"The coda for the contemporary artist is now defined by the desire for being in

the contemporary, rather than producing a belated or elevated response to the

everyday."; 1 (Papastergiadis, 2006)

Catalogue essays are meant to elucidate and complicate ideas offered in the body of artworks. Or at least that is usually what I look for in one. In this instance, I'm not sure this show requires complication or elucidation, so instead, I will attempt to share some thoughts about the way these works resonate in a time of deepening inequality and injustice, and a time where many are looking to art to succeed where politics is failing and a materialistic "attention economy" prevails.

This series of works presents a story not claimed as fact; they don't try to convince you of things—they speak to the heart and the mind in a different way. The practices of Bloor and Marlow emerge from a similar place; the collecting of human traces and slippages found in most major cities. Bloor and Marlow are both street artists and gallery artists; they are both visual poets who keenly feel and observe the human condition. 

The combination of Marlow's photography and Bloor's text is a sophisticated approach to what twenty years ago Nicolas Bourriaud called "relational aesthetics", a shift from studio and gallery practice. These gallery works gain providence from the paste-up street interventions, building momentum over time, bringing an aesthetic that builds relationships and thinking for and with the audience.

The power of these works is not only found in the content of each iteration but also in how it joins up with the experiences and ideas of other people. The documentation of this ephemeral and transient extended story is the artwork, and the firm, clean gallery installation is merely the permanent reminder of this collective beauty.

The works cleverly straddle abstraction and realism—the lifting of an image from a city that could and does resonate in other places, combined with words that have familiar connections to religion, that have or will become urban proverbs.

Bloor's words and the effect these works have on me as a body of work remind me of the well-known story of King Solomon who wore a ring with the letters Gam Zeh Ya'avor - meaning "this too shall pass". Although it has been co-opted and oft misinterpreted in contemporary culture in different ways, this phrase guides you through both good times and bad. When in good times, you should value and make the most of being in the moment because it won't last, and in bad times, remember this won't last forever, and there will be better times to come. This connection, is of course, is an oversimplification of individual works that communicate more than this, more a confrontation with specific moments of vulnerability and fragility that compel you to ask what can I do?

These works capitalise on our shared humanity using a mnemonic function. These prompts provide a dual-channel communication out of monochrome darkness that frames and emphasises the text and image in the midst of the varied cadence of the surrounding streetscape and the lives of the people in it. Individual works that communicate love and hope and despair through virtuoso handling of light, space, texture, and narrative, each time ask you to value this moment.

Nikos Papastergiadis (2006) talks about displacement and a transfigured relationship between global and local. For Bloor and Marlow, the global and the local are linked through humanity. From these works, humanity belongs to all, here and everywhere. The large photo works of Bloor and Marlow cut through; these works say Pay attention, do not turn away, do not evade the moment. They say we are citizens, we do what we can to address the moment we are in, and we do not look away.

1. Nikos Papastergiadis, Spatial Aesthetics: Art, Place and the Everyday, Rivers Oram Press, London, 2006.

2. The concept of an "attention economy" refers to the idea that human attention is a scarce commodity in an age of information overload, and therefore has economic value. First proposed by psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon, who noted that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"

3. Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction, Lukas and Sternberg, New York, 2001 Bourriaud defines relational aesthetics as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space."

Dr Nicole Slatter

Artist and academic at Curtin University

A catalogue of available editions can be viewed here