Look, This is my friend! by Renuka Rajiv and Gonzalo Ceballos

Look, This is my friend! is a collaboration which experiments with the disruption and layering of sensibilities. Both Renuka's and Gonzalo's individual works are of a highly personal and dense nature. By allowing two subjective narratives to interact physically, and visually, the attempt is to create both a fragmented aesthetic, and possibly a fresh cohesion. In these pieces, they have made a work that remains personal but has developed an identity beyond one individual.

The chosen media of Renuka and Gonzalo's research are visual art rather than verbal essay. It is still a pursuit and refinement of ideas, but one of a more skewed and ambiguous nature. Working in a non-verbal realm allows them to prioritise feeling over thought. As art is a space that allows for vulnerability, it is liberated from having to sound convincing, or right. Since the process is largely intuitive, the artist’s intentions are mainly gestures. Over time, other patterns become apparent in the body of work. With this process, it is a 'felt' research where the output is clearer than the answers. 

In the creation of Look, This is my friend!, Gonzalo provided the first stage of this collaboration by drawing the cut-outs with a texta. Renuka then took them home and added small cut-out ornaments to them. Gonzalo's cut-outs resembled some of his favourite artists as well as some of their common friends. Working with Gonzalo's templates, Renuka focussed on smaller embellishments on these cut-outs in order to provide each template with something connected to the drawn character's personality. Throughout the making of the artworks, they opted to use full and bright colours and to leave the additional layers of paper loosely stuck on the cut-outs.