“Small Findings” by Sonia Donnellan at Five Walls Projects

Five Walls Projects is located in a ”Being John Malkovich” -esque, surreal corner/ building / hallway just around the corner from Trocadero Art Space in Footscray. I was originally going to the opening of “Formality” photography exhibition at Trocadero when I stumbled upon Five Walls. It was weird. I loved it. And then, I was completely mesmerised and astounded by the beautiful work of Sonia Donnellan’s “Small Findings.” Intriguing, spiritual, clinical, alien and emotional - the work harbours dualities and hypocrisies within itself. The work invites you to walk toward it, to approach, and to hesitantly interact - it forces you to interact with it - and it is like entering the void, becoming the singularity with the machine, a soul machine, made from the utilitarian and all-seeing commonplace fluorescent light, the symbol of the offices, the confinement of the workers everyday, now transformed, into some sort of 2001 Space Odyssey mind trip / freakout. Perhaps that is a crazy intense reference to make - but this work really affected me. Maybe because I am also exploring the use of fluorescent lights as medium in my own practice, or perhaps because the situation of the gallery itself, coupled with the work made for a perfect experience of surreal, isolated meditation. Reflected within those flickering, awakening tubes was my own mortality. ​“My installation practice explores the way that emotional affect can manifest a work of art. Small Findings is an artwork constructed from fluorescent lights mounted onto a wooden frame with a sensor that turns on at the approach of a viewer. Like a painting, it fixes onto the wall of the exhibition space. The work creatively explores feelings associated with uncertainty and draws upon the ideas of Brian Massumi: that uncertainty is an active site of being present to the moment with all of its emergent potentials and possibilities, rather than as an inert or disempowered place of anxiety and hopelessness. ‘While working on Small Findings I had the early line paintings of Canadian artist Agnes Martin in mind. Small Findings is composed of twenty two fluorescent lights arranged horizontally to echo Martin’s hand-drawn lines and the number is chosen to make a square ‘grid’ ‘. As the fluoros flicker on they make random patterns of light and dark before settling down to a subtle undulating pulse of white light. The flickering patterns in the work have a slightly mesmerising affect. White light floods the exhibition space.” -Taken from Five Walls Project website