Palimpsest

                                                           
August 2023
solo exhibition by Benjamin Bannan at Cathedral Cabinet, Curated by Isabella Hone-Saunders.
            Concerned with converging notions of shame and anonymity, surveillance and the monument, the artistic practice of Benjamin Bannan (b. 1997, Boorloo/Perth, WA) spans video, installation and printmaking. Bannan studied at École Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Dijon, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University and recently received a Master of Fine Art (Research) from Monash University.

This exhibition centres around the mythical figure of Narcissus and speculates on his metamorphosis into a daffodil. The psychological diagnosis of narcissism emerged alongside the progression of sexology and psychoanalysis, with increasing affiliations to inversion and homosexuality, Narcissus became a surrogate for the artist and a vehicle for coded declarations of same-sex desire within art.

As the title suggests, ‘Palimpsest’ presents a selection of artworks in which surfaces bear visible traces of earlier forms.

Transformed from antiquated administrative use into a pictorial material, carbon paper is used to render depictions of Narcissus that emerge in varying states of legibility and abstraction. Layering and exposure to sunlight over time results in tonal shifts to the recognisable blue, a process of change that threatens further change during the duration of the exhibition.

These strategies of engaging with the metamorphosis of Narcissus work with and against the classical Western convention of the figure/ground relationship. From a psychological figure imposed on the landscape to an aesthetic subject that ventures to become a landscape, a transformation with the potential to collapse and expand traditional self/world binaries.