Media Release - A Second Simplicity - Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)

A Second Simplicity

A Second Simplicity, opening August 5th in ACCA's main exhibition hall, will feature a scale representation of the one bedroom apartment that was inhabited by de Clario, his parents, grandparents and his sister. The apartment will be lit by the seven spectrum colours, casting skeletal-like shadows from the building structure that surrounds it.

The apartment, via de Bosco, no. 3, Trieste, was adjacent to a cinema. Yet all the 11 year old de Clario and his sister could see from their window was the bottom half of the cinema screen. In A Second Simplicity, a cinema projection will be screened from the apartment window, and the lower-half of popular films from the period will be shown, dubbed in Italian.

And, at various times during the exhibitions' duration, de Clario and his family will invite one person in to the apartment to share a meal. Traditional Italian one-pot dishes, the kind prepared and eaten by the de Clario family on the landing of their apartment, will be cooked and served up alongside engaging discussions about origins, journeys, youth and ageing, Trieste and Melbourne, and remembered and recorded history. The ensuing conversation will be heard throughout the gallery space.

Domenico de Clario is one of Australia's most influential installation, site-specific and performance-based artists and his work has been deeply influenced by his family, his Italian upbringing and the migrant experience. He has exhibited widely and made performances in Australia and overseas; his Shaker Road performance was shown in Maine, U.S.A. in 1996 and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, U.S.A., in 1998; tongleN (13 conversazioni with les estrellas) at the Liverpool Biennale of Contemporary Art, 1999; and he was included in the exhibition La Quietudine de Terra at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Salvador, Brazil, 2000. In Australia his work is held in a number of major national collections and he has exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Monash University Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of N.S.W., and others.

A Second Simplicity will be a highpoint in the artists' career, bringing together many of the forces and ideas that have shaped his immense and highly engaging practice over the past forty years. The exhibition will be a culmination of previous works focussing on family, narrative, dislocation and memory.

Domenico de Clario - A Second Simplicity. August 5 - September 25.