Jerico Contemporary is delighted to present ‘STILL DIGGING IN THE DARK’, the gallery’s sixth solo exhibition with Australian artist Luke Chiswell. Opening Thursday March 2 and showing until Saturday March 25, ‘STILL DIGGING IN THE DARK’ represents the most distilled showing yet of multidisciplinary artist Chiswell’s signature sculptural works, otherwise known as trophies.
In ‘STILL DIGGING IN THE DARK’, Chiswell’s heightened reverence for the notion of process-as-art has prompted a renewed focus on his early mark making, a self-perpetuating record of tries and fails.“You think there’s a finish line but there just never is a finish line,” says the artist. “There’s something nice in that as well. You never get there.”
Here, Chiswell returns to his formative materials with 12 wooden works, along with one trophy cast in aluminium and another, for the first time, in bronze. The creation of the title piece in a material of inherent value can be seen as an assertion of the artist’s magical thinking, despite the presence of doubt.
In many ways, ‘STILL DIGGING IN THE DARK’ represents a homecoming for Chiswell. Having made much of his oeuvre in Los Angeles and New York City, Chiswell worked with a foundry near Sydney to create this exhibition’s metal works. The wooden pieces are the first he has made in a new studio on shared Country close to his hometown of Collector, NSW. It is a deviation from the makeshift, quickly disassembled creative spaces to which the artist had become accustomed. But Chiswell has maintained a sense of motion in his practice, urged onward by the mantras that have made their way into his works.
The artist’s asemic text, referencing his dyslexia, presents as a cyclical conversation through dark nights of the soul. Followers of Chiswell’s work will notice a return to familiar affirmations in No Good Good, Last Try and No End. It’s true that repetition begets progression but, for Chiswell, the action has always been the reward.