Hayley Does & Iona Mackenzie
Honeydew Melon
7 – 16 June 2024
Opening event 7 June 6–8pm
In their exhibition Honeydew Melon, Hayley Does and Iona Mackenzie resist the urge for decorum demanded by the White Cube, surrendering instead to sincerity. Fumbling freely through their thoughts and feelings, the duo’s canvas and performance works operate in an ode to loosening up. Like two disruptive pupils, their scribbles are juvenile but earnest, and their gestures clumsy. Does and Mackenzie wish to employ humour in their childish and experimental approach to craft-based materials, which challenge the feeling of formality often embedded within our arts and academic institutions. With a sense of unseriousness emanating from their works, the rigidity of the White Cube wilts and joy emerges.
Performance times:
Opening night 6pm – 7pm
Friday – Sunday 1.30pm start
About Iona
After graduating from VCA in 2021, Iona Mackenzie has had the pleasure of exhibiting in Austria, Venice, Sydney, and Melbourne, with spaces such as CAVES, Seventh Gallery, KINGS, Temperance Hall, Creative Spaces, Bus Projects, Bundanon, Keiv, and Plague Space. Iona is interested in the theory that fictional stories contain and preserve non-fictional histories. More broadly, she considers the way that symbols act as surrogates for things that are often too difficult or complex to communicate explicitly. Consulting anthropocentric material, Iona examines this tendency to document our experiences by disguising them. As she excavates meaning from objects, words, and images, she encounters lessons in love and strife.
About Hayley
Hayley Does is an artist residing on stolen Wadawurrung country - A graduate of VCA (BFA Dance), and currently studying a Bachelor of Paramedicine. Alongside Cant, they have held residencies and exhibited at Bundanon Trust, Temperance Hall and Testing Grounds. Their exploration is routed in the Live Body; A collective intelligence of empathetic autonomy conducting causal kinesthetic relationships that inform improvisational technologies. Does’ research spans into somatic practices of Zen Thai Shiatsu body work and Feldenkrais technique within which she flirts with the veil between the spectacle to the practical. Interrogating the boundaries of what one can contribute to the other, to reimagine spaces and methods of inhabitance. Asking --- what is it that lingers?