PARKER Contemporary is pleased to present Becoming Penguin (Act II), a new exhibition by Carolyn Craig.

In this body of work, Craig uses the figure of the penguin to examine how judgement is carried through the body. The penguin is not simply a character or disguise, but a constructed identity through which the artist tests the pressures of adaptation and belonging. As Craig reflects, “I want to huddle against the cruelty of the world. I want to become penguin in all its absurdist overtones.”

The exhibition begins in performance, with Craig inhabiting this figure before the action is documented, stilled and subjected to classification. Through this process, the playful absurdity of the penguin becomes increasingly uneasy. It is a body made visible, sorted and read through a system that appears neutral but has already set the terms.

Informed by Michelle Alexander’s writing on the contemporary caste system, Becoming Penguin (Act II) considers how structural exclusion can be made to appear voluntary. Craig uses humour and transformation to unsettle ideas of innocence and blame, asking how identities of criminality or deviance are produced rather than simply found.

Moving between tenderness and absurdity, Becoming Penguin (Act II) asks what it means to seek protection from a world that continues to decide who is seen, who is suspected and who is left outside the huddle.

Carolyn Craig is a Sydney based artist who has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including at the Krakow Centre for Print and Artspace GOTGAN, Seoul, Korea. She completed her PhD at Griffith University in 2017 and is the head of printmaking at the National Art School. 

Exhibition Opening
Friday July 3
6pm to 8pm