Dean Kenning, Rosie McGinn: Hyper-Deflation

29 Sep-4 Nov 2023

PV 21 Sep 2023, 6-8pm

Overview

Dean Kenning, Rosie McGinn 
Hyper-Deflation

As the continued failure of capital unfolds and the last deflationary tactics peter out, we find ourselves in this rhythmic death-driven dance of bust and bust, crisis and collapse, inflation and deflation. Kenning and McGinn present two of their early seminal works; the Helsinki Diagrams from the Diagramming Politics series (2017, +Untitled, Rubber Plant 2020 Kenning) and Howse (2018, McGinn) Both works deal with the deflationary; in economic, political, and emotional and literal senses.

Kenning’s chalkboard diagrams take on a methodological approach that combines the diagrammatic and the allegorical, premised on the notion that one thinks through drawing. The work is a proposition to engage with visual representation as a means for artists and researchers to analyse, compare, question and propose models of politics and desire. Kenning's (Untitled) Rubber Plant a kinetic sculpture that wobbles with nervous violent energy, a pseudo-autonomous art object that the artist describes as having a  'compulsive aesthetic' 

McGinn's Howse is a giant, handmade, leopard-printed bingo woman, inflatable sculpture. As the air flows through the nylon structure the woman rises, her arms flinging out to each side, mimicking the frenzied moment of winning a full house. The image is of McGinn’s grandmother, who is now banned from her local bingo. Terrifying in scale and presence, while maintaining slapstick humour, Full Howse captures this moment of euphoria. The deflating of the body punctures the joy and the fleeting moment of escapism is gone.