Opening Thursday 21 January, 6-8pm

Using techniques of sculptural assemblage and repetitive craft-based processes, Adam Cruickshank takes standardized objects produced from automated systems and reworks them into one-off totems or charms.

Reverse Cargo employs concepts of ‘sympathetic magic’ much like the techniques of various Papua New Guinean tribes, albeit via a reversed, backward exchange. Unlike the work of many cargo cults throughout the history of the Oceania region, which adapted highly evolved craft practices to replicate the trappings of modern technology and western lifestyle, this new body of work inverts these processes to forcibly apply the magical to the mass-produced. This reversal (making the new ancient rather than the ancient contemporary) is oppositional, but by no means antithetical.

Adam Cruickshank is a Melbourne-based artist working across a broad range of media and installation techniques. Having worked as an art director and designer in advertising and magazines, the corporate manipulation of culture is central to much of his artistic practise. The dialogic nature of his approach attempts to question hierarchical definitions of fine and so-called ‘applied art’ practices. Cruickshank attended the Queensland College of Art in the early 90’s and was involved with various Brisbane artist run spaces of that time. He has lived in London, Berlin, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

Read an interview with Adam Cruickshank on CLOG

• Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo
• Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo
• Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo
• Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo
• Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank, Reverse Cargo
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