God-favoured, Rodney Glick: Surveyed, is an exhibition that brings together art works ranging across the last 15 years of renowned West Australian artist Rodney Glick's practice, in a typically idiosyncratic mix of sculpture, installation, photography and publications.

In his latest series of works—which in this exhibition include eight sculptures and two groups of related photographs—it is the capacity, or the potential, of everyone to take on some aspect of the that provides the ground on which Glick and his collaborators have built an elaborate and engaging series.

Rodney Glick, Everyone NO.9, 2008, carved and painted wood (detail)

The larger-than-life carved wooden statues, cast bronzes and manipulated photographs are derived from Glick’s observations of Buddhist and Hindu religious statues in Western art museums. The statue series titled Everyone, and based on real people in Glick’s life, has taken on the aura of the venerated object of contemplation. Through the photographs of other gesturing figures with multiple arms and hands, the series is extended, both in Bali (where the statues were carved) and back home in Australia, and potentially to everyone, everywhere.

Photographs feature heavily through th exhibition, including family snapshots. In his Defaced series Glick has taken family photographs that were being discarded, and scratched out many of the faces that made these characters familiar and known. In doing so, they become representatives of anyone or everyone. As the memories fade; the snapshots move into being just records of the historical past.

Rodney Glick, Defaced, 2005-2007, altered photographs, courtesy Goddard de Fiddes Gallery

Glick and his partner, Lynnette Voevodin, have made a number of panoramic films that compress a full day into a single hour of video. The 24-hourly slices of condensed time and space are of a forest in Kent and sections of downtown Havana, with a focus on everyday, routine activity.

In the Jewish Orthodox tradition, the full prayer service can be performed only in a quorum of 10 adult males. Glick explores this tradition through his Master of Prayer installation, where each computer has been individually programmed to respond (in Hebrew) to the blessings recited by the main computer — just as they would respond to a human Master of Prayer.

The title for this exhibition, God-favoured, has come from the name of a Chinese rubber used for table tennis bats (which Glick, an avid player, used for several years).

Everyone No.9 (Self Portrait), 2008, Rodney Glick, Wood and acrylic paint, Height 210cm x width 70 cm x depth 70cm

Everyone No.48 (Shaman), 2007, Rodney Glick, Sohan Hayes, Chris HillDigital Print, 100cm x 75cm

Throughout his work since the early 1980s Glick has compressed time, space and elements of everyday life, and fictional but very real stories into dense and humorous amalgams. Explanations of art, of life, of collecting, of place and origin are created by Glick, retold and recast in ways which destabilise as well as intrigue, and which are cut through with the blackest humour or which transpose details of real life into a different but still quite possible world.

Rodney Glick is an artist with a wide-ranging practice, encompassing everything from painting to architecture, film to sculpture and public art to furniture design. He has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. He has undertaken residencies in Yogyakarta, Kent, New York, Seoul and Basel and been included in major exhibitions and biennials in Sydney, Perth, Havanna and Sao Paulo. His work has been exhibited at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in several exhibitions since 1992, with this being his first major survey exhibition in Western Australia.