Potential Energy:

A junction of unrealised projects

Kathy Zhang, Hal Witney, Kayla Piris & Olivia Gates

Curated by Claire Costello & Matilda Skerrit

27 - 13 DECEMBER 2020

Potential energy is energy stored within objects, awaiting its release through movement or transformation. Like a compressed spring, the objects in this space contain the burgeoning force of potential energy, ready at any moment to flourish into their next forms - whatever shape they may take. Together, the artists and curators of Potential Energy collaborate in an attempt to locate the places where potential energy is held in creative work. 

Potential Energy presents previously unseen tests, sketches, and works-in-progress of four emerging artists from Canberra and New South Wales. In the eternally fluid space between concept and creation, we witness streams of abandoned projects, unrealised ideas and creative debris that inevitably result from the artistic process. Working in ceramics, painting and glass, these four artists expose some of the most vulnerable stages of their processes, pinpointing moments when their works hold potential energy, which may or may not be released in the future. 

While it is usually an incomplete, unfinished, or otherwise unseen work speaking to these ideas, sometimes more resolved works also capture something messy and immaterial, having been left deliberately open, unfinished, ambiguous, or broken. Each of these artists bring a different interpretation of what it might mean to be ‘finished’ or ‘ready’ to present work to an audience. Welcome to this moment, when we remember that energy is never created or destroyed, but in a constant state of change and movement, showing itself in the making of things. 

Potential Energy is accompanied by a 3-part serial zine entitled Come As You Are which distills and meditates on some ideas which have arisen during the curatorial process. With every week of exhibition, one part of the zine will be released and made available in the Tributary Projects gallery.