This exhibition of new work from emerging artist Remy Faint
engages with his interest in the distortion of images and memories through
time, exploring the dynamic between the past and the future as our view of the
world constantly evolves. Utilising silk, textiles and timber as well as
assemblages, Remy utilises methods of collage, juxtaposition, transcription,
and scale to create works that are transparent yet solid, fleeting and eternal,
much like our own memories.
Like many of his silk-based paintings, the work He
Turned and Bowed (2024) prioritises the layering of materials,
painterly gestures and abstracted imagery to reflect on notions of time.
Drawing from photographic archive material held within local museum collections
that depict anthropological representations of cultural customs, architecture
and social etiquette, Remy mediates elements of this “educational material”
blending textures, materials and shapes to reimagine speculative narratives or
mythologies within its composition.
This single piece is supported inside the A.SINGLE.PIECE gallery by an
installation containing a series of recently developed fabric sculptures and
assemblages. These works expand upon notions of the ’silhouette’ explored in
the work in the windows. In these installations, materials are reconstructed
into embodied painterly and sculptural forms, emerging as ethereal apparitions,
’ghosts’ or surrogates within a reimagined limbo, further adding to the concept
of memory explored in the other work.
In the centre of the gallery is Apparition 1 (2024),a large-scale work (and Remy’s largest to date) that again plays with the
concept of memory, building on mythological beliefs that after a period of time
inanimate objects may become sentient, taking on the feelings and memories of
those they have encountered throughout their existence. The shapes are inspired
by traditional heirloom garments from Remy's family, but constructed from
various found and recycled fabrics, elements that bring together many past
stories into one new whole. They are then given substance as though they have
transformed from merely shapes into their anthropomorphic beings, filling the
space with their presence and memory. Combining elements of former painting
substrates, textiles, prints and mass-produced materials the work also speaks
to the cyclical nature of Remy’s studio practice, where materials and their
inherent histories are blurred and subsidiary.
Also in the gallery is Passage (2024) a
two-part, autobiographical work that incorporates a work on silk (The
Library, 2023) and then surrounds it with a larger assemblage. The
Library mediates a painterly image of a room in Remy’s childhood home
where his grandmother, a former seamstress, would store materials and domestic
detritus. A space of imagination and discovery for the artist, this fond memory
has strong echoes for Remy and played a pivotal role in the creative path he is
on today. The broader work that surrounds ‘The Library’ acts like a
doorway, a passage through which one can pass that has elements of the past and
future, with the use of varying fabrics tying it to the room’s function, which
was often filled with various fabrics which Remy would explore as a child,
along with his heritage.
REMY FAINT CV
Remy Faint is an emerging artist
based on Gadigal-land, Sydney. Engaging with a diverse range of mediums and strategies —
including painting, collage, sculpture and assemblage — Remy’s practice is motivated by the
desire to expand languages of abstraction by examining its global histories. Drawing upon
influences from collection-based objects and materials specific to his Chinese-Australian heritage, his
work mediates both painterly and sculptural ‘silhouettes’ to reflect on themes surrounding
visibility, national identity and folklore. Remy’s interest in transparency is evident in his consistent use of
silk as an artistic surface and the form of the folding screen. While Remy often reinstates the
screen’s historical function as a barrier, divider or structural device, this cultural referencing coincides
with physical acts of assembling, repurposing and combining various materials in his studio.
Remy has exhibited nationally
including at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts [PICA], Cement Fondu, UNSW Galleries,
Gosford Regional Gallery, Craft Victoria, ADSpace, Mothership Studios, Sheffer Gallery, Comber
Street Studios and Kudos Gallery. Remy was curated into the national graduate exhibition
Hatched, at PICA in 2022 where he received the inaugural Schenberg Art High Commendation Award. He
was also selected to undertake a one-month residency at PICA in May, 2022. Remy was the
winner of the 2023 Gosford Art Prize and has been a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, the Jenny
Birt Painting Prize, Kudos Emerging Artist Award and was a studio resident at the City of
Sydney Creative Studios, Bathurst Street. He recently presented his first solo exhibition at Cement
Fondu with his exhibition The Library and the Cave, in June 2023. Remy is a finalist in the 2024
Create NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) presented at Artspace. He is also a 2024
recipient of the Art Incubator grant, where he will be presenting his first commercial solo exhibition
at Cassandra Bird Gallery. Remy is currently a studio resident at Waverley Artist Studios.