REDBASE is pleased to present Self-Induced, a duo exhibition featuring Gao Rong and Ding Hui, a husband-and-wife artists from China. This exhibition highlights a diverse array of works from each artist, alongside their collaborative pieces. Since their partnership, they have focused on the artificial scenes of daily life, employing the variability and semantic characteristics of matter to reimagine physical forms. Their works establish critical connections between line, density, and the tactile softness of fabric.
The attributes of packaging, folding, and the plasticity and elasticity of sponges, combined with the labour inherent in human craft and the evolution of mental will, situate their practice at the intersection of geometry and nature. This complex interplay reflects reality while generating fiction, culminating in a self-adaptive body of matter and sentiment that intertwines.
Utilising hand-stitching techniques, Gao Rong and Ding Hui integrate personal perception and transformative processes into quotidian objects, articulating a journey that transcends the self and oscillates between the mundane and the artistic, as well as the practical and the poetic. By constraining the intrinsic functions of materials, they forge a dialectical relationship between the individual and the collective, as well as between poetic imagery and spiritual artefacts. This methodology adds layers of individual agency, serving as cues for contemplation on “signs” and “devices,” and ultimately presenting a poetic visual dialogue that reflects the complexities of the social landscape.
We pay our respects to the Gundungurra people who are the traditional custodians of the land. We acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging for their immense spiritual connection to place which was never ceded.