Imprint

Imprint brought together works by three artists and one collective to examine the relationship of documentary and archival systems to performative, ephemeral and process-based practices. Through the interplay of performance, action-research, photography, video, installation and text, the exhibition explored a series of concerns embedded in the notion of an imprint: the character of a partial or secondary trace, the effects of repetition, contiguity and succession.

The relationship between primary and secondary registers formed a key thread between works. Broadly, this was evident in an emphasis on provisional, contingent scenarios and a self-reflexive approach to various modes of spectator address. The reiteration of ideas, materials and actions was another focal point.

In turn, Imprint considered the significant relationship these works bear to early conceptual and post-object practices. A number of concepts that were integral to these movements in the late 1960s and 1970s resurface here as contemporary themes. These range from the possibilities of dispersed or collaborative artistic agency, to an emphasis on the work of art as a dynamic situation, remediation and repetition as transformational gestures, and the operation of documentary materials and indexical systems. To this end, Imprint situated re-enactment practices and dialogues within a broader range of performative and process-based strategies as an avenue to consider shared points of reference in the legacies of art history.