Overview

Everyone has unfinished business. Work uncompleted, work never executed, work to be revised etc.

In 1997 Geoff Kleem exhibited a collection of working schematics and pre-visualisations to accompany a Project Exhibition at the Art gallery of NSW. The exhibition was titled Industrial Division. The title was meant to imply that the artist had created an annex, a department that dealt with the rational or business end of conceptualising and making work. Kleem was also interested in the curious process of developing and building work from scratch, literally the making of a work. Having a photographic interest he considered the process of printing a work from a negative as an analogue to that of building a work from a blueprint. The process of generating an accurate virtual photographic representation of an object, which would then solidify to become real and tangible, has always intrigued Kleem.

This exhibition represented some of those works along with related maquettes and plans. Works that were never made for various reasons plus other works, which Kleem has wanted to revisit. The plans and pre-visualisations are his way of conceptualising and thinking them through - for them to generate enough authority to convince Kleem to make them. This practice allows him to create an accurate virtual representation of an object. In a sense it is a process of conceptual pre-visualisation which has kept the relationship between photography and the object active and relevant within his working process.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.