porous, 2024 — Lisa Kurtz

porous

porous was the second joint exhibition by prelingually d/Deaf photo-video-installation artist Katrina Garvey and hearing photo-video-projection artist Lisa Kurtz. The exhibition brought together site-specific works by each artist, in conversation with one another.

Following Hear/Here, porous continued an exchange around communication, perception and space.

There is nothing inherent in a space that makes it deaf or hearing. Space exists in time, as events woven together from the actions of people being in the world.

This exhibition considered how hearing and d/Deaf bodies can un/intentionally be gatekeepers, intermediaries or couriers in spaces. porous not only referenced the experiences between the artists, but also the way the audience connected those experiences.

Using the materiality of light to express process, communication, culture, intimacy and distance, the artists invite the audience to amplify the works as they move through the exhibition space with a heightened attention to porosity.

Firstdraft Gallery, Woolloomooloo

Artist Statement: Lisa Kurtz

Paper becomes both image and surface, blank sheets of paper falling through space projected onto a single suspended sheet.

The work grew from thinking about how communication can remain structured by hearing conventions even when speech is absent. Katrina and I often communicated through written language due to my lack of Auslan, but this still asked her to meet me within a language system shaped by hearing culture.

In Untitled, the paper is emptied of text and released from its usual communicative function. Blank sheets endlessly fall through the air. They move through space as material rather than message, shifting attention from carrying language to carrying gesture, movement and spatial relation.

The work intentionally resisted an immediate reading. Positioned in relation to Katrina’s work across the gallery, it asked the audience to make connections between the two works, to take on some of the labour involved in reaching towards understanding.