Concrete Playground

A central theme to She went that way, the first major exhibition of Raquel Ormella’s work, currently showing at Artspace, is memory — personal and collective.

An image like The Domain reminds us all of a place we know. For Sydneysiders, it’s un–mistakable, for those from anywhere else, it’s their equivalent. Ormella’s ideas of space and perspective convey this familiarity. She has a gift to recognise the diurnal happenings and miss-happenings of our lives, and the guts to comment on them. Originally made in 2001, The Domain, like many other early works, has been re-jigged for the Artspace show.

The show’s title suggests Ormella ran out the back door on the opening night, or during the install, leaving the gallery attendants pointing in her wake. It speaks not only of the relationship of the artist to their work, but also to the direction in which Ormella might be moving. As an artist working over an array of activities (video, painting, installation, drawing and zine production), who’s to tell which way she’ll go next.

Image: Raquel Ormella, The Domain, Sydney, February 2001, 2001-09