Concordia gallery is a site of possibilities.

It recently revealed some of these possibilities in an arrangement of contemporary art and archival objects in an exhibition titled 149; Watching Time Take Form. The exhibition opened in Concordia Gallery on Tuesday 4 September to a Sydney art and education audience. The gallery was open to the public daily from 10.00am–3.00pm excluding Sundays. The exhibition included two installations from Aniss Fakhri, a room video projection by Sarah Jamieson and digital photography from Alex Kiers.

As the curatorial statement suggests, the intention of the exhibition was to acknowledge the journey of Newington’s 149 year history in anticipation of its Sesquicentenary. Artists selected specific archival images and objects which they responded to in light of their own artistic practice.

The exhibition engaged three spaces within Concordia to communicate ideas of the past as a means of becoming the future. The first room was pierced by two bows of victorious Newington rowing boats standing vertically obedient, as a suggestion of the discipline required by the sportsmen. It also displayed a human scaled black kaleidoscope which presented some of the 1866 Astronomical Lantern Slides (as discussed in David Roberts’ article in this edition of Black and White) in a steady rotation. The second work by Fakhri in this first room was a hovering 2.5 x 2.3 m concertina photo of students in the Newington gym in 1935, an image depicting a repetition of suspended bodies. Two large scale wooden gymnastics bars from the archive further mimic this rhythm with their shadow and own horizontality. They lean against the back and side wall, altering the viewer’s line of perspective. These dominant objects of strength and presence are precariously positioned to reflect their role in the College’s history.

Sarah Jamieson’s practice has traversed film, photography, installation and architectural interventions. For this exhibition she employed the curatorial lens of change and development to directly engage with the physical and philosophical position of the gallery and its relationship to the school. Jamieson often seeks to provoke new conceptual and pragmatic possibilities within the framework of pre-existing opportunities. Within Concordia she repositioned a small office-style room into a film projection. Jamieson used the blinds as a screen to project another representation of the blinds; the work looked out to Newington as a provocation for the kind of generative relationship Newington and Concordia might have concerning art and education. The audience peered from outside the room through the glass and observed the agitation as questioning; a trembling of anticipation.

As visitors followed the long line of the exhibition signage they were taken to a previous life of the gallery, the third exhibition space. The flooring changes from commercial carpet squares to cement, the walls change from brick to unpainted MDF and a light indicates the beginning of a lineage. A series of tables serve 11 black velvet Rugby caps dating from 1884, ending at a digital print of a face with only sunglasses and hair. This rearranged chronology and faceless end point allowed viewers the chance to consider the future possibilities of these players and men.

Standing on the eve of the school’s 150th Anniversary, 149; Watching Time Take Form, celebrated the accumulative nature of history and held historical objects critically as a means of both reflecting on and orientating a future trajectory.

The exhibition was supported by the expertise of David Roberts, Newington College Archivist. Many thanks to Andrew Thompson, Head of Visual Arts, for his logistical assistance and patronage.

Ms Hannah Burns
Curator of 149: Watching Time Take Form