Cover: Squeeze (Detail), 2016. Fabric, resin cast objects.

Left: Seeping touch, open mouths (Detail), 2016. Fabric, resin cast objects.

Text by Ben WatersPhotographs by Emily Hornum

OOZEKimberley Pace

23 April - 8 May 2016Paper Mountain

Kimberley Pace’s work is never easy to look at, sitting on that fine line between being incredibly beautiful and repulsive at the same time. Her work elicits a response that plays on the abject. “One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit]” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 9). This joy is linked to jouissance and affect. “One thus understands why so many victims of the abject are its fascinated victims—if not its submissive and willing ones“ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 9).

It celebrates the theatre of the body, seemingly transgressive in nature, it often enacts visceral responses from viewers, operating on many levels through seeing, touching, feeling, and hearing, much like the ultimate of human connection, sex itself.

She works directly with the body through draping, folding, stitching and casting. She uses garment as an extension to the idea of body parameters where anything worn on the body becomes a part of the body, these are indefinable blurred spaces.

Squeeze (Detail), 2016. Fabric, resin cast objects.

Pace states “The corporeal body (the material physical body) is not confined by the

boundaries of skin. The surface of the body is not like a Tupperware container sealing off our

insides, snapping everything hygienically shut inside. It is a marginal place.”

Acknowledging taboo she avoids the obvious literal bodily sites, as these are tropes for shock value, and are bound with suggestion. Instead opting for more erogenous zones, the lips, fingers, and feet. In fact she celebrates these as adornments or growths that replicate themselves and spread all over these incredibly laboured couture garments, poking, pushing, squeezing out of these hand stitched folded bodies of fabric. Accoutred with beads and fake pearls, she uses a visual language that would sit comfortably inside an adult shop,

but she transforms these garments into a kind of bedecked epidermal growth.

Pace works as scenographer, not only directing the audience to areas or

zones of the gallery, but she also utilizes the ultimate of narcissistic devices, the mirror, to direct your eyes to these erogenous places. They make you feel comfortable, they say ‘it’s ok to look’, but is it? The subsequent gaze of the onlookers contributing to the

thresholds of the body.

Seeping touch, open mouths (Detail), 2016. Fabric, resin cast objects.

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection (L. S. Roudiez, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.

Schneider, R. (1997). The explicit body in performance. London: Routledge.

“Gaze beckons and simultaneously denies, invoking possession at the

same time that it expands into an infinite, inaccessible dreamscape… a

distance across which desire can be constructed as unsatisfiable, and so constructed, can work its magic as

the unending drive to accumulate, appropriate, possess, acquire”

(Schneider, 1997).

Pace’s use of such devices, both revealing and denying the body, almost forces fetish, albeit benignly upon the viewer. But ultimately she is in control. She is well

aware of what she allows us to see and what she denies us.

The ambiguity of the body undermines our own perception of what is taboo and what is not, and with Pace you never know how she will confront you with another taboo, one you didn’t

even know you’d be bringing to the opening.

Squeeze (Detail), 2016. Fabric, resin cast objects.

Acknowledgements

Paper Mountain would like to thank their magnificent Gallery Attendants:

Amy Grasso, Aya Jones, Ben Yaxley, Carolina Koszelski, Caroline Forsberg,

Crystal Lim, Daniel O’Conner, Danielle Blackwell, Emeline McGrath,

Emily Mycoe, Grace McKie, Hayley Anschutz, Jane Verran, Jasmine

Uitermark-Thaun, Jenni Gray, Jenny Scott, Jessica Scallan,

Karl Halliday, Kate Thresher, Kayla MacGillivray, Laura Folan,

Laura Vermeulen, Leah Robbie, Lizzie Bruk, Mathew Siddall,

Miranda Johnson, Nathan Tang, Phoebe Mulcahy, Valleri Foster

The artist would like to thank:

Corey Galea, Emily Hornum, and all models that

participated for life casting and photographs.

Upstairs, 267 William St, Northbridge

info@papermountain.org.au

papermountain.org.au

Paper Mountain is an artist run

initiative co-directed by:

Claire Bushby

Desmond Tan

Johnson Doan

Kali Norman

The Operations Team:

Adam Paskos (Finance Manager)

Alex Tate (Marketing Officer)

Bridget Bathgate (Studio Manager)

Desmond Tan (Communications Manager)

Jasmine Uitermark-Thaung (Media Officer)

Johnson Doan (General Manager)

Krista Tanuwibawa (Media Officer)

Indi Ranson (Marketing Officer)

Mark Wahlsten (Graphic Designer)

Mark Robertson (Graphic Designer)

Olivia Tartaglia (Events Manager)

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