SIDESHOW

2014

University of technology 
SYDNEY

The exhibition Sideshow curated by Isobel Parker Philip adopted the spatial logic of the circus sideshow as an allegorical blueprint for exhibition display. Popular from the 1850s until the mid 20th century circus sideshows presented individual exhibits in makeshift tents. The architectural logic of the self-enclosed spaces exploited tensions between concealment and revelation, it was conceived to cultivate anticipation and deliver shock. The fabric walls of the tents masked and unmasked displays of the exotic and the other; biological and or ethnological oddities were placed on podiums, peddled as human spectacles. Sideshow re-staged the exchange between the unseen and the exposed. A series of micro-exhibitions were contained within freestanding tents erected in the gallery. Pulling back the curtain, the viewer was confronted with a profusion of grotesque and manipulated bodies. In these partitioned and screened spaces the body became a curiosity and the object became a performative agent. Hazewinkel’s contribution to the exhibition Two Figures (after Caillois) 2013, comprised twin plater casts made from a 19th century bust refaced with almost identical slices cut from an agate geoid which formed through a geological process similar to casting.

Participating artists included Pat Brassington, David Capra, Christopher Day, Charles Dennington, Heath Franco, Andrew Hazewinkel, Matthew Hopkins, Emily Hunt, Anna John, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Polixeni Papapetrou, Sarah Parker and Tom Polo.