Extract from catalogue essay, "Onlooker" by Martina Copley:
A collection of paintings seamlessly housed within faux Classical frames are made to narrate within the gallery’s walls. Wojcik’s works of art, subsequently preserved as ‘souvenirs’, denote the symbiotic relationship between the museum and object. …

…Jarek Wojcik re-imagines the museum as both a lived reality and a fiction: the reproduction of an imaginary space. A place in which to read history in its forms, resonances and aporias. …

A space for the collective redemption of lost time - of the times embedded in the spaces of things, the museum is a site of cultural memory - a proprietary context for argumentation and for the telling of stories. Whose meaning is it that we experience and for whom and how do we remember?

Imbued with the artist’s characteristic skill and delight in visual appearance, these recreated relics and stilled artefacts point to the seamless narratives we like to construct around objects, they remind us that the museum is an active system of changing relations and meanings and that sometimes art aspires to similar things.
Martina Copley, 2012.

Biography
Born in Poland, where he studied painting and art history, Jarek Wojcik proceeded to graduate from the University of Poznan, majoring in medieval mural art with a Masters degree. With his family he relocated to Melbourne in 1985. He has been exhibiting as a professional practising artist throughout Australia (Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne) since 1997. Internationally, Wojcik exhibited in Paris in 2007 and Poland in 2008. He was a finalist in the John Leslie Art Prize, in 2004, a finalist in the 5th International Biennial of Miniature Art, Czestochowa, Poland in 2008, and in 2006 Wojcik was “Highly Commended” in 4th International Biennial of Miniature Art.

He is represented in the collections of National Museum in Szczecin, Poland and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Canberra, and his works are held in numerous private collections in Australia, Poland, New Zealand, USA, England, Malaysia, France, Sweden, Austria and Germany and South Korea.

For all enquiries including further images and/or a copy of the artist’s CV, please contact Catherine Asquith Gallery, (03) 9417 2828 or email enquiries@catherineasquithgallery.com

View exhibition on line www.catherineasquithgallery.com