Speak to us: An exhibition of work by Kim Lehman

Speak to us is an exhibition of work by Launceston based artist Kim Lehman. Strongly conceptual in nature Kim's work in Speak to us investigates the interactions between, and viewer responses to, the physical gallery space, the art making process, and the nature of art itself. There is also a clear concern with the artist's omniscient presence in the work— a number of the pieces involve some form of self-representation. For example, the work Self portrait, Turbine Hall has the artist in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, the site of many large scale and imposing works, and which, only a few weeks after the image was taken housed Ai Wei Wei's Sunflower seeds. Similarly, the title piece, Speak to us, 'o wise one! lists the locations at which the artist has given a presentation from 2005 to 2010. The photomedia series People I don't know in Paris art galleries and the performance work 3 models at an art exhibition opening more obviously question the role of the artist as the maker of special kinds of material objects.

Over a number of years, and in various disciplines, there are two preoccupations apparent in Kim Lehman's creative practice. The first is portraying the idea of being out of context, of people or things seemingly being in the wrong time or place. The result for the viewer can be a 'disturbance' in their reality, which creates the opportunity to make comment on social phenomena, his second preoccupation. Kim is not necessarily interested in making evangelical statements, but is interested in causing the viewer to think more deeply on the issues that concern him. The works in Speak to us all evidence these preoccupations.