AS YOU swing by Canberra Museum and Gallery’s outside Gallery 4 on Civic square, you’ll see a large, gold and inflatable object on show.

Part of an ambitious project by Canberra artist and ANU Ph.D. graduate, Jay Kochel, the installation “avarice: auspice” is an exploration of the Japanese concept of ‘reading air’.
Gallery 4 has been effectively transformed by Kochel into a laboratory site in which invisible forces are seen to gain shape and materialise.

Kochel was awarded the inaugural Asialink residency at the Kyoto Art Center in Kyoto, Japan, in 2014.

During his residency, Kochel began investigating the ideas which have resulted in the realisation of “avarice: auspice”. The work’s title, he suggests, may imply a desire for otherworldliness borne out of the parameters of everyday life. In addition, a sense of polar opposition exists between the two words and their relative meanings. An alternative way to understand the term ‘auspice’ in Kochel’s work is to consider it as a form of divination – a sign of propitious circumstances.

The Japanese term for ‘not reading air’, he says, is kuuki wo yomenai – a derogatory term not unlike, ’…you’re missing the point…’, or someone ‘…not reading between the lines…’ The term is largely used to create ‘air’, or more literally, space between people.

Kochel constructs a “mysterious, glittering object which hovers between reality and unreality”, not unlike an alien craft.

It’s worth a visit as, under his guidance, “invisible forces gain shape, crystallise and transform.”

“avarice: auspice”, Canberra Museum and Gallery’s outside Gallery 4  on Civic square, until Sept 18, viewable 24/7.