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The Narcissist

Jade Venus

14th June – 15th June 2007

Gallery One

 

A video of a girl crying. A childhood anecdote embroidered on linen. Hand sewn cotton dolls suspended in the middle of a room. In this solo exhibition by Jade Venus, The Narcissist, the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and construction, memory and imagination disappear. Within a mix of video, written text and craft, notions of authenticity, performance and identity within the autobiographical are questioned. The artworks have all been constructed from memory, their accuracy indefinable, their ambiguity apparent. Fuelled by a self obsession that only narcissistic artists have, Venus' analysis of her life reveals a fluid and fragmented identity. Multiple selves exist simultaneously, with the internal conflict and self loathing of the artist leaving viewers uneasy. Coupled with the emphasis on the handmade, and the use of domestic fabrics, this intimate and emotional exhibition at Blindside Gallery, is vulnerable, confessional and poignant. Within Venus' autobiographical art, the inherently personal becomes and reflects the universal as anyone, someone or everyone has lived through and experienced these moments. 

Editions

This is me. Because I’m telling you so. It might not be clear, but I’m actually taking the photo. The facial expression is put on for the picture. It’s pretend. So maybe it is not me at all.

Spending countless hours alone plumbing the depths of my memory to find inspiration for art has created an unexpected condition. One would assume these durations of introspection would help produce for myself some great realisation of a hidden self truth (alas I am still searching). Instead I am presented with an unsettling mix of fact and fiction. The narrative of my life is in multiple paths; it is conflicting, fluid and transient.

‘The stories we tell about reality construe the real,rather than merely reflect it’

I like this quote because it quite neatly sums up my art practice. Autobiography is realised upon its completion. The artworks made for this show have now altered the experiences they may (or may not) have been based on. When I try to retrieve a hazy memory in the backlog of my mind and make some art to show what I think or feel or want or wish or lots of other things, the memory is then slightly altered. It is now remembered through the experience of making art (and of course the representation that is created with the art as well… and then what I think of the actual artwork too, I guess). Like layers of clear film, slightly altering the visibility of an object with each new addition, the veracity of memories and experience are just as easily tampered with. The authenticity in my autobiography is ambiguous. The level of performance, uncertain. The image I create of myself is too raw and honest to ignore, yet seemingly too constructed to believe.

This exhibition, for me, is a combination of contradictions. What is truth and what is imagined. What is origin and what is reflection. What is me and what is you.

(This entire exhibition is about me and yet you don’t know me at all.)

Jade Venus