Stephen Little

Born 1966, Lisburn, Ireland
Bachelor of Visual Arts
Graduation show: 1989
Graduation ceremony: 1990

Artwork in Space YZ

Untitled, 1992/2021
Two printed banners
255 x 55 cm (each)

These banners were originally commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney for the show Signals (September 1992). The whereabouts of these loaned works have been in contention since 1993. As fabrications from an original design, the banners have been re-made in different iterations of scale and proportion for the exhibition Space YZ.

When first exhibited, these banners received varied responses and invoked a broad range of referents from fascist formalism to decorative high-end design, corporate branding and chic advertising. Some viewed the designs as product launch logos for Chanel or similar. For my part, the work’s broad open-ended reception was a positive outcome.

Black and white exist at the extreme ends of the colour spectrum. Representing dualism, they invoke a long tradition of metaphorical use, from the Pythagorean Table of Opposites to the symbolism and moral dichotomy of good and evil. For example, the Bible associates light with God, truth, divinity and virtue, whereas darkness is associated with sin and the Devil. This purported dualism represents many meanings for many people across different social, cultural and ethnographic divides.

By further example, anarchist Howard Ehrlich described the values of black as, “…beautiful. It is a color of determination, of resolve, of strength, a color by which all others are clarified and defined. Black is the mysterious surrounding of germination, of fertility, the breeding ground of new life which always evolves, renews, refreshes, and reproduces itself in darkness. The seed hidden in the earth, the strange journey of the sperm, the secret growth of the embryo in the womb all these the blackness surrounds and protects… So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth.” (Ehrlich, H. Reinventing Anarchy, 1979).

Questioning these varied beliefs and positions led to the dissolution of limits and boundaries along with an abandonment of absolutes. This was further played out in the geometric mapping of the banner’s rigid flat two-dimensional plane (Euclidean geometry) and the banner’s subsequent surrender to the contorting effects of the surrounding wind (non-Euclidean space) – a collision of alternate ideologies.

When first made, these works represented a dissolution of barriers and ideological truths. At the time in 1992, I deemed the tension in the work as having stemmed from playing different systems against each other, i.e. rigid formal design motifs in dialogue with the wind. The activation and interaction of these different systems - optical, conceptual, ideological, perceptual, ephemeral, philosophical, material and elemental generated a range of new perspectives for reflection.

Banner designs for Untitled, 1992

The merits of the art school when I attended (1986-89) was that it ran visual arts with dance workshops, performing arts and theatre concurrently. Combined Studies, a core Art History and Criticism first-year unit, would see visual arts students mixing with actors, musicians, etc. This cross-disciplinary pollination was incredibly insightful, progressive and creatively developmental.

The school serviced the arts in Western Sydney. Aside from lower tier diploma courses at Penrith TAFE, Nepean was the only serious Higher Education provider in Western Sydney. It initiated Indigenous academic support assistance through the Department of Employment, Education and Training. This was a very important initiative in facilitating the tutelage of Indigenous students in higher education. The school extended arts, culture and public awareness of the arts across the outer West and lower Blue Mountains region. Its closure was a disgrace, a great loss as an avenue for contemporary art in Western Sydney and the lower Mountains. I left western Sydney shortly after completing my undergraduate degree and have lived, worked, lectured and studied overseas for many years since. I returned to Australia in 2010 to take up my current post at The National Art School.

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