YOUR PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING brings together work by Lauren Redican & Daniel Betham and sound artist Jason Post. The show continues a discussion of the Window foyer space, choosing to read the physical, social and ideological architecture of the site above the assumed context or independence of the gallery. Redican & Betham respond to institutional furnishing of the space to investigate the idea of student performance. The visual campaign in YOUR PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING likens itself to corporate public relations imagery that instrumentalises affect: aiming to create a mood, reinforce imagined values of the institution and manufacture compliance in its subjects. ‘Felt images,’ as epitomised by the stock image, contain smiling faces and hand gestures to connote expression, which is very often a bland positivity. The use value of the stock image – the translation of felt experience into representation – contains an assumption of how this works in reverse for the viewer, as a mirror. Alas, empathy has been photoshopped. Withal, in the typical stock image gestures remain incomplete: there are no discernable goals, just signifiers of social cooperation. Similarly, motivational sloganeering uses the syntax of speech to mimic positive social relations, but lacks a semblance of exchange. The separation between feeling and content and thus, the suspect position of intent in the visual languages of advertising, branding and promotional material are evoked in YOUR PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING. Reworked as an open language, without product and an obvious consumer base, perhaps most inviting is what Redican & Betham say is still on offer, pure rhetoric - though only through displacing future action and realisation upon the onlooker. YOUR PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING includes a recorded sound piece by Jason Post that permeates the borders of visual, architectural and social utilities of the foyer to inform a reading beyond what is expected by a viewership hallmarked by the idle student, hanging around or ‘just passing through.’

Daniel Betham graduated from Massey University with a Bachelor of Photographic Design, First Class Honours, in May of 2012. His practice explores notions of spiritual enlightenment and the absurd methodologies used in the attempt to attain it. His other current show, What Would I Do Without You, at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington runs from 5 September - 29 September 2012.

Lauren Redican is a Wellington based artist, who graduated from Massey School of Fine Arts in 2012. Her recent projects include CONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU ARE DOING (2012) with Annsuli Marais at Enjoy Public Art Gallery.

Jason Post (BMus(Hons)) is a Wellington-based composer and a recent graduate of the composition/sonic arts program at the New Zealand School of Music. He is currently undertaking postgraduate studies in this same field. Post often creates sound installations that attempt to engage with space as the primary compositional material. He has recently shown Sirens (2011) at the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington.