A dead mouse and a broken coffee machine is an exhibition of new work by Perth artist Shannon Lyons, exposing the art gallery as a place full of political, personal and poetic content.
At Moana, Lyons reflects the adjacent cafe into the gallery space, and on the opening night, the exhibition will also include an enigmatic performance.
A dead mouse and a broken coffee machine plays with the relationship between the commercial cafe environment, and the supposedly non-commercial, contemplative gallery space. Encouraging the audience to consider the relationships between the two spaces, Lyons comments on the coded social engagements embedded in each, and highlights the gallery as a cultural institution endowed with the ability to poetically transform objects and activities.
Through her multidisciplinary site-specific practice, Shannon Lyons attempts to visually ‘unpack’ the complex relationships that exist between artistic content and context. She has shown her work widely across institutions, commercial galleries and artist-run spaces, including SOMA, Mexico City; FELTspace, Adelaide; Kings ARI, Melbourne; Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth; and Success, Fremantle. In 2020 Lyons was conferred PhD in Visual Art, and is currently a sessional academic in the Department of Art at Curtin University.
Exhibition opening Friday 6pm 12 August 2020