Overview

Nirvana Office is an exhibition for a summer's day. The installation is presented as part furniture showroom, part studio. Three elements are the Nirvana Office; Furniture: the bird cages, the tables in the shape of a stylised lily pad, and the animations shown on monitors. It is a utopian space, something like a lily pond, a tranquil place out of the grime of the surroundings of Sydney. Where there were flowers, if this were a lily pond, there are instead monitors, showing simple flash animations of cartoon figures sleeping, dreaming and breathing, and occasionally slightly more.

Still life objects are central to this work and the spaces, typically interiors, within which still life objects are contained.

Interiors it seems are described and given meaning based on observation, and also what we know about the kind of activities taking place in them. For example, retail show rooms, office spaces, prisons, aviaries or art galleries are distinct from one another.

Nirvana Office is a cartoon office/lounge room. The program Flash has been used to draw the design of the exhibition and to make the animations with a vector line style, contrasting still life with animation.

Sadie Chandler graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 1996. Since then she has exhibited throughout Australia and overseas. She has exhibited at PS1 Contemporary Art Space, New York City, at the 2003 Prague Biennale, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, MOP Projects, Sydney, The Studio, Sydney Opera House, and was included in the 1994 Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.