
what emerged is a vision that spans continents.”
Ms Specker said she and Mr Deutinger wanted audiences to see that they could
lose their blindness about what’s around them through the eyes of another. They
will be at RMIT Gallery and available for interview from today (28 July) to Monday,
3 August.
They will participate in a seminar on 3 August from noon to 1pm; “Where on
(Google) earth are we?” with architect Gretchen Wilkins (Editor of Distributed
Urbanism; Cities After Google Earth, 2010) and poet Ann Shenfield, (You Can Only
Get So Close on Google Earth, 2010), and Professor Paul James, Director of the
Global Cities Institute (RMIT).
For media enquiries, photos and interviews: RMIT Gallery Media Coordinator,
Evelyn Tsitas, (03) 9925 1716, 0418 139 015, or evelyn.tsitas@rmit.edu.au.
28 July, 2010
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