Gary Deirmendjian | Provocative Interventions

Deirmendjian encourages curiosity through provocative interruptions within the urban environment, presented in both digital and physical realms. The works within his multifaceted practice remain unresolved until interacted with by fellow humans. This dialogue embodies a kind of “truth telling,” that calls audiences to adopt a keen curiosity and broadened perspective of the everyday.

I met with Gary Deirmendjian in his studio, or one aspect of it at least, at a café in Sydney’s Kings Cross. He is self-described as an “urban animal,” and the streets form a diorama and the source for his creations. Consequently, Deirmendjian’s artistic practice rejects defined parameters, both in terms of medium and its display. His multifaceted practice centres on uncovering and exposing truth whilst utilising the materials within the urban environment he inhabits. Deirmendjian’s works therefore form part of an ongoing, evolving process that creates provocative interventions into the everyday.

Deirmendjian describes his artistic practice as a “disparate affair” that rides the boundaries of a public and a gallery or institutional artist. Over the years, his “practice has spilled into the street in many forms,” which has allowed for intuitive, reactionary, and spontaneous creation and audience reception. These spillages manifest in various forms, from “formal imitations to large-scale installations.”

Deirmendjian has become an active user of social media, utilising its instantaneous dissemination of information as a means to circumvent the white cube, and instigate inquisitive curiosity in his audience. He cleverly disrupts using a tool that has conversely eroded our collective curiosity for our surroundings. His posts on Instagram and Facebook are “on the quieter side of things” and each post is considered its “own little work.” The imagery and footage are “harvested” by his phone on his daily walks, at times he is “interrupted by moments of interest,” always a particular moment in time, including sporadically marked roads, and tables supported by a fourth unmatching leg. Deirmendjian does not interfere with the content for the post, and instead aims to document the feeling of being enticed by the moment and doing something with it there. The posts’ combination of text and image is imperative to their provocation and generate a sense of ambiguity and openness. Including an image of a peeling Aboriginal flag painted in Bondi, exposing layers of colour, captioned with “a thousand colours deep . . .”

Through these posts, Deirmendjian aims to highlight moments in time that are inspiring to his following and provide permission for them to nurture their curiosity in the everyday and individual perspectives. Deirmendjian’s surrender of these works to the public via social media, provides a direct contact to sink his hooks into his audience as well as foster a genuine space for connection.

Deirmendjian notes that “sometimes on those walks opportunities arise where I do intervene—whether it is milkcrates or other possibilities, a quick ‘happening’ with whatever is there.” These interventions await another’s inquisitive gaze to encounter the provocation Deirmendjian has left for them. One such series that currently inhabits the Sydney streets, is the image of his eyes pasted precisely on a single brick plastered to the city’s brick walls, both inviting the gaze inwards as the eyes peer outwards.

This unwavering curiosity departs significantly from his upbringing in Armenia, in the Soviet Union, where notions of black and white were deeply ingrained. During his childhood, he was conditioned to despise the west, and his views of the outside world were heavily mediated through the state, his family, and school. He was pulled out of that environment and relocated to Marrickville, Sydney, where he was surrounded by people of multiple cultural backgrounds and confronted by their overwhelming sameness to him and his community.

Growing up, the thought “I would love to be an artist” never crossed Deirmendjian’s imagination, rather becoming an artist was the result of becoming undone. As a first-generation immigrant, Deirmendjian internalised the pressure of having something to prove and studied aeronautical engineering after school. After a time, he came to realise this path was not the way to continue and decided to divest himself of the scientific profession. With the support of his partner, artistic outputs became a mechanism for Deirmendjian to make his meaning in a valid way. He was allured by the Sydney sandstone as a photographic subject and sculptural material that carried metaphorical meaning, and the ability to carve, and hack away. He decided to undertake a Masters of Fine Art at the National Art School, Sydney, where he now teaches, to turn over a rock he hadn’t “looked under yet.”

While many of Deirmendjian’s works are evocative of “happenings,” he has an ongoing exploration of the figure, including his work lone man, 2023, previously situated on the dilapidated Berrys Bay wharf, Sydney. The sculpture comprised of mixed media layered to form a male figure, stealthily placed on the wharf by Deirmendjian and a few delinquent friends. For three months prior to its collapse, the lone man sat on the wharf, surrounded by the glistening harbour, with his back to the city. His posture was quiet and contemplative, suggestive of being “caught up in his own thoughts.” lone man was driven by a “need to put something felt and considered amongst people, real lives.” The lone man sitting on the abandoned wharf was a figure that reflects all, a physical form in which people can imagine themselves.

Deirmendjian’s recent exhibition The Aesthetics of Nil Intent, 2024, at SLOTProjects, presented a private project in which he has been “looking for tangible moments of truth.” The exhibition was a “proposition on the ordinary” and a result of “hoarding and collecting off the street.” The materials are articulated as unconscious arrivals, the formal result of human labour exercised in various intensities and durations on everyday materials with no active consideration. One such unconscious arrival tommy & vito – vito & tommy, 2008-13, comprised two pieces of wood originally placed in a hatch beneath the coffee machine in a cafe, tapped every day from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Sunday. After two and a half years the unconscious sculpting caused the wood to fray and splinter carving two sweeping symmetric curves.

Deirmendjian’s multifaced practice is one in which the medium finds the message. He celebrates the ordinary and ability for forms to hold narratives that are not typically ascribed value. His ongoing practice of positing moments of curiosity to his audience, urges us to remain open to receiving them.

COMMON GROUND is available for $35.00 via the book page on our website.  

This profile was published in Artist Profile, Issue 67, 2024.
Images courtesy of the artist