The List and the Line

The List and the Line with Anne Phelan and Mark Swords brings together two very different art practices in a site specific and responsive installation at Casino Marino. Both artists interconnect conflicting histories through the act of making — with complex collage paintings, layered Joly screen photographs, text works, assemblages and sculptures. The personal is thrown together with the national, consumerism is jumbled with colonialism, visual narratives tumble into abstraction, and pleasure is maybe more pizza box than portico perfection.

The Casino is not denounced in our time as a monument to imperial excess and extravagance, but rather it is celebrated as an unlikely architectural gem and national treasure. Built as a pleasure-house, this little maison de plaisance is so much more than kitchen, dining room and bedroom. The Greek origin of the word archive is arkheion, meaning house or abode. In its conception and design this casino, or little house, was a fusion of antiquity and early modern style. Now it can be an archive of other potential histories.

Where the Earl, James Caulfield partied, we now also play. In the initial selection of works there were so many direct visual connections with shapes and textures, exotic plants & animals, and indeed parallel symbolism. To this were added new works, responding to and sometimes working against the thematics of specific rooms. The List and the Line is where both artists meet, beyond stripes and potential inventories, to find a way to structure our thinking on this incredible place.