Anthony Elliott Baker’s practice is a tracing of transconnectivity of things, exploring the bonds and miscommunications objects attain in the experience of the art encounter. Baker’s installation and sculptural practice aspires to interact with contemporary psychoanalytical dialect considering the value of dissociation in the process of artmaking and the encounter of art as opportunities for personal and collective reflections. Residing in Brisbane, they are completing a doctorate in Fine Art at Queensland College of Art.
From cement mixers filled with ball-bearings on timed circuits creating chaotic noise simultaneously reminiscent of a calming waterfall depending on proximity installed at Enoggera Reservoir for Open Actions (WHEN IT DOES IT WILL ALL COME TOGETHER, 2019), to installing a seven meter spinal configuration of a tensegrity acting as a digital theremin with projected live infra-red video feed in the Gatehouse of the notorious Boggo Road Gaol (BOUNDLESS REFLECTIONS, 2020), offering the gallery go-er to dissolve sugar-cubes in a suspended basin sink with pungent off red wind (ON WAY CORE, 2019), or walking through the Brisbane CBD in a cage on wheels after recent lock-downs, Baker’s work oscillates between Interpassivity and audience participation. Value is placed on the private evocation of thought and contemplation in competition with visceral responses for the subject as material to regenerate action.
2021 SWELL ARTWORK – Transmuting Beyond Uncompassion For The Other Of Up Or Forward, Anthony Baker
Kenneth Snelson’s tensegrity structures suspend solid objects using interrelated points of tension holding together form of the object. Before this threshold of equilibrium there is nothing. If a part is over-tensioned, the object collapses. The poetics of the structure’s physical attributes are remarkably relevant considering global relations during this pandemic.
We are melancholic suffering the loss of the world we knew. As we look to new horizons, or the constellations we must consider our responsibilities as global citizens when asking how are we to construct our futures.
Instagram: @toneartaeb
Website: www.artaeb.com
Come and see for yourself at SWELL Sculpture Festival, Pacific Parade, Currumbin 10-19 September.