The inaugural exhibition for ACCA @ MIRKA featured 20 ‘circle head’ portraits and three ‘mirror works’ by Stuart Ringholt.
Ringholt’s images resemble the effects of retinal lesions: a kind of blindness – yet re-vision. In these works he played with the viewer’s perceptions and assumptions to create a double-take. His visual strategy is to destroy the ‘gestalt’ of an image which would otherwise be familiar or banal, so that the viewer must refresh their apprehension of things. There is also a strong psychological aspect to Ringholt’s works, particularly his altered mirrors. The viewer seeks self-identification and narcissistic confirmation, only to have a gaze returned upon them through these odd, coloured eyes added onto the representational surface. The mirror is cracked wide apart by these double visions that amalgamate the eye and the gaze where the ego is usefully sundered.
Commissioning Curator: Juliana Engberg
In the Press
January, Art Forum, Stuart Ringholt
14 February, The Age, Portraits on the menu
March, Art Almanac, Melbourne
