When All That We Know, or Feel, or See, Shall Pass
2019
Noticeboard (found upstairs in the abandoned staff lunchroom) and assorted pins.
When All That We Know, or Feel, or See, Shall Pass, is a site-responsive work that was exhibited as part of BRB, a group show that bid farewell to the artist run space, Smart Casual in Fremantle, Western Australia. Liebetrau was invited alongside previous exhibiting artists to pay homage to the deteriorating building that was home to Smart Casual and facing impending demolition.
For When All That We Know, or Feel, or See, Shall Pass, Liebetrau responds to the abandoned staff room once occupied by former Spotlight employees several years ago, now derelict and shrouded in darkness. All that remains are traces of industry, labour and time passing in the form of noticeboards that prevail on the peeling walls, revealing the ghostly imprints of notices pinned up and taken down. The pins serve as a visual reminder of the building’s former tenants, with both a selection of found office pins and sewing pins, a nod to Spotlight, a sewing and fabrics store.
Liebetrau adopts the title for the work from an excerpt in On Death, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The use of this verse, relates the demolition of the Fremantle building at 52 Adelaide street, as having its own passing or end. The aging building had evidently had a diverse catalogue of uses, lives and purposes but now faces its final chapter.