Luke Parker and Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Exquisite Corpse, 2011
exhibited Death Be Kind, Melbourne, 2011 and in Sexes, Performance Space, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2013
artists statement
Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative project following the principles of the Surrealist drawing game (c.1925), which in turn stemmed from the word-based Victorian parlour game, ‘Consequences’. Made across Sydney and Melbourne, each work was authored in four alternating steps: head / upper-torso / lower-torso & upper-legs / lower-legs & feet. Each ‘body-part’ was concealed from view of the recipient save for a sliver – a glimpse at the point of connection for the following element. These glimpses were often intentionally enigmatic, in order to throw the other off the scent; at other times, gently suggestive. What unfolds in these works is not the result of an individual impulse, rather an amalgamation – a visual dialogue between elements and desires. The parameters of the game pushed our individuality aside, opening a new space, often beyond recognition to either of us.
"What excited us about these productions was the assurance that, for better or worse, they bore the mark of something which could not be created by one brain alone, and that they were endowed with a much greater leeway, which cannot be too highly valued by poetry … With the Exquisite Corpse we had at our command an infallible way of holding the critical intellect in abeyance, and of fully liberating the mind's metaphorical activity … Along the way a considerable enigma arose, posed by the frequent encounter of elements with similar associational origins in the course of the collective production … This encounter not only provoked a vigorous play of often extreme discordances, but also supported the idea of communication between the participants – tacit, but in waves …"
André Breton, Le Cadavre Exquis: Son Exaltation, exhibition catalogue, La Dragonne, Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris, 7–30 October 1948.
exhibited Death Be Kind, Melbourne, 2011 and in Sexes, Performance Space, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2013
artists statement
Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative project following the principles of the Surrealist drawing game (c.1925), which in turn stemmed from the word-based Victorian parlour game, ‘Consequences’. Made across Sydney and Melbourne, each work was authored in four alternating steps: head / upper-torso / lower-torso & upper-legs / lower-legs & feet. Each ‘body-part’ was concealed from view of the recipient save for a sliver – a glimpse at the point of connection for the following element. These glimpses were often intentionally enigmatic, in order to throw the other off the scent; at other times, gently suggestive. What unfolds in these works is not the result of an individual impulse, rather an amalgamation – a visual dialogue between elements and desires. The parameters of the game pushed our individuality aside, opening a new space, often beyond recognition to either of us.
"What excited us about these productions was the assurance that, for better or worse, they bore the mark of something which could not be created by one brain alone, and that they were endowed with a much greater leeway, which cannot be too highly valued by poetry … With the Exquisite Corpse we had at our command an infallible way of holding the critical intellect in abeyance, and of fully liberating the mind's metaphorical activity … Along the way a considerable enigma arose, posed by the frequent encounter of elements with similar associational origins in the course of the collective production … This encounter not only provoked a vigorous play of often extreme discordances, but also supported the idea of communication between the participants – tacit, but in waves …"
André Breton, Le Cadavre Exquis: Son Exaltation, exhibition catalogue, La Dragonne, Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris, 7–30 October 1948.