Emi­ly Floyd
New Graph­ic Sculpture

Emi­ly Floy­d’s large scale work at Anna Schwartz Gallery Syd­ney spells out its title through the con­fig­u­ra­tion of coloured open-form steel blocks.

‘New Graph­ic Sculp­ture’ con­tin­ues a long term project cre­at­ing abstract spa­tial struc­tures and three dimen­sion­al graph­ic forms util­is­ing lit­er­ary, polit­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ing as a point of depar­ture. Text and ele­men­tal objects are com­bined using a mate­r­i­al vocab­u­lary that finds its lin­eage in alter­na­tive ped­a­gogy such as Free-School Edu­ca­tion, The Bauhaus and The Com­mu­ni­ty Move­ment. This cur­rent work takes inspi­ra­tion from two seem­ing­ly dis­parate edu­ca­tion­al forms, a coloured micro-archi­tec­tur­al wood­en block set designed dur­ing the 1920s by Bauhaus toy­mak­er Alma Sei­d­hoff-Busch­er and a polit­i­cal pam­phlet out­lin­ing a series of work­shops for The Broad Left Con­fer­ence dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia dur­ing the 1980s. These two forms of learn­ing share in com­mon, an auto­bi­o­graph­ic asso­ci­a­tion for the artist and a design that fos­ters exper­i­men­ta­tion with­in defined struc­tur­al para­me­ters. These then new arrange­ments of colour, shape and form and the build­ing frame­works for a dif­fer­ent soci­ety both sought new knowl­edge and speak to modes of inven­tion inher­ent in exper­i­men­tal con­tem­po­rary prac­tices today.

Edu­ca­tion and knowl­edge are key themes in Emi­ly’s work. Recent group exhi­bi­tions include ​‘Colour Bazaar’, at Hei­de Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, Mel­bourne, ​‘Kind­ness: Undar­ta’, Habi­tat Cen­ter, New Del­hi, ​’10 Ways to look at the Past’, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne, and ​‘Home and Away’, Aus­tralian Embassy Wash­ing­ton DC. Recent solo projects include exhi­bi­tions at the ​‘Aus­tralian Print Work­shop’ and a Build­ing Com­mis­sion for the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Syd­ney. Upcom­ing projects include the inau­gur­al Ian Pot­ter Sculp­ture Com­mis­sion at Monash Uni­ver­si­ty Muse­um of Art and a group exhi­bi­tion ​‘Nego­ti­at­ing This World: Con­tem­po­rary Aus­tralian Art’ at the Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne. Floy­d’s work is held in muse­um col­lec­tions includ­ing The Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra, Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Syd­ney, Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Queens­land and The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, London.