'Mime'
Dale Washkansky at Commune.1Conceived as an exhibition that unpacks the concept of traumatic repression, ‘Mime’ encourages viewers to remember otherwise silent and concealed histories. The artist wields kitsch and collage in a manner that destabilises historical form. The resulting works are often irreverent in their appearance and employ strategies of humour to further challenge the locked narrative construction that so often occurs with traumatic history.
To mime is to use gesture and movement to convey the idea of another action. Used within the context of this exhibition it is a performative motion that grapples with the question of how history can be'mimed'. Washkansky’s re-photographed collages comment on the notion of post-memory. Just as these collages can only be accessed through their photographic duplicate, so too can the past only be accessed through its mediated representation. Although the past is therefore distanced and open to misrepresentation, it also allows for appropriation and re-interpretation. The images are crude and simplistic in their construction in order to maintain the sense that they are not fixed or resolved- they remain uncomfortably incomplete. Similarly, the gaudiness of Washkansky’s sculptures refute the austere and stern aesthetics of the original busts of Hitler that were mass-produced during the 1930s and, at the time, often found on the mantelpiece.
05 December - 23 January
