FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 4 May 2018

The placeholders used to commemorate relationships are the subject of Blind Carbon Copy: an open love letter, a solo exhibition by Gabrielle Amodeo that opens at Te Uru in Titirangi in May.

Amodeo is a Wellington-based artist renowned for her interest in what happens when we trace or copy something familiar. In 2015, she won the $20,000 Parkin Drawing Prize for The Floor We Walk On, in which Amodeo made rubbings of the floor of 94 square metre house she and her partner owned in Auckland. The entire piece comprised approximately 1200 sheets of paper, each done by hand, and laid out flat together in the gallery as a 1:1 index of their home.

The upcoming solo exhibition Blind Carbon Copy: an open love letter follows on from Amodeo’s award-winning work. For this exhibition, Amodeo has typed out the date of each day of her 14 year relationship on individual sheets of paper. The current tally stands of 5305 sheets, and still counting, as each passing day means a new piece of paper.

“One of the interesting things about Gabrielle’s work is the to-and-fro between documentation and the absence of the thing being documented,” says Te Uru Curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.

“For instance, the dates on the page are imprinted using a typewritter, but without using ribbon, so the typewritter cuts into the page – the gap is what makes the numbers and letters. Similarly, Gabrielle can only mark or record a day because it’s passed.”

The new work raises the question of whether it would be a jinx to include pre-typed days spanning the exhibition’s duration.

“I'm a little weirded out by typing those days in advance!”, laughs Amodeo. “But they will have to be typed out in advance. They’ll just be kept away separate and added to the exhibition as each day passes.”

Paper, of course, also has significance as the gift traditionally given for a first anniversary.

“It’s meant to signify an early relationship’s fragility”, notes Amodeo, “and also a new page of a couple’s life.”

14 years into her relationship with her partner, Amodeo also presents a selection of objects in order to ask if perhaps the accumulation of things is how we can ‘see’ the timespan of a relationship. Accompanied by an audio essay, the installation considers what connotations objects can convey, and the internal logic and limits of different material forms.

“One of the interesting things about Amodeo’s work is that certain things become more poignant because they can’t be fully captured”, says Gordon-Smith.

Blind Carbon Copy: an open love letter runs at Te Uru from 19 May to 5 August

Opening: Saturday 19 May, 4-6pm
Artist talk: Saturday 19 May, 3.30pm

Hours: 10am – 4.30pm daily
Address: 420 Titirangi Road, Titirangi, Auckland
Website: www.teuru.org.nz