Emily Floyd
1972
Born Melbourne, Australia
EDUCATION
1999
1992
Bachelor of Fine Art, Sculpture, Royal Melbourne Institute
of Technology, Melbourne
Bachelor of Arts, Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne
2001
2000
1998
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces Studio Residence,
Melbourne
New Work, Creation, Arts Victoria
Cinemedia Digital Arts Fund
A Constructed World, Truck Project
COLLECTIONS
Bendigo Art Gallery
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
The Outsider, John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of
Technology, Perth
A strategy to infiltrate the homes of the bourgeoisie,
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Art School, Anna Schwartz Gallery at the Melbourne Art
Fair, Melbourne
Thank You, Oh Beneficent One, Anna Schwartz Gallery at
The Depot Gallery, Sydney
It's because I talk too much that I do nothing, Anna Schwartz
Gallery, Melbourne
1st Floor, Melbourne
Studio 12, 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
Instinct, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne,
curator: Liza Vasiliou
Cycle Tracks Will Abound in Utopia, Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne, curator: Juliana Engberg
Fraught Tales: Four Contemporary Narratives, The Ian
Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia,
Melbourne, curator: Anonda Bell
Still Life: The Inaugural Balnaves Foundation Sculpture
Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney,
curator: Wayne Tunnicliffe
NEW 03 Australian Centre for Contemporary Art,
Melbourne, curator: Juliana Engberg
ARCO, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Possible Worlds, Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand, curator:
Juliana Engberg
Travels in Time, 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne
Present/Future, a special project of Artissima 2001, Turin,
Italy, curator: Max Delany
Artissima, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Turin, Italy
Gertrude Studio Artists 2001, 200 Gertrude Street,
Melbourne
Studio Artists Exhibition 2000, 200 Gertrude Street,
Melbourne
Rubik #11 Pan Pacific, a satellite event of the 'Use By'
project, 1st Floor, Melbourne
The Tyranny of Feelings, TCB Inc, Melbourne
Fascination, Centre for Contemporary Photography,
Melbourne
One Night in the Real World, Laundry, Next Wave 2000,
Melbourne
www.oneeleven.au, Collaboration with Mecamedialight,
Next Wave 2000, Melbourne
RMIT Sculpture Graduate Exhibition, RMIT Sculpture
Studio, Melbourne
RMIT Sculpture, Stripp, Melbourne
Emily Floyd, Lara Stanovic and Starlie Geikie, Talk Artists
Initiative, Melbourne
AWARDS / RESIDENCIES
2005
2004
2002
Residency, Curtin University of Technology and
Central TAFE, Perth
New Work, Visual Arts/Craft Board, Australia Council
for the Arts
Signature Work, Watergate Apartment Complex, Docklands
Precinct, Melbourne (sculpture installation)
Important Emerging Artist, The 2004 Gertrude Edition,
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne
The University of Melbourne Asialink Residency, Sankriti
Kendra Foundation, New Delhi, India
2004
Liza Vasiliou, Instinct, exhibition catalogue, Monash University
Museum of Art, Melbourne
Ashley Crawford, 'Instinct', The Sunday Age Agenda, 19 September,
p.19
Edward Colless, 'Emily Floyd's Alphabetical Artistry', Australian Art
Collector, Issue 27 January - March, Sydney, pp.66-69
2003
Patricia Anderson, "A different light on the world", The Weekend
Australian, 20 - 21 September
Anne Loxley, "Laudable heavyweight kick-off", The Sydney Morning
Herald, 6 -7 September
Anonda Bell, Fraught Tales: Four Contemporary Narratives, National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Wayne Tunnicliffe, Still Life: Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project,
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Mark Gnomes, "New03", Broadsheet: Contemporary Visual Arts +
Culture, vol 32, no 2, June, July, August
Ashley Crawford, 'Melbourne Gothic', Australian Art Collector, Issue
24, April - June
Samantha Compte, 'Emily Floyd', Art & Australia, Vol. 40, No. 3,
Autumn
Gabriella Coslovich, 'Kafka and the bunnies', The Age, 18-19 April
Juliana Engberg, 'New 03', NEW 03, Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Justin Clemens, 'This door was only ever meant for you', NEW 03,
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Gabriella Coslovich, 'ACCA show a testimony to diversity of young
artists', The Age, 21 March
Lucinda Strahan, 'Hello Art!', Gallery Highlights, Melbourne Magazine,
Issue 003, December - January
2002
Georgina Safe, 'An Inquiring Mind', The Australian, February
Megan Backhouse, 'Around the galleries', The Age, 8 June
Robert Nelson, 'Onions elevated on a horizontal plane', The Age,
6 July
Alexie Glass, 'Emily Floyd', Smart Art, Australian Art Collector, Issue
22, October - December
2001
Damiano Bertoli, 'Emily Floyd 1st Floor Melbourne', Like; Art
Magazine, #15, Winter
Damiano Bertoli, 'In The Before Time', Present Future, Artissima,
Torino, Italy
Samantha Compte, Travels in Time, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy
Max Delany, Gertrude Studio Artists 2001, 200 Gertrude Street,
Fitzroy
Robert Nelson, 'An Investigation of Time and Space', The Age, 23
February
Robert Nelson, 'A cheap shot or exquisite artwork?', The Age, 14
July
Eliza Williams, Zoo, Edition 11, December
2000
Charlotte Day, Final Fantasies, Centre for Contemporary Photography
Publication, Melbourne
Bianca Hester, an example of an exhibition, (part of Longevity) Ian
Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
1998
Emily Floyd, 'Truck Project', Art Fan 9, Autumn
Larry Schwartz, 'Love's Labours Not', The Age, 6 June
Emily Floyd
THE OUTSIDER
John Curtin Gallery
Curtin University of Technology
16 September - 9 December 2005
When I walked into the Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne three years ago I wasn't sure what to expect. I’d heard of Emily Floyd but
never seen her work other than in reproduction. The impact of encountering It's because I talk too much that I do nothing literally stopped
me in my tracks. Occupying the entire floor space of the very spare white gallery was a re-construction of St Petersburg, complete with
the cupolas of an orthodox cathedral and with text from Dostoevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment scampering across the floor,
defining the topography, road and rail networks and the architecture that makes up the city.
Roskolnikov's’ name kept appearing as my eyes scanned the work, then other words and phrases asserted themselves as Floyd cleverly
employed the author’s text, ‘to speak out from inside them in the voice of the artist’, as Christine Morrow explains in her catalogue essay
to this exhibition. The blackness of the images was in stark contrast to the whiteness of the gallery, leaving after-images on the walls
when you moved your eyes after staring at one section for a few minutes. The city grew and then faded as you refocused.
It was exhilarating.
My immediate reaction was to wonder how I could convince the artist and her gallerist to let me show it in Perth. Fortunately, my overtures
were welcomed by both and we began the process of identifying when Emily would be available to come over for a residency at Curtin
University and Central TAFE, how possible it would be to show the Dostoevsky work, or maybe Cultural Studies Reader or perhaps a
series of works that might occupy the whole Gallery. We met whenever I was in Melbourne, had lunch and talked and followed up with
numerous emails until the date was set.
Then to my great delight Emily announced that rather than show an existing work she was planning to show a new project based on
Albert Camus’ L'étranger, a massive installation that would occupy one gallery and re-create the city of Algiers from text and wooden
forms in much the same way she had conjure up St Petersburg from Dostoevsky’s novel.
When finally installed in the John Curtin Gallery it was the result of many hours of work from many people and most particularly from
Emily herself, whose dedication and commitment to this project has been extraordinary.
I would also like to thank Anna Schwartz and Margaret Moore for their support and Gail Cameron from Central TAFE who has been a
wonderful collaborator in organising the residency. My gratitude also to the Curtin University Artist-In-Residence Committee and my
colleagues in the Faculty of Built Environment Art and Design (BEAD) who have cosponsored Emily’s residency at Curtin and worked
with her on the production of a website and this catalogue to document her time on campus.
Professor Ted Snell
Dean of Art, John Curtin Centre
Surrounding the sea and the buildings are strings of erect alphabet
letters arranged to spell out whole sentences and fragments from
the novel. The strands of text provide strange egress between the
various components of the installation and the city spaces they
represent. Yet they peel away from the water and the buildings like
winding streets leading nowhere. One of the phrases, FIFTY MILES
FROM ALGIERS, designates a place only by its distance from
somewhere else. This heightens our impression that while the
sentences lead away from something concrete they head towards
nothing in particular. The city is conceived in terms of separation,
dissociation and displacement.
It’s because I talk too much that I do nothing, 2002
Image courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery
The Outsider by Emily Floyd is a floor-based installation
that creates - in alphabet letters and simple architectural
components - an analogue representation of the city of
Algiers and fragments of text from one of the great novels
set there: L'étranger (The Outsider) by Albert Camus. This
book, one of the 20th Century's most celebrated literary
works, is usually understood as a novel of ideas whose
broad themes include social conformity, alienation, morality,
justice, truth, freedom and the inevitability of death.
In Floyd's installation alphabet letters have been cut to resemble
large pieces of moveable type and are strewn in a flat expanse
representing the sea. Rising up a slope from the water is the city
of Algiers, its buildings created by the artist from modules of richly
coloured blocks, some surmounted by polished domes or gilded
minarets. Between the water and the buildings lies the beach, the
setting for the novel's climax in which the protagonist, Meursault,
kills a man designated to the reader only as 'an Arab'.
If the aimless spatial meanders of the text create an atmosphere
of futility, this is reinforced by its content: I COULDN’T BE
BOTHERED, THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ME, IT WAS ALL
REALLY A BIT POINTLESS. Together, these fragments and
sentences seem noncommittal, nihilistic, irrational and absurd. They
also communicate the narrator's neutrality of observation and
emotional disengagement.
There is a predominance of the subjective personal pronoun among
the phrases - I STAYED IN BED..., I HAD NO PLACE IN SOCIETY,
I WAS CAUGHT IN THE MECHANISM AGAIN, I FELT
COMPLETELY EMPTY - that creates the impression of an amplified
individual, an ego writ large. The alienated individual may be seen
to represent the figure of the artist and the following references to
visual perception support this interpretation: SEEING THE LINES
OF CYPRESSES LEADING AWAY TO THE HILLS AGAINST THE
SKY..., WE COULD SEE THE MOTIONLESS SURFACE OF THE
SEA.
By recreating the quotations from The Outsider as strings of
meandering type Floyd seems to cut them loose from their original
meanings. She takes them out of Camus' text, assembles them in
large letters and gives them back to us ostensibly unchanged. But
in truth they are utterly transformed, having grown formidable with
handling. For the act of selective quotation is to impose new frames
or borders around sections of a text where previously none existed.
The phrases emerge here as personalised utterances communicated
to us by a new narrator, the artist, who inserts herself as an
intermediary between the text's hypothetical original narrator and
the viewer. In so doing Floyd reinvests these quotations with private,
encoded and portentous meanings beyond those present in the
novel. The thoughts and observations they spell out no longer seem
to be those of Meursault. Or perhaps it is that Floyd and Meursault
have merged into one.
meaningless, representing something pre-sentient or pre-verbal.
Alternatively, they may even represent something post-verbal or
apocalyptic: language and meaning stretched beyond the point of
exhaustion, or the aftermath of a text that has collapsed or been
destroyed.
Other installations created by Floyd have been based on the novels
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Trial by
Franz Kafka. These texts share with The Outsider their themes of
freedom, truth, crime, justice and death. Each novel tells of an
alienated individual who struggles against an authority that is legal,
societal, bureaucratic or all three simultaneously. So too does each
relate in suffocating detail the psychological observations of the
accused before or after arrest. Similar to the way Floyd used the
texts of Crime and Punishment and The Trial, to 'speak out from
inside them' in the voice of the artist, in this new work she harnesses
some of Meursault's individual struggle and appropriates it for the
figure of the artist, popularly cast by romanticism in the role of hero,
loner, observer and seer, always alienated or misunderstood.
The beach is a liminal zone between water and land but in Floyd's
installation it is also a symbolic boundary between verbal meaning
- expressed by the coherent sentences - and the non-verbal morass
of formless letters with which she creates the sea. This concept of
boundary or threshold is vital to understanding the work. The title
of Camus' novel is often translated as The Stranger in English, in
preference to The Outsider, but it is both deliberate and necessary
that Floyd adopts the latter translation. While the two alternative
titles equally express the concept of social exclusion and alienation,
'outsider' conveys additional meanings of exteriority and spatial
segregation. ‘Outsider' and 'insider' are relative terms in a closed
system that requires the acceptance of a boundary between them
that is both clearly defined, and clearly defensible. The concept of
an 'outsider' collapses when such a boundary dissolves. By peeling
open the text, Floyd breaches its limits, and brings the concept of
exteriority, and of outsider status, into doubt.
While the artwork shares its
intense mood of anxiety and
alienation with the book, its
purpose is neither to
summarise the novel's
themes nor to illustrate
them. Rather, Floyd's
strategy seems to be to peel
the text apart, stretch it and
flex it this way and that, and
see what new forms and
meanings can emerge. We
imagine that these
sentences snaking around
the city of Algiers have
somehow broken free from
their strict rectilinear
presentation in Camus'
book. They have clattered
off the page and variously
melted and pooled, or
swirled in irrational swerves
and spirals, each one of This door was only ever meant for you, 2003
Image courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery
their winding forms a playful
demonstration of the text's pliability in the hands of the artist.
If Floyd's conception of Algiers
has no distinct Casbah, the
name given to the fortress or
citadel that overlooks the city,
it is because her artwork
stages a series of conceptual
incursions into Camus' text
and the city it produces or is
produced by: invading and
occupying it, breaching its
boundaries, collapsing its
defences and hence its
a u t h o r i t y. I n F l o y d ' s
installation, the text occupies
the city as if taking it by siege
but so too does the artist
overrun, occupy and colonise
the text in turn, co-opting one
of its citizens, Meursault, as
a mouthpiece. Without
changing a single one of those
words she quotes from
Camus, Emily Floyd gives the
text of The Outsider back to
us turned inside out, foreign, marginal and alienated unto itself.
The entire installation seems to be the product of Floyd's secret
play time. She has furled and unfurled the phrases, inserting
glissades between some of the letters like little Floydian slips. This
theme of play is also suggested by the way the installation's
components resemble toys. Its letters and blocks are reminiscent
of children's building blocks and alphabet shapes. And the city looks
like a fairytale illustration with its intense colours, stylised contours
and repetitive forms. The blend of Berber blocks, Arab domes and
Ottoman minarets layers the architecture according to certain
patterns of colonisation Algiers has experienced over centuries. Yet
the installation is not intended as a literal representation of the city.
Instead it is imagined as a make-believe town that does not strive
for authenticity but stands in for 'fictional' space. Its strong elements
of fantasy demonstrate the power of imagination that fiction allows.
If the textual components of the artwork are formed from what
appear to be large pieces of moveable type it is because the work
addresses the very movements (spatial as well as linguistic) that
the recombinatory potential of printers type permits: the random
and eruptive bursts of energy in the arrangement of letters that
make up the words, and their various meanderings, digressions
and transitions. Where the letters are scattered in a chaotic horizontal
expanse to form the sea, they are shapeless and hence deliberately
Christine Morrow
ISBN 1 74067 420 0
© Copyright the artist, authors and Curtin University of Technology, Perth 2005.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing
from the publishers. The copyright of all artworks reproduced remains with the
artist.
The John Curtin Gallery would like to acknowledge the
support of The West Australian, our major media sponsor,
the Curtin University of Technology Artist-in-Residence
Committee, the Faculty of Built Environment, Art and Design
and the Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.