Nervous Systems Ben Pearce

A lone school chair and blackboard have been reconfigured into sculptures that represent the tension between the physicality of the human body and the ethereality of the mind in Ben Pearce's installation Nervous System.

Pearce says while the installation is set up like a classroom, this is more of an organising system for his works than the subject of the exhibition. However, it is a useful entry point to it.

"The classroom is the first societal structure we experience outside the home, therefore I find it interesting to be presenting this one inside a gallery space," he says.

"School for me is not so much about childhood, but about how it influences us as adults and the memories it holds. A part of ourselves always remains there and it influences the way we are in the world and the perspective we have as adults.

"Some of the works in the installation have started as found objects. My work is then to unlock a different reality that is trapped within the object, but not visible to us. In many cases the objects have been stripped back to the bare bones, becoming a skeleton of what they were before. It is a fight between the mind and the body, with the body gradually becoming obsolete," he says.

Pearce likens visitors to the exhibition to archaeologists, who won't necessarily recognise what they're seeing to start with, but who can slowly uncover the secrets and meanings of the exhibition as they look.

20 April 2011: Artist Talk

Click to download text by Karl Chitham (PDF)

Click to download the exhibition text (PDF)

Presented alongside Angela Lyon Boy Love – Dummy Heart and Ana Terry and Don Hunger Indigo Blues.