Anxious Spaces (2020) , 'The Long Kiss Goodbye’ Perth International Arts Festival 2020 Curated by Gemma Weston Perth Festival Visual Arts Associate, Curator

'The Long Kiss Goodbye’ stills a moment of departure, guiding you through your feelings and suggesting, gently, that you’ll never really be able to let them go.

Artists

Sarah Contos / Penny Coss / Iain Dean / Brent Harris / Michele Elliot

Long Kiss Goodbye Installation View. (L) Anxious Spaces Penny Coss (R) Brent Harris

Statement

Penny Coss’ practice has always pursued a persistent preoccupation with painting and the iterative possibilities of creating a whole. In this immersive 13 metre long installation, her painting processes are set loose with individual parts arranged adjacent to, on, over or apart from each other , held, bound, touching and resting, and references her traversing of known and unknown topologies in certain landscapes where memory and loss form part of a larger universe that folds and unfolds to reveal personal and collective histories . In Coss’ three unique performances, ‘Pendulum Acts’ metronomic choreographies that unfold over time the slippages between the familiar/unfamiliar and of being both observer and participant.

" Coss’s meticulously arranged, idiosyncratic fabric installation in ANXIOUS SPACES, is a thing of glorious beauty, rich in texture, colour and mysterious logic. Twice during the course of the exhibition, Coss performs an intuitive rearrangement of the installation, highlighting the nature of anxiety, which often manifests in the need to control the narrative, stay ahead of any imagined problems, and ensure perfection."

Miranda Johnston, Review SeeSaw Magazine 2020.

Iteration 1 Anxious Spaces

Iteration 2 Anxious Spaces

Iteration 3 Anxious Spaces