Big Feelings Going Nowhere, 2013, Hillyer Art Space

In Big Feelings (going nowhere), Dawson slows things down. Hapless symbols of movement – a Mid-Western tumbleweed, a 1979 Motobécane moped, and a series of decommissioned road signs – are employed in sculptural meditations on progress and the passage of time.

In Slow Burn (full circle), Dawson castrates a moped, bypassing its petrol engine and employing a geared-down electric motor to force it into an endless, quiet and impeccably circular burnout. In Untitled (tumbleweed again), a Mid-Western tumbleweed is caught in a balletic approximation of its natural wanderings. The series of road signs, which during the term of their official life were broken, bent or shot at, are presented super polished and stripped of their official markings.

Dawson’s technical dexterity partners spectacle with subtlety, stillness with motion, and utilitarianism with purposeless in a series of works that coalesce the contradictory yet aspirational nature of contemporary America.

Dawson has exhibited extensively in Australia and has presented work internationally in group exhibitions in Paris, Hong Kong and Washington D.C. He is currently undertaking studio-based research in Washington D.C. supported by an Australia Council for the Arts Skills and Arts Development grant.

Marley Dawson (b. 1982, Australia) works across sculpture, installation and performance and employs simple physics, chemistry and sophisticated D.I.Y. fabrication techniques in his constructed situations and machine sites.