Exhibition Statement - Season Fray

The concept of the "Super-Market Society," as articulated by cultural theorists Henk van Houtum and Bas Spierings, offers a compelling critique of contemporary identity formation. They describe a system of human barcoding, where individuals are expected to present themselves as marketable entities—unique products shaped by consumerist logic. As they write, “everybody is required to be somebody.”¹ This provocation invites a deeper question: Who is controlling whom?

As an artist, I find myself increasingly aware of the subtle ways neoliberal systems influence creative practice. Are we unconsciously conforming through the professional artefacts we produce—CVs, websites, artist statements? Is our engagement with political and social themes always authentic, or is it sometimes strategic, designed to signal intellectual depth or attract funding?

Academic and critic Karel Vanhaesebrouck raises concerns about this dynamic, suggesting that contemporary art often adopts ‘subversive’ content not out of genuine commitment, but as a means of self-promotion. He warns of an “over-inflation of the notion of commitment,” arguing that it risks becoming a fashionable, hollow category, easily absorbed into the mechanisms of the creative economy.²

Season Fray is my response to these tensions. It represents an intentional retreat from external pressures and a return to the fundamentals of artistic practice. Developed during a period of uncertainty and disillusionment in Australia’s arts education and funding landscape, the work reflects a process of reduction and introspection. For me, making became a way to withdraw from external expectations and reconnect with the internal logic of materials and process. It is both a coping strategy and a reclamation of artistic integrity.

These works focus on the physical and visual properties of materials—paper, aluminium, graphite—and the ways they interact. I’m interested in how graphite behaves: its gloss and dullness, how it can be rubbed, washed, or scratched into a surface. The relationships within the work are elemental: graphite, water, aluminium, paper. Any political engagement is internalised, manifesting through the subconscious ordering of imagery and the aesthetic decisions involved in resource management—how to maximise the effect of a wash while preserving the surface beneath.

This refusal of overt content is, for me, a quiet act of resistance. It reflects a desire for simplicity, authenticity, and a return to foundational principles. Season Fray is a sustained meditation on material and process—a reaffirmation that, in times of cultural saturation, returning to basics may offer the most meaningful way forward.

¹ Van Houtum, H. & Spierings, B. (2007). Barcode Humans: On the Fabrication of Consumers in the Super-Market Society. In Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City (Reflect #06), pp. 183–195. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam.

² Vanhaesebrouck, K. (2011). As Dead as a Dodo? Commitment Beyond Postmodernism. In Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization (Reflect #08), p. 21. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam.

Chris Casali, 2017

Welling Street Projects installation view