Material formations and body movements is an evolving performative sculptural-installation by Melbourne artist, Ardi Gunawan. For his new work, Gunawan reconsiders Allan Kaprow’s Yard (1961), which involved a load of car tires piled into the courtyard of Martha Jackson Gallery and included the instructions ‘rearrange the tires’, encouraging visitor participation with the work. These instructions did not specify or graphically indicate to visitors where, why, or how to go about in rearranging the tires, leaving no clear indication as to what forms these body movements might end up producing in the resulting material order.
Material formations and body movements is neither a reenactment nor reinvention, but a re-using of Kaprow’s ideas in Gunawan’s own terms, for his own sculptural purposes. Gunawan invites Boxcopy committee members to enact various scored activities, such as to throw, to pile or to move the material or junk found on site over the duration of the exhibition. The material configuration, as a result, is formed by a variety of chance events. This project continues Gunawan’s experimentation with materials as they are being encountered by methods involving provisional gestures: piling, throwing, and etc, and where other coordinate: entropy, matter, energy, and chance is encountered.
Gunawan has recently completed a Master in Fine Arts by research at Monash University and is currently undertaking a two-year studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. His practice involves sculpture, object-based intervention (or installation), performance, self-publishing, and collaboration, focusing on the material encounter with processes of art’s production. He also writes instructions and scores using chance methods, such as the I-Ching, which involve throwing coins or dice for the construction of his performative acts. His last performance work was Sculptural Relations: embodiment, event, forces, and material performance at Monash University Postgraduate Gallery, where fellow artists were asked to participate in the material re-arrangement of the exhibition.