Caroline McQuarrie: We Hold Back the Night | Vicky Browne: The Orator Vs. The Warrior

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Reworking family portraits with textile interventions, Caroline McQuarrie's We Hold Back The Night probes the ideologies represented by our domestic documentation of times gone by. Questioning both the social construction of house as ‘home’ and the phoniness of the standard smiley ‘family’ photo Caroline McQuarrie draws attention to the artificial memorialisation of these moments. But all is not doom and gloom. McQuarrie’s playful use of domestic arts and crafts is nostalgic and celebratory, prompting memories that help us form our own ‘stories’, she explains.“It is believed that the experience of shaping our own story becomes what is truth for us in our memories. The story we tell does not simply re-play old memories; it is constructed from the point of view of now and how we connect and explain through this. The story of our identity changes as we grow and gather experience”

Positioning contemporary electronics alongside, usurped and even ancient technologies Vicky Browne's The Orator vs. The Warrior induces a contemporary technological battle for supremacy. Mapping the slow elimination and identity shifts evident in devices like the ipod, the mobile phone and the trusty cassette Vicky Browne’s practice critiques and explores changes evident in the everyday items of today’s digital empire .The new and the ancient stand beside each other ready to dual it out in the ancient arena. Utilizing many mediums including: sound, sculpture, video and interaction the artist an audience are encouraged to examine these newfangled devices through the perspective of a historical looking glass. But what does such a comparison reveal? Do these technological icons represent a continuum of humankinds desire for technology and western ideologies drive for the bigger/better, faster and smaller? Or reveal something that is lost in the wake of the dreams and desire for advancement? The resolution is yours for the taking.