Quincunx

Solo Exhibition at TCB.
Brunswick, Victoria.
April 19 - May 7 2023

Images: Aaron Christopher Rees

Text by Jack Coventry and Elsie Preston:

There! Against the wall leans the house painter, his emerald overalls glazed with many medallions always. “Have you seen my brushes?” He squarks at the carpenter. A wall with a doorway, a double stud and lintel. A cross brace nods across the room to the interlocking of chevron and herringbone parquetry. Point us toward the theatre of construction. The labour is not enough, it must be varnished, silken, strew and stretched. For the deft carpenter, paint proves to be a most useless tool. What use is the illusion of depth when I, in hand, wield a chisel? Why draw attention to flatness when structure and sturdiness is all I need provide? Look for the face of five on a dice and you’ll find a quincunx. It’s here too, as a geometric pattern. A quadrilateral with a central point. The quincunx is the blueprint of equal branching, projecting oneself out into each cardinal or diagonal direction. A symbol of possibility or a false promise of an infinite directionally. See pinecones, see sunflower seeds, see the organisation of planted trees. The carpenters brush plans woods made in perfect order. A painting of a landscape intervened with, the romantics chapel and the centre of a compass become one. It is this shape that articulates the working hand, the building hand, the intervening hand, the encroaching hand, the polluting hand, the hand that feeds and the hand that takes. All hands build the chapel under a watchful eye.