Artists statment: Stephen Carley

I make stuff from poor materials. I make stuff so it won’t last and doesn’t
have to sell. I like things that evaporate or melt, crumble and dry out - things
that glitch and have to be rewound in order for you to listen to them again.
I’m sick of brash, slick, commodity driven art. I’ve lost the desire to make
‘art’ for the bloody living room wall. I’d  rather it was a miserable little 
fragment of non-descript ‘stuff’ than ‘proper art’. 

I think I like things to be humble and quietly shocking. 

 can you hear me now? has been about completely reinventing my practice, 
or what it aspires to be. Its been stripped back, exposed, made fragile, 
intimate, unstable, connected and vital. It’s now more deeply rooted in 
process and materials, collaboration and community, linked instinctively 
to concept and context. There is no fat here; I’ve trimmed everything back to
the very basic muscle and sinew. I’ve ripped off the excess. And also, it’s raw
emotion I’m working with, and the emotion is not mine, it’s yours, and that
feels strange and oddly privileged at the same time. Sort of like washing other
peoples dirty laundry in front of a huge crowd!

It’s been a complex, drawn out game I am playing in  can you hear me now?
Waiting, waiting, waiting... for a response... and every now and again there
would be a response that really switched a light on for me, that I genuinely
connected with. Other times the really banal responses were the most 
intriguing. But now and again there would be one that jumped of the page 
and yelled ‘use me’.

The title of the show has taken on very pertinent and specific meaning
for me. 2011 was a year of great unrest globally. In this country alone, 
demonstrations, riots and strikes have become commonplace. Being a part 
of these huge demos, going on strike marches and picket lines – the links are
clearly obvious in my work, especially in the more overtly designed pieces.
From my point of view  can you hear me now? has gone way beyond an
analysis of a public need to ‘confess’ or communicate. The contributions 
have become a vehicle for me to be able to articulate bigger political and 
social ideas in very subtle formats.

I worry at times that the pieces I’ve made for  can you hear me now? are just
words in the end, nothing more, nothing less. And I worry that I have imbued
them with some kind of meaning by using certain processes or materials, 
a meaning that really isn’t there at all? And I worry about whether it is a 
valid process – because you do, as an artist, worry about autonomy and the
creative voice. 

The very big unanswered question of course is do the pieces have a life 
outside of the context of  can you hear me now? Personally – I have a hunch
that  can you hear me now? cuts at the very core of what contemporary art is,
what it’s for, who its for, how it functions, what its worth. I feel it articulates
clearly what it can be and what its functions possibly are in the 21st Century.
 can you hear me now? It’s a question that could well be asked by me, the
artist, to you the viewer / participant / collaborator / curator. It’s also possibly
a call to arms. A clarion call. A desperate plea. 
A public demonstration perhaps?