towards a theory of everything…

An eccentric and obsessive diarist driven by a tireless bureaucratic and archival impulse, Patrick Pound organises collections of visual explanations. There is no distinction between fact and fiction, nor adherance to a specific discipline, all are grist to his accquisative mill. Diagrams and illustrations, whether commercial, medical, dental, scientific, corporate or pedagogic are torn and included in collages. An encyclopeadic collection including all manner of lists, bird-watcher’s field guides, a dry-cleaning manual, violin parts, typography, famous murderers, manga, embroidery, dog breeds, scribbles, film stills, fragments of text books, typewriter typefaces, quotations, catalogues, models and representations. Anything that might make up a system of knowledge is sought out, incised and displayed. Pound’s photographic practice involves a collecting of found photographs as well as a careful imaging of objects that either resemble each other or demonstrate the oddities of human behaviour such as smashed CD cases, abandoned restaurants, vacant lots, dead-birds, forlorn mattresses or discarded televisions.

Assembling, collecting, combining and captioning form the crux of Pound’s practice, he returns again and again to the communication or manufacturing of information. There is a fascination with writing, whether a child’s scrawl, handwritten notes, newspaper print, the typewritten, or the artist’s own cursive. Blackboards have been used as the support for collages together with found objects, slim volumes, customised junk-shop paintings, puzzles, glued photographs and torn book illustrations. A perpetual scavenger hunt, Pound’s collages are part scrapbook, part bulletin-board, part teacher’s aid. He has created large-scale installations, diorama as well as video works. Mode of display is crucial as Pound adopts a museological language in order to display orphaned then found photographs as well as his own newly created images, often manifesting a catalogue of visual patterns as though there is some comfort in repetition. Collaborating with artists and writers, many books have been realised, additionally there is a conceptual component to Pound’s work that generally involves tampering with the truth, whether it be fabricating identities, authoring bogus resumes, paying to be entered into biographical compendiums or awarding himself a medal for 20th century achievement.

Mapping human culture, paper wunderkammer are created. Pound sytematically creates bewildering palmipsests, overloading viewers with a cacophony of information. Classifications, taxonomy, nomeclature take place, as does sorting and layering until what is created seem to be artificial archives, or monuments to the pseudo-scientific. Learning, remembering or musing, one can dip in and out of Pound’s unique and nostalgic multiverse, following a path of printed labels, diagrams, instructions and images.

Patrick Pound (b. 1962) currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Pound has exhibited works nationally and internationally in both private and public galleries. Recent solo exhibitions include: Remote Abstraction (melanie Roger Gallery, 2019), The Photographer's Shadow (Melanie Roger Gallery, 2013), Collected Works: Telling Things (Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne, 2011), Before and After (Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 2009) and Painting in the Library (Artspace Mackay, Queensland, 2008). He has also exhibited within curated exhibitions and group shows such as: Present Tense: An Imagined Grammar of Portraiture in the Digital Age (National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2010), In Which the Wind is also a Protagonist (La Générale, Sèvres, 2010) and Photographer Unknown (Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2009).Work by Pound is held in prominent collections such as those of the National Gallery of Australia, Auckland Art Gallery and the Chartwell Trust. His work has been featured in many publications including periodicals such as Art Link and Photofile as well as Anne Marsh’s Look: Contemporary Australian Photography Since 1980 (2011) and Jim and Mary Barr’s Reboot: The Jim and Mary Barr Collection (2007).