Tanya Alexandra Richards: Sediments of Haptic Play, in the Art Factory

December 11 2009 — February 28 2010

 

Sight paints a picture of life, but sound, touch, taste and smell are actually life itself.Gill Sullivan

My time spent in wide and open spaces of Australian desert was not only of visual dimensions but of multi-sensory experiences of sight, touch, smell, taste and auditory senses.

The created spaces concentrate on an effect, wanting to alter the viewer’s conditioned perception, not by imitation but by reconstruction of spacial memories. The work is more about what it is not rather than what it is. These multi-sensory and multi-dimensional experiences of the installations are meant to challenge habitual perceptions and pre-conceptions by creating an invitation to new ways of seeing.  By approaching the work with a clear slate, free of pre-conceptions we learn to expand our range of the ways we feel, think and live. As the body is a site of all the senses, the immediacy of encounter becomes a multi-sensory experience. The senses translate each other without a need of interpretation or intervention of an idea.