Each picture in the Reciprocal Interference series was a collaboration between Hong Kong-based artist Carol Archer and one other artist: Sue Rawlinson (Bondi), Sue Taylor (Googong), Johanna Trainor (Newcastle), Mary Grehan (Ireland), Even Mak (Hong Kong). The first of these collaborations began in 2005, the others in 2006. No written instructions or descriptions arrived with the pictures – conversations proceeded by means of the visual language in the works. The pictures in this series deploy a rich variety of drawing, painting and photographic media and heavyweight watercolour paper. Each picture is 29.5 x 21 cm in size.
Reciprocal Interference? The phrase comes from Henri Bergson’s essay on laughter. When “two altogether independent series of events” come together, it may generate a comic effect, “the precise formula of which is very difficult to disentangle, by reason of the extraordinary variety of forms in which it appears”. Like the ingredients of a good joke, the elements comprising the Reciprocal Interference pictures are diverse. Two artistic sensibilities meet in each work. Each results from a challenge posed by one artist and an answering visual intervention by another. The process is important: these pictures could not have come into existence in any other way. A series of blogs, each highlighting the works-in-progress of particular collaborative pair, forms the virtual component of the project. To access these blogs, or to read some further reflections on the project, visit www.aboutreciprocalinterference.blogspot.com. The Reciprocal Interference series was exhibited in 2008 at Podspace in Newcastle, Australia.
