Stasis

Claire Healy b. 1971, Melbourne. Lives and works in Sydney.
Sean Cordeiro b. 1974, Penrith. Lives and works in Sydney.

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro are a collaborative duo who reclaim and transform the detritus of everyday life in their work.

Stasis was a newly commissioned work situated on the Museum of Contemporary Art’s front lawns, this temporary work accompanying the duo’s first major museum exhibition in Australia in 2012. Stasis consisted of a Beechcraft Travel Air (small aircraft) suspended in a cube matrix of metal scaffolding. The artists intended that it not be obvious whether the scaffolding was elevating the aircraft or had captured it mid-flight. Interested in this tension and ambiguity, Healy and Cordeiro were seeking to articulate themes of living in the early third millennium. The aircraft points towards the museum evoking the idea of a potential threat or attack and reflecting upon recent events that have shaped history and imprinted themselves into the psyche and memory of our society.

While this work is immobile, the suspended plane nonetheless embodies the velocity of flight and a virtual image of movement remains. Stasis is poised indefinitely on the brink of disaster contradicting the calm suggested by its title. Since the horrifying incident of 9/11, the unforgettable images of that disaster will forever be linked to planes flying near buildings.

Healy and Cordeiro’s practice interrogates ideas of home, aspiration, mobility and the acquisition of material goods. Their work is characterised by the reinvention of prefabricated structures and the compilation of commonplace objects into extraordinary sculptures and installations. Ideas around (im)permanence, destruction, time, travel and autobiography are recurring themes, as are processes of packing, sorting, storing, freighting and discarding that are associated with their nomadic lifestyle. Healy and Cordeiro have spent much of their artistic careers travelling and this has played a central role in their art. A number of their works also look at domestic space examining its symbolism, functionality, affordability, construction and decay.

The Keir Foundation is delighted to have supported the commissioning of this work.

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