atmo-spheres

Francis Kenna

Generator Gallery, Belconnen Arts Centre

Opening: 6pm Friday 16 Febraury 2024

Exhibition: 16 February – 28 March 2024

Artist Talk: 2pm 16 March 2024, registrations required

What kind of thing is an atmosphere? Atmospheres materialise and form under certain conditions, an delicate nvelope of space that we can inhabit, only to shift and collapse like bubbles in a foam. One possible answer is to think of atmospheres as a kind of quasi-object: hovering and indeterminate, they exist somewhere in-between us and our surroundings. Nature is not static; space is fluid.

This exhibition takes these transitory states of atmosphere as a place to begin questions around the mutability of space and our own experience. In the meeting of light and matter, the shifting states of water and air, the works explore of the passing of time and our awareness of it. They encourage movement and tactile experiences to consider our experience of atmosphere, asking the viewer to experience atmosphere as a temporal meeting between a body and their surroundings. These are rooted in the complexity of our own perception of the world, and the feeling body as in-habitant of space.

About Francis Kenna

Francis Kenna is a Kamberri/Canberra based interdisciplinary artist. Kenna engages a number of different media to explore our experience of space and perception, temporality and the body. Through installation, light, sculpture and printmaking Kenna’s practice foregrounds the body within the world and the limits of perception. His works ask the viewer to pay attention to temporal and atmospheric phenomena, such as ephemeral effects of colour and light, changing states of matter, and the unfolding experience of our surroundings. Kenna lives and works on Ngunawal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands and acknowledges these lands were never ceded.

Website: www.franciskenna.com

Instagram: @francisjkenna