{"id":3998,"date":"2022-05-16T00:11:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T00:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2022-11-29T06:18:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T06:18:01","slug":"holly-block-its-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/16\/holly-block-its-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Holly Block | ‘It’s Love’ (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Text featured in Holly Block’s 2022 solo at Off the Kerb gallery.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\u2019s Love<\/em> (2021), like the oeuvre of multidisciplinary Naarm\/Melbourne-based artist\u00a0Holly Block, sits outside the canon \u2013\u00a0 subverting the curated and pulling past the discernible.<\/span><\/h5>
Her installation assembles familiar aged objects – a chair, subway tiles, dolls, a mirror – which hold enough common language to conjure inviting energy. Block overlays their facets of reality with newly awakened elements, then steps away, granting their autonomy. Such maternal intervention creates an enigmatic atmosphere, begging curiosity.<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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It\u2019s Love<\/i>\u00a0arcs on an incubation between artist and material locating and releasing a previously hidden emotional vibration. In the studio, Block anchors herself to communicate internally and aloud with her hunted and gathered materials.\u00a0<\/p>

Through this private ritualised correspondence, she opens their desire, her love preparing a passage that no one has given them before.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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While Block’s previous work, such as Techno-Romance<\/i> featured in RMIT\u2019s FutureU<\/i><\/a>, communicated a defined social critique, her current work resists specificity. Instead, she embalms intuitive, rather than a conceptual, language. Block affixes herself to the installation, including her childhood dolls and referencing (and rejecting) parental pressure for self-perfection. But her sense of self never intervenes. Instead, her presence serves as a muscle to languish for the universal, with her practice flexing spiritual give-ways.<\/p>\n

To achieve this, Block embodies her central figures, two dolls humanised by a tender embrace, with psychological complexity. The emotion of these flawed, discomforted, precious bodies – the searching eyes of \u2018the baby\u2019, the dented head of \u2018the mother\u2019 – transfer a transgressive power which ascribes delight throughout the installation. Block honours their desire to nourish and nurture. One monstrous form loves another.<\/p>\n

Reformed and shifted, her objects embrace their monstrous selves. Connected through their relationship, Block clears them from her care in their altered state as It\u2019s Love<\/i>\u2019s gravity centre, the things are independent on the other side of their creation. She then can sustain a fondness for them without proximity to their stage, allowing them to reveal or withdraw at their will.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\u2019s Love\u2019s <\/i>staging pulls at perception. Its surreal composition with little aesthetic refinement carries charm and unease. While Block taps into the magical realm of a toy, the dolls never satisfy in their form, nor does the barred-back, worn setting echo the multiverse to which they belong than beckon the unrecognisable. Behind the dolls, a mirror with a vintage frame smeared with Vaseline obscures reflection. On inspection, the words \u2018You are beautiful\u2019 become apparent.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Distanced from reality, the installation dismembers time. The room presumes abandonment while still a home. The dolls don\u2019t evoke nostalgia but an omnipresence: a child holds a child, mothering and being mothered. The mise-en-sc\u00e8ne of the tactile d\u00e9cor circularises history: harking to the ancient, the afterlife, the 1970s of Block’s childhood, an ageing museum exhibit, a contemporary stage. Overlapping between imagination and reality, the It\u2019s Love<\/i> maintains a foreboding continuation beyond its own image.<\/p>

In this work, Block bridges vulnerability and control: the need for the quantifiable at odds, alluring the unseen on a personally open-ended journey. The objects hold-and-release perception, but their performance stops before the crescendo. On a precipice, the viewer feels tension to close the distance of their awareness as It\u2019s Love<\/i>, with tenderness, slips between the tangible and triggers an occurrence of something beyond.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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About Holly Block\u00a0<\/em><\/h3>

Holly Block lives and works in Melbourne and is a currently studying her Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at MARS gallery (Melbourne) and Seventh Gallery (Melbourne), and has exhibited at Spring 1883 (MARS gallery), George Paton Gallery (Melbourne), Dirty Dozen (Melbourne), Trodadero Art Space (Melbourne), Darwin Visual Arts Association (Darwin) and Viewpoints Gallery (Bendigo). She has over 13 years experience as a dancer, choreographer and performer and been awarded an arts grant for Maribrynong Council for new works. In 2014 she established Tribe for Art, an artist collective, shared studio space and community for mothers who were artists. Her work has been published in The Sleepover Club, January 2016 and Precinct 15, 2015\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Holly Block\u2019s practice is multidisciplinary with a focus on video, photography, and performance. Block\u2019s most recent practice explores the impact of technology on human behaviour sexually, socially and romantically with a particular focus on dating applicants such as Tinder. Her oeuvre has deployed reoccurring motifs of skin, hair and hairlessness to explore her own subconscious knots around sexuality, femininity and personal power, while her background in psychology and choreography inform her interest in the performance of gender and identity, seeking to reveal the instability of these states. Moreover, her works suggest that as much as these performances are for others they are also performed for ourselves and this slippery oscillation between the personal and the social imbue her work with an uncanny resonance.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Critical analysis written by Tahney Fosdike<\/a> in consultation with the artist. <\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holly Block’s ‘It\u2019s Love’ (2021) pulls at perception. Its surreal composition with little aesthetic refinement carries charm and unease. The dolls never satisfy in their form, nor does the barred-back, worn setting echo the multiverse to which they belong than beckon the unrecognisable. Behind the dolls, a mirror with a vintage frame smeared with Vaseline obscures reflection. On inspection, the words \u2018You are beautiful\u2019 become apparent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[359,377],"tags":[16,41,495,15,19,496],"class_list":["post-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","category-editorial","tag-art","tag-contemporary-art","tag-holly-block","tag-melbourne","tag-melbourne-art","tag-subversive-art"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_7382.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Pso7-12u","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":72,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5543,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions\/5543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}