Reception
4 minutes
Art Gallery of South Australia 2004
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art

Imagery in James Geurts' installation 'Reception' reflects, among other things, his complex processes of thought and action in ascertaining his own frank responses and reactions to this dark nexus of our Australian present, in which we are being offered a normality of definitive inclusion and exclusion through fragmentationary and distortionary communicative mechanisms.
Using video and drawing techniques Geurts has created an ever-changing shoreline adorned/littered with discarded, unclaimed or imagined objects; a tangled ball of string, the furtive beam of a flashlight caught fleetingly in that inter-tidal zone, as a torso, dead or alive. Maritime incidents. Images and sounds that have no eyes or ears to respond to our gaze, words or gestures, but invite us to contemplate our own sense of reality and the means by which such realities are created and sustained. Imagine an eye, caught in its own reflection, not knowing what it sees. An ear hearing not what is out there but only the sounds of its internal mechanics. James Geurts' allegorical and symbolic works are a contribution towards enriching this process. A process of enriching and activating our imagination, beyond our government's anxiety to protect us from knowing that "…if it were not for the envy of those around us who are deprived, the taste of life would change in our mouths…" 1[1]
Mehmet Adil
[1] Naguib Mahfouz Children of Gebelaawi