Eternal Rhythms

David Sequeira is a storyteller. He weaves compelling narratives, sharing with his audience anecdotes and reminiscences that lead you into a world where art and life coincide. One story recounts his father’s purchase of a World Book Encyclopaedia just after arriving in Australia. It seemed a strange investment for a migrant family striving to establish themselves and reconstruct their lives in a new country. Many other items might have been more logical purchases, but the encyclopaedia was about the future, about possibility and hope. And it was beautiful. It came with a companion set of children’s encyclopaedias called Childcraft, each one in a coloured cloth binding, together making up the spectrum. It’s all there: knowledge, organization, ideas, books and the spectrum, which are all recurring elements in Sequeira’s practice over the past decade. There is one further component, the re-imagination of childhood as the source of creative engagement with the world, a reconstruction of the awe and excitement of things seen fresh, new for the first time.

In a body of works that embraces different media with catholic exuberance Sequeira explores the space between here and now, between the openness of a child and the knowingness of an adult, between the work of art and other objects in the world, between the artist and his audience. He moves within these interstices, the gaps between what we know and what we imagine, what we challenge and what we believe, to give new meaning to the wonder of life. ‘Life is a mystery’ is the signature on his email correspondence and once again the storyteller leads us toward revelation. This simple statement is at the core of what makes him an artist…

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Title Eternal Rhythms David Sequeira 1996-2006 Date Made: 2006 Installation: John Curtin Gallery, Perth Photographer: Robert Frith