New World is a sculptural installation that reflects Marilyn Schneider’s interest in trade fairs as models for future corporate landscapes1. Schneider uses manufactured forms and materials such as polished stainless steel text logos and skeletal timber frames that highlight the temporality of the elaborate sets of trade fairs in order to examine their normative modes of replica and display. However, in combination with this critique of the ephemerality of ‘pop-up and pack down’ trade fair architecture, Schneider pays decisive attention to the specific and permanent architecture of 552, in which the installation was first exhibited. In such a way, the proximity and orientation of the various sculptural elements within the spatial confines of the gallery force the viewer into specific viewing trajectories as they navigate the installation.
The order of the following images, in combination with the framed and restricted pictorial composition provided by the confines of the photographic lens, mimic the ordered viewing experience of the audience as they traverse a New World.
Marilyn Schneider, New World, 2013, polished stainless steel, 102 x 17 cm.
Marilyn Schneider, New World, 2013, polished stainless steel, 102 x 17 cm.
At the entrance to New World the viewer is greeted by an immaculately sheened sculpture-sign with the obtusely abstract promise of a New World. Schneider aptly describes her choice of font as derived from the familiar ‘sleazy, corporate’ typography that we have all come to know, love and hate within our globalized capitalist economy.
Marilyn Schneider, New World (installation view), 2013.
Marilyn Schneider, New World (installation view), 2013.
Marilyn Schneider, Display booth, 2013, acrylic paint, 317 x 403 x 267cm. Photos by Jack Dunbar.
The gallery space is divided diagonally by a timber frame that stands as an attenuated version of the trade fair booth façade. The frame is composed so as to obstruct the viewing of a wall painting depicting a blue and white trade booth, tilted on its side and comprised of a floor to ceiling scale. Once observed from the specific vantage points the perspective of the painting is such that the trade booth appears to be catapulting downward towards the viewer.
1. Hal Foster and Slavoj Žižek both reference that in Delirious New York Rem Koolhaas argues that the architectural modernity of Manhattan was driven by the stylistic designs of the exhibits in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Hal Foster, The Art-Architecture complex (London: Verso, 2011), 11-12.Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010), 245-278. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, (New York: Monacelli Press, 1994).
2. 55 Sydenham Road, Marrickville.
Marilyn Schneider is an emerging artist who is currently completing her Masters of Fine Art at UNSW COFA in Sculpture and Installation. She has been awarded several studio residencies at Parramatta Artist Studios, Fraser Studios and Firstdraft Depot. Schneider has been included in group exhibitions at MOP, Firstdraft, Alaska Projects and Artspace. This year she completed a studio residency at Red Gate in Beijing and had a solo show at 55 Sydenham Road.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches. We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Runway Journal receives project support from the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches. We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Runway Journal receives project support from the NSW Government through Create NSW.