Charred tree stump (local), carved wooden acanthus leaf excavated from colonial decorative ornament (Eastern Europe), chalk stain
.
Acanthus MollisL.
Invasive coloniser.
Native to Europe.
Disperses widely.
Competes for natural resources.
Resists eradication once established.
Transforms the endemic landscape.
This ornamental motif infiltrates each continent, each timeline;
from the Corinthian capitals of ancient Rome to the Victorian tapestries of William Morris;
Ever present, all-pervasive, the consummate weed.
.
In Early May, at Dane Mitchell’s studio we (Isabella Young, Celine Frampton and I) did a mini installation and critique. My work titled ‘Migrant’ comprised a charred tree stump and a carved wooden acanthus leaf. The top surface of the stump (locally sourced), I left untreated after charring in order to preserve the velvet-like texture reminiscent of Victorian sumptuousness. The leaf was extricated from an ornamental carving originating in Eastern Europe and treated with a chalk stain. Notes from the crit were as follows:
Dane – Does it have to be a sculpture? Could this image/idea be a photo or a drawing instead?
Dane – The text is quite prevalent. Is the text a surrogate for the work? Or is the work a surrogate for the text?
What’s most important?
Celine – Fragility. Decay/destroyed. It’s static in its decay. Decay is a process but this is a pause in this process. Not necessarily entropic – halted.
Dane – Don’t assume the necessity of the text to explain what’s going on. Let the work speak.
The work is operating and therefore not the text.
Dane – the wooden leaf sits in the space between being a replica and a symbol. Interesting space in which it sits. What does that mean for the other objects/ Where do they sit on that spectrum?
Visual proposition
Scale and presence – more of these? A formidable number of these? (Autumn leaves en masse)
Production/edition
Physical impact
Not hyper-real, nor totally ornamental
Beyond the symbolic
Not trying to trick the eye
Extracted from colonial furniture. Secondary to physical presence and the effect it’s having.
Half-charred native totara, casualties from a burnt neighbouring property, have been meticulously planed and carved by Kazu Nakagawa. Each carefully sculpted into homogenous conical forms, expressing an organic materiality constrained within a formal vocabulary of both presentation and structure. It was interesting to see how the charring had infused its smokey patina within the inner striations of the timber. I enjoyed the correlations and variations between each piece and the impact achieved by displaying multiple iterations across a single plane.
“Reality is a collage composed of whatever grabs our attention.”[1] So might an art practice not also be considered as collage? As a subjective, selective accumulation of ideologies and processes, the thematic overlaying of praxis perhaps becomes an unwitting and unsolicited collaboration. The curator Suzanne Ramlijak correlates the composition of an art exhibition to that of an ecosystem. Just as nature is a synergistic alliance, an exhibition is a collective endeavour. [2]
This essay can also be seen as collective endeavour. Each of these elected texts have helped formulate and contextualise my art discourse and practice, helping inform my understanding and hone critical thinking. Each resonates with my core interests, those pertaining to the concepts of assimilation and exchange: Exchange as cultural, exchange as transformational, as replication, as commodity and as dialogue between cultures, objects or people.
Notes:
[1] Richard Flood. “Not about Mel Gibson,” in Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century (New York: Phaidon Press, 2007), 10-11.[2] Suzanne Ramlijak, Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman. Natural Wonders: The Sublime in Contemporary Art (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2018), 127.
Theatre Country: Essays on landscape & whenua
Authored by the ecologist and environmental historian Geoff Park. His evocative descriptions express a vivid and tactile sensitivity to the history and landscape of Aotearoa. He recalls an indigenous territory “before my own culture got to it with its ‘improving’ urge and what James Cook calls ‘better plants.’” [3] In his final essay, Park speaks of the living connection between the land and those who walk upon it. Within this concept of whenua, indigenous wisdom portrays land as life-giving placenta and invokes a visceral attachment to place. [4]
There is perhaps a pertinence in the difference between the word ‘belonging’ and ‘belongings’, expressly in relation to land. The former signifying an affinity and connection, the latter a referral to property and assets, bringing with it the associations of both literal and figurative baggage. It is these etymological connections, these elisions which ignite my creative impulse. I enjoy the analogy of landscape as an accumulation; [5] the sum of its composite histories; an un-still life. A landscape is a collage, which can be viewed variously: ‘as nature, habitat, artefact, system, problem, wealth, ideology, history, place and aesthetic;’ [6] all of these socially constructed and subjectively dictated by each viewer.
Fig 1. Henry Charles Clarke Wright, Unidentified area of bush, 1890s. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
My understanding of land is rooted in the pastoral, the grand sculptured vistas of picturesque parkland or the manicured hedgerow of England’s home counties. My maunga are the rolling Chiltern hills. Forest as wild, primordial, untamed, is a relative unknown to me. As a comparatively recent arrival to Aotearoa New Zealand, I am drawn to the stories and histories held deep within the antipodal soil. The imperialist imperative saw the systematic incineration of swathes of indigenous lowland forest; a transacted transformation from forest to farmland, forming a rigid geometric patchwork ‘burnt and ready for balloting to eager, waiting settlers.’ [7]
Culpability for these unwarranted and thoroughly detrimental legacies lies squarely with my ancestral kin. “Nothing, says the landscape historian J.B. Jackson, more clearly shows the cherished values of a group than the manner in which they organise space.” [8] My preoccupation with the process of burning and with the materiality of earth and of wood, stem from this awareness. Inherent associations brought to bear through the usage of either native or non-native timber alters meaning within the artwork. So too, the connotations of the yaki-sugi charring process. Though seemingly destructive, this culturally appropriated practice conversely preserves and protects against the elemental agents of fire, water and decay.
Migrations are not only defined by relocated communities and their accompanying flora and fauna but also knowledge, traditions and techniques. The reciprocal interchange, overlaid and intertwined, that occurs within this interstitial terrain is fertile ground. It is here I situate my practice.
Notes:
[3] Geoff Park. Theatre Country: Essays on landscape & whenua (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006), 10-11. [4] Ibid., 240-244. [5] Ibid., 9. [6] D.W. Meinig. The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene. In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays.https://murphy.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12322/2018/09/Meing_1979_Beholding.pdf (accessed March 3,2021). [7] Geoff Park. Ngā Uruora: The groves of life: Ecology and history in a New Zealand landscape. (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995), 84. [8] Ibid., 121-122.
Constellations
Working variously with meteorites, exotic birds and colonial furniture, Zac Langdon-Pole’s artwork often addresses the vagaries of migration; matter out of place. His book, Constellations, features insightful interviews and essays on the ideologies and methodologies behind these and other works.
As Christina Barton astutely analyses, “Langdon-Pole’s art is not manufactured from scratch…Instead, the artist orchestrates a meaningful coalescence of pre-existing fragments that are put together in carefully constructed situations, so that in the instance of their combination the world in all its complexity is momentarily held together in a manner that is at once personal and political.” [9] I am drawn to this modus operandi, as one which I would wish to cultivate within my own art practice. In its configuration it demonstrates considerations of context and dialogue between carefully compiled and arranged images, words and objects to elicit their connections and associative histories and meanings. With his selective collating and re-combining, Langdon-Pole demonstrates a deft employment of allegory and elision.
I am increasingly intrigued by the ways one artist might borrow, reference or utilise existing objects or another artist’s artwork or art practice, inducing an exchange of authorship or executing perhaps, a respectful yet unsolicited collaboration. As documented in Constellations, Langdon-Pole has twice played interloper with the artworks of contemporaneous sculptor Dan Arps. First, (Untitled (Alex), 2013) with the subtle placement of groups of leaves within the other artist’s installation. [10] And later (The Pearl Diver, 2015) which saw Langdon-Pole re-purpose an Arps sculpture by adding an anchor chain and gilded tongue cast, thus re-contextualising the piece entirely. [11] These astute interferences tentatively balance upon the complex and complicit boundaries of ownership and authorship; a theme at the very core of my art inquiry.
Another mutual preoccupation is Langdon-Pole’s use of kintsugi, the Japanese tradition of repairing with precious metals. For his recent installation at the City Gallery, Wellington, Langdon-Pole re-floored the gallery space with recycled native timber. The title of the artwork, Punctatum (Library), referring to the borer beetle whose expansive tracks are both highlighted and ‘mended’ by the application of gold-leaf. Itself an unwitting migrant to these shores, the beetle becomes coloniser, its passage memorialised in gold. Walking across these despoiled then gilded boards, there is an understanding, a recognition of ‘‘our own passage across the land – across time and space – as something akin, and not.” [12]
As Thomas Girst identifies in his foreword, even the most basic tools of navigation, terms such as ‘cardinal direction’ and ‘celestial hemisphere’are culturally-bound and highly presumptuous in nature. [13] North, South, East and West – designated by whom exactly and relational to what? This notion of the ‘West’ and ‘East’ (or ‘non-West’), in the words of theorist Stuart Hall, ‘is as much an idea as a fact of geography” [14] It is a tool for classification, a politically charged construct.
Issues pertaining to lands colonised and cultures usurped seem ever present in Langdon-Pole’s work. These themes are approached through sympathetic consideration and subtle allusion. In this, I see a possible path to navigate these fraught waters respectfully, to acknowledge problematic histories without expressing narratives to which I hold no claim.
Notes:
[9] Christina Barton. “Foreign bodies, strange parts,” in Constellations (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2020), 75. [10] Zac Langdon-Pole. Constellations (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2020), 74. [11] Ibid., 233. [12] Robert Leonard. Containing Multitudes: exhibition guide (Wellington: City Gallery Wellington, 2020), 7. [13] Langdon-Pole. Constellations, 26. [14] Stuart Hall. The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power, 1992. https://analepsis.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/hall-west-the-rest.pdf. (accessed March 3,2021), 186.
Kei konei koe / you are here: Mapping Auckland
A short collection of essays on the mapping of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, this publication accompanied the 2011/12 exhibition at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The opening extract states, ‘to map is in one way or another to take the measure of a world…in such a way that it may be communicated between people, places or times.’ [15] In this sense I see the formulation of map making as an act of exchange; both representational, where symbols stand-in for solid physical matter, and informational: a transmission of knowledge through one-way dialogue. Mapping is a language, a semiotic lexicon. As an indicator of demarcations and boundaries, it becomes a tool of possession. There is a claiming, an implied ownership in cartographical classification. To map privileges certain subsets of information, telling the subjective story of a place and time. It is a literal conveyance in both vernacular and legal terms in its relationship to both the act of communication and the transfer of property from one person (or people) to another.
The act of writing ‘’terra nullis’ on a pictorial representation of a land mass does not empirically make it so. Nor does the absence of cartographic precedence verify the emptiness of a given territory. Yet maps, throughout history have operated as authoritative mandates. If ‘knowledge is power’, then so too is the dissemination of that knowledge. It is these histories and these narratives which draw and engage me; the unspoken but inherent, the stories within. Inside each object, symbol or artefact resides a life, a meaning beyond that which is physically tangible, one which performs a reciprocal interplay when selectively combined in an unwritten languaging of contextual proximity.
In her introduction, Kathy Waghorn frames the actions and intentions of map making. She references the materiality of the map, and calls attention to its ability ‘to hold meaning in place.’ [16] Though the veracity of any singular meaning is problematic at best and somewhat historically contingent. In the delineation and binding of space inevitably the lattice of interrelations and cross-cultural entanglements that traverse these boundaries are disregarded, forgotten. Like the interwoven roots and vast mycelial networks beneath the forest floor of Geoff Park’s Ngā Uruora, these secondary essential narratives are buried.
Fig 3. Der Isthmus von Auckland (The Isthmus of Auckland). Geology by Ferdinand von Hochstetter in 1859, cartography by A. Petermann in 1862, published in Geologisch-Topographischer Atlas von Neu-Seeland in 1863, Auckland War Memorial Museum Library: Res G9081,C5 HOC
The cartographical act of measuring, classifying and containing finds parity with the taxonomic museological practices of the era. I consider this in part as pictorial archive, a cultural collage even; a themed and categorised illustrative assemblage; an art form of its own. In this way perhaps my art practice might also be considered cartographically, as a “spatial fixing”, [17] with its rendering of landscape populated with codified artefacts, imparting a subjective narrative of a particular time and place; an illustrative dissemination of a set of selective data; a curated still-life.
I am interested in maps as a mode of organising space and the way a 2-dimensional image becomes placeholder and descriptor for a 3-dimensional form. I am interested in the tales they tell about themselves and those who created or commissioned them, their subjective veracity, purported authority, bias and influence; colonial documents revealing and concealing in equal measures. I am interested in the curatorial decision-making involved.
Notes:
[15] Dennis Cosgrove. “Mapping Meaning,” In Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999). Available: http://appliedmapping.fiu.edu/readings/cosgrove.pdf (accessed March 10th 2021), 1-2. [16] Kathy Waghorn. Kei konei koe/you are here: Mapping Auckland (Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2011), 8. [17] Ibid., 6.
The Artist as Curator
In her introduction, editor Celina Jeffery posits the question, “When does the artist’s arrangement of his or her own work become a curatorial initiative and hence a form of artist-curating?” [18] Equally, I would ask: When does a curatorial act become artwork in its own right? And if this exchange or transferral takes place, where does authorship lie? Artworks which rely on the implementation of written instructions by anonymous appointees, such as the monumental wall drawings of Sol Lewitt and Zac Langdon-Pole’s Untitled (Alex) 2013, demonstrate an art that lies in conception rather than execution. As LeWitt states in his Paragraphs on conceptual art, 1967, “The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.” [19] May the ideas surrounding curatorial praxis be considered similarly? The curation of ideas, as non-tangible artefacts is integral to art making. Like cartographers, an artist must collate, select and therefore privilege certain objects, materials, and processes to evoke, provoke or carry selected meaning. These delineations of role become increasingly indistinct as they relate to exchange of agency and authorship.
In 1989 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York installed the exhibition ‘Burton on Brancusi’ as part of an innovative and somewhat controversial ‘Artist’s choice’ series: an exhibition program in which appointed artists were invited to assemble and curate installations comprised chiefly from the Museum’s own collection. By involving contemporary artists in the curatorial procedures of the institution, it was hoped that these elected artefacts might be re-contextualised and reinvigorated.
Scott Burton, as first artist-curator in this series, chose to feature the works of the great modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Controversially, and most pertinently, he chose to display a couple of Brancusi’s plinths devoid of their customary accompanying artworks. With this bold breach of convention, Burton subverted the hierarchical order of subject/object and effected the unbinding of sculptural form from the practical application of its functional role, effectively re-contextualising it as an artwork in its own right; [20] an action in keeping with the writings of Sol LeWitt, who states that, “Art is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional art starts to take on some of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as art.” [21]
Fig 4. Installation view of the exhibition, Artist’s Choice: Burton on Brancusi, 7 April – 4 July 1989. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
I am interested in this relationship between utility and value and how both are contextually bound. A map can be illustrative artefact, historical document or navigational tool. A lone pedestal or empty plinth transmutes into self-referencing monument and objet d’art. This is the transaction of display displayed, the action of presentation as presentation subject; a static performance piece perhaps.
I see Burton’s provocative gesture as aligning to the conventions of his own art practice where his architectonic chair-like forms traverse the conventional boundaries between pure sculpture and furniture, between aestheticism and utility. Has one artist (or artist-curator) assimilated another artist’s practice within his own? These exchanges and uncertain balances hold a charged fascination for me.
Notes:
[18] Celina Jeffery. The Artist as Curator. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 7. [19] Sol LeWitt. “Paragraphs on conceptual art,” in Artforum, June 1967. http://arteducation.sfu-kras.ru/files/documents/lewitt-paragraphs-on-conceptual-art1.pdf. (accessed March 14th 2021), 2. [20] Cher Krause Knight. “Both Object and Subject: MoMA’s Burton on Brancusi,” In The Artist as Curator. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 61-75. [21] LeWitt. “Paragraphs on conceptual art”, 2.
Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century
Published in 2007 to accompany The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York’s inaugural exhibition, this volume of essays and biographies showcases the work of 30 contemporary sculptors exploring the realm of the unmonumental.
Historically, sculpture holds close association with the mores of permanence and grandeur. Built to preserve in perpetuity a likeness or memory, monuments are placeholders, substitutes of and for the living; frozen replications; still lifes. Traditional materials of stone and bronze are demonstrative of this solidity and perceived indestructibility, resolutely forestalling entropic decline. [22] This too is exemplified within the conventional Museum construct, in the stolid frameworks of both its governance and architecture; civic monument seemingly unchanged and unchallengeable.
This exhibition and its accompanying texts however, present an alternative sculptural mode of being. They speak of “a world in pieces and a parallel impulse in art-making.” [23] In his review, Steven Stern identifies “a shared language of refusal. Industrial fabrication, precious materials, the well-made object – all these were obviously jettisoned.” [24] Conversely, I recognise it is precisely these conventions and aesthetic attributes with which I find resonance and wish to instil and install within my own art practice: specifically precious materials or materials preciously treated, with a clarity of form and high production values. Might my work therefore, despite a non-heroic scale or far-reaching historical import, nevertheless sit within the oppositional domain of the monumental?
Fig 5. Installation view of the exhibition, Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, 1 Dec 2007- March 30 2008. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
The artist Caroline Rothwell asserts her interest in both the monument and the anti-monument, [25] and has successfully propagated an art practice which bridges this binary divide. Working with endangered plants, soot and furniture, (materials and themes similar to my own), she explores the complex relationship between the anthropological and natural worlds since the start of industrialisation; unpacking the past to contemplate the future. [26] Plants she describes as historical signifiers; markers within the politics of place, tools of mapping. Like Langdon-Pole, she is engaged with the exotic mythologies of birds of paradise and also the industrial readymade. And similarly, there is a recognition of ‘how the European colonial connection with the landscape of ‘elsewhere’ began through curiosity’ and continued through consumption. [27]
As monolithic and monocultural museological paradigms finally shift away from the authoritative and didactic, new hierarchies are likewise formed within the institutional walls. As witnessed in Brancusi’s Endless Column, the sculptural object dismounts the pedestal or amalgamates with it, absorbing the plinth within its own form. “We have come to live in an age that defines itself by the disappearance of monuments and the erasure of symbols – a headless century.” [28] Yet monumentalism is still apparent within the panoply of the Arts. Land Art by its very scale is colossal in both physical form and geological duration. Installation art can create momentous experiences as grandiose as more orthodox immemorial sculpture. [29] Incongruously, in bearing witness to the cultural zeitgeist, the self-professed ‘unmonumental’ acts as commemorative marker of enduring significance and as such antithetically becomes, in effect, monumental.
Notes:
[22] Massimiliano Gioni. “Ask the Dust,” In Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century (New York: Phaidon Press, 2007), 64. [23] Lisa Philips. In Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century (New York: Phaidon Press, 2007), 7. [24] Steven Stern. “Unmonumental (review)”, In Frieze magazine, issue 114, April 1, 2008. https://www.frieze.com/article/unmonumental (accessed 26 March 2021.) [25] Tessa Molden. “Caroline Rothwell: Follies of Industrialisation”, In Ocula Magazine, March 2021. https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/caroline-rothwell-follies-of-industrialisation/ (accessed April 2, 2021.) [26] Ibid. [27] Ibid. [28] Gioni, “Ask the Dust,” 65. [29] Gioni, “Ask the Dust,” 64, 65.
Conclusion
My art practice is centred upon the migration and exchange of materials, objects and cultural contexts. It is a discussion pertaining to landscape, as a definitive ‘un-still’ lifeform. Its focus lies in the collation of potent artefacts and in excavating the agential stories and histories embedded within. “Maps are records of the known, and as such, they need not be made of lines on paper.” [30] This essay is a map; one realised from infinite possible iterations. It acts as signpost and archive, shepherding the subsequent and plotting the prior. It is a curated assemblage of unearthed connections and inter-twinnings, and a contextual insight into such formative influences that lie behind my current art practice.
Notes:
[30] John McCrystal. Singing the Trail: The story of mapping Aotearoa, New Zealand (Auckland: Allen & Unwin, 2019), 7.
Illustrations
1. Henry Charles Clarke Wright, Unidentified area of bush, 1890s, Henry Wright Collection, G-20688-1/1, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
3. Der Isthmus von Auckland (The Isthmus of Auckland). Geology by Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829-1884) in 1859, cartography by A. Petermann in 1862, published in Geologisch-Topographischer Atlas von Neu-Seeland in 1863, Auckland War Memorial MuseumLibrary: Res G9081,C5 HOC.
4. Installation view of the exhibition, Artist’s Choice: Burton on Brancusi, 7 April – 4 July 1989, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
5. Installation view of the exhibition, Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, 1 Dec 2007- March 30 2008, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
Bibliography:
Museum, New. Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century.New York: Phaidon Press, 2007.
Ramlijak, Suzanne, Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman. Natural Wonders: The Sublime in Contemporary Art. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2018, p. 127
Park, Geoff. Theatre Country: Essays on landscape & whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006.
Meinig, D.W., The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene. In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, edited by D. W. Meinig and John Brinckerhoff Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Knight, Cher Krause. “Both Object and Subject: MoMA’sBurton on Brancusi,” In The Artist as Curator, edited by Celina Jeffery. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Abbie Read An exchange: A New Zealand landscape study; a drawing in chalk and charcoal
An exchange: A consideration of trade and of trade-offs; a forage to find what has been gained and what has been lost or substituted. An exchange is a dialogue; a discussion between potent artefacts which hold such histories within. These traitorous wooden objects, instrumental in the destruction of their forest kin as the imperatives of measuring and marking confer an ownership; a claiming. As the natural and endemic are replaced or replicated, the humble plumb bob seeks the true line, an augury of fidelity. Enlisting a limited palette of colour, form and material, I seek to excavate the entwinings and entanglements of this transposed terrain.
Mataharehare, Dove Myer Robinson Park, Tāmaki Makaurau.
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Mataharehare is a tāonga of Tāmaki Makaurau. This ancient Pā site is home to a notable and majestic 180 year old Pōhutakawa that is a tūpuna. It is also the proposed site for the National Erebus Memorial.1
The vast planned memorial includes 534m2 of earthworks and a 17m long, 8m high double-walled concrete and steel structure that would pierce into the roots of the giant Pōhutukawa. Invasive annual cutbacks back of the tree’s branches would also be required to maintain access to the structure. This Pōhutukawa is as old as Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Other notable trees may also be felled.2
An exchange: A New Zealand landscape study; a drawing in chalk and charcoal
An exchange: A consideration of trade and of trade-offs; a forage to find what has been gained and what has been lost or substituted. An exchange is a dialogue; a discussion between potent artefacts which hold such histories within. These traitorous wooden objects, instrumental in the destruction of their forest kin as the imperatives of measuring and marking confer an ownership; a claiming. As the natural and endemic are replaced or replicated, the humble plumb bob seeks the true line, an augury of fidelity. Enlisting a limited palette of colour, form and material, I seek to excavate the entwinings and entanglements of this transposed terrain.
1. [Charred wooden block] Non-native timber
2. [Survey mark box] Cast iron survey mark box
3. [Nails] Antique iron nails, carved (lamb and beef) bone
4. [Floorboards] Charred plywood, nails
5. [Antique surveyor’s measuring stick]
6. [Hanging roots and plumb bobs] Copper PLA (plant-based bio-degradable plastic) 3D printed root systems, brass plumb bobs, epoxy clay, metal fixings, twine
8. [Tripod and tripod ‘tree’] Antique surveyor’s tripods (charred and uncharred), tree branches, black paint, handmade gesso (rabbit skin glue and calcium carbonate), twine
My art practice lies in the collective custom of collation and assemblage. Embracing the histories, meanings and associations that accompany particular objects, materials and processes, I absorb extrinsic techniques and artefacts; gathering, arranging and modifying matter from outside of my own immediate geographical and temporal, cultural sphere. It is an acknowledged borrowing, an acculturation. This cross-cultural assimilation and its resultant hybridity creates a rich heterogeneous entanglement which captivates my sensibilities and forms the basis of my field of enquiry. In particular, I am drawn to the medium of clay, of earth, burnt wood, root systems and precious metals, not only for their structural and aesthetic nuances but for the myriad connotations and potent narratives which reside within.
I am continually intrigued by the mutable boundaries of ownership and authorship, and quite how and where these indistinct and clouded lines are drawn. One artwork which delves wholeheartedly into these issues and that I am repeatedly drawn back to is Michael Landy’s performative installation Break Down 2001, in which he individually destroyed every item that he owned at the time.
Michael Landy, Breakdown, 2001
Such an all encompassing undertaking; each documented category of possessions (photographs, official documentation, money) laden with consequential significance. But it is one particular category and pertinent fact which haunts me: he destroyed other artists’ artworks as well as his own. Is that legally, morally or ethically acceptable? Is art ever really ‘owned’? Or are prospective buyers merely posterity’s de facto caretakers? So too, land. The one-sided histories and problematic politics of the past are fraught with contention, centring perhaps on conflicting understandings and translations relating to entailments of possession and ownership. Without trying to tell other people’s stories, which is neither my place or intention, it is however important to acknowledge these inequities. How to best do so authentically and respectfully is where I situate my enquiry. The taxonomical practices of measuring, classifying and naming, an impulse of the Imperialist age, confer an implied ownership.
“In times of colonial amplification, mapping, with its essential bounding capacity, is a tool of possession, framing and claiming…Unmapped land was unoccupied, and to that extent unpossessed.” (Waghorn, 2011, P.8)
My MFA art practice is specifically about acculturation, about how different materials, cultures or processes are borrowed or shared (with or without consent). From one artist overwriting another artist’s practice in my earlier kintsugi works to the yakiusugi (shou sugi ban) traditional Japanese wood-burning techniques I am currently utilising. I find myself returning always to the same topics which intrigue and inspire me: preservation and decay, value systems, and museology (display modes, taxonomy and the policies and choices behind what is stored or displayed and how). Many of these themes appear rooted in Victorian histories and sensibilities. So, whether I aim it or not, I always incline toward Victorian (and therefore while based in New Zealand) colonial topics. In these muddied waters I do not claim any authority or manifesto. I simply seek to understand and acknowledge these composite histories.
Marc Quinn, A Surge of Power (Jen Reid), 2020
Earlier this year cities worldwide saw the egalitarian toppling of outmoded statues; classical representations of wealthy and powerful figures who earned their status by somewhat dubious means. I watched the ensuing conversation with great interest. The populist removal of the monument to former slave trader Edward Colston from the Bristol cityscape in July was, in the weeks after, replaced by the figure of a black woman, Jen Reid, whose triumphant stance atop the recently vacated plinth had become the meme of the moment. This new sculpture was the work of established British artist Marc Quinn. Although on initial encounter this doubtless well-intentioned act may seem an egalitarian one, designed to celebrate the empowerment of the previously disenfranchised, it conversely exemplified the antithesis. Instead of being a declaration of power and a reclaiming of voice to the traditionally underrepresented, the story is told once again from the point of view of a white, middle class male from the Art establishment.
“for a white artist to suddenly capitalise on the experiences of Black pain, by putting themselves forward to replace the statutes of white slave owners seems like a clear example of a saviour complex and cannot be the precedent that is set for genuine allyship.” (Price, 2020)
This episode was an important realisation for me and a reminder not to take on or take over issues that are not mine to take. I look to the work of Christine Hellyar in this particular domain, for inspiring examples of navigating these historically problematic waters with awareness and consideration.
References
Waghorn, Kathy. Kei konei koe/you are here: Mapping Auckland. Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2011.
The process of charring timber preserves it. In burning off the more combustible outer surfaces, the wood becomes fire retardant, water resistant and thus less susceptible to decay. This seemingly destructive act is conversely an act of conservation. The technique is a borrowed one; an acculturation, a non-native cross-cultural entanglement.
Yakisugi is a traditional Japanese technique. Yaki means ‘to burn’, Sugi refers to cypress (cryptomeria japonica) in particular. Often known as Shou sugi ban in the West, though this may be a misnomer:
” In Japanese colloquial as well as formal industry terminology our product is called「焼杉」or “yakisugi”, written with two Chinese kanji and pronounced with the Japanese phonetic pronunciation even though it is a compound word. It might be a compound kanji word with an indigenous reading due to specifically being a Japanese technology or maybe due to the material’s vernacular origin, but nobody really knows. 「焼杉板」is how the word is sometimes written, with a third kanji added to make the word “yakisugi-ita”. This means the actual word used does not follow the textbook linguistic pattern, therefore the misreading as “shou sugi ban” is probably from a foreigner looking up each character in a dictionary independently and assuming the pronunciation follows the standard pattern.”
I enjoy the chance exchanges and slippages created through translation from one cultural context to another; The act of borrowing subtly creates things anew.
Dan Arps, Gitanjali Bhatt, Fiona Cable, Samantha Cheng, Stella Corkery, Brunelle Dias, Claudia Dunes, Matt Ellwood, Celine Frampton, Louise Kenn, Giulio Laura, Wendy Lawson, Tanya Martusheff, Dane Mitchell, Abbie Read, Glen Snow, Amy Unkovich
LIVELY COLLISIONS
In October 2017 Scientists detected a mysterious object hurtling past our solar system. The object 11/2017 U1 was given the name ‘Oumuamua, a Hawaiian term for scout or “messenger that reaches out from the distant past.” Analysis showed its orbit is almost impossible to achieve from within our solar system, therefore its origin is interstellar. ‘Oumuamua is the first space rock identified as forming around another star, according to researchers it could be one of 10,000 lurking undetected in our cosmic neighbourhood.
It was noted that after passing the sun, ‘Oumuamua suddenly sped up, could it have been pushed by the sunlight striking it, like a deliberately designed solar sail? Some speculated that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as debris from an advanced technological equipment. In early December 2017, astronomers on an alien-hunting project known as Breakthrough Listen used the huge Green Bank telescope in West Virginia to monitor ‘Oumuamua for radio signals in case it happened to be a passing spacecraft, and not an interstellar asteroid after all. To date, no signs of intelligence have been found.
‘Oumuamua is an extremely dark object, absorbing 96% of the light that falls on its surface. It is coloured red, a hallmark of organic molecules, the building blocks of the biological molecules that allow life to function. Cigar-shaped, it is extremely elongated and roughly 400 metres long. This slowly spinning skyscraper-shaped object has a greyish-red surface crust and potentially ice in its heart.
The deep surface layer is made of carbon-rich gunk baked in interstellar radiation during its cosmic travels. This upper layer was formed when organic ices such as frozen carbon dioxide, methane and methanol were battered by the intense radiation that exists between the stars. The outer crust may have formed on the body when comet ices and comet dust grains were baked with high energy particles for millions or even billions of years. This process is what could have produced ‘Oumuamua’s tumbling motion, colour and unusual shape.
It is thought that ‘Oumuamua is an active asteroid, the remnants of a larger body that was torn apart by its parent star and then ejected into interstellar space. Indeed most planetary bodies consist of numerous pieces of rock that have coalesced under the influence of gravity. These can be imagined as sandcastles floating in space. With objects such as ‘Oumuamua passing through “habitable zones”, such as our own solar system, they may even carry with them seeds of life.
Perhaps ‘Oumuamua can be read as a kind of ur-sculpture, an object that has been crafted over millions of years with comet ices and dust, baked by cosmic radiation like a vase within a kiln. Made via processes of layering, melting, coalescing, colouring, tumbling, moving and travelling, it seems fitting to consider ‘Oumuamua in the context of an exhibition of artworks that are the result of material driven processes of making. Imaginatively bringing an interstellar object together with these artworks creates a collision that is capricious, but one that is also lively.
6-7 Matt Ellwood, Laurent/Vuitton #1 (Arnault/Pinault series), and Nathan on Guston, 2018, Charcoal on board
8 Amy Unkovich, Boldini’s Line, Four composite Modern Multi Panels, 2018, Concrete, pigments, salvage marble & granite, mild steel
9 Brunelle Dias, Lockdown studies, 2020, Watercolour on paper
10-11 Glen Snow, Loop-Hole, 2019, Wood, fabric (underwear leg band) and acrylic and A Kind of Excellent Dumb Discourse, 2015-2016, Wood, Builder’s Fill and acrylic
12 Dane Mitchell, A year of sleep, 2013, Rheum, glass, string
15 Giulio Laura as OpenCo, Material Cost, 2019, Bought casting plaster on traded paint, found pastel and graphite, scrap canvas, and rescued vinyl
16 Dan Arps, Barrier Condition, 2020, Polyurethane and acrylic paint
17 Gitanjali Bhatt, rockroller, 2020, Found mechanical object camera apparatus, rolled through rock pools with an iPhone attached, at Hatfields beach, 5’ 25”
18 Louise Keen, Untitled (one for the movement), 2020, Bricolage, recycled clothing, tape, cotton thread, card on fabric
19-20 Stella Corkery, No Title and No Title, 2020, Oil on canvas
black painted root systems bound with antique gold thread (x3)
decayed charred wooden planks (x2)
gold painted root
black painted root on uncharred decorative plate
charred wooden shelf with decorative brackets (inverted)
botanical drawing of an acanthus on distressed grey painted hardboard
other root systems (painted and natural)
matte black boundary tape
Group Crit (including Abbie, Glenn, Wendy, Malaki, Megan, Sonja, Jonathan and Dane):
I initially asked for a cold read in order to gauge what associations potential viewers might make without any additional explanatory information. Here are some notes of the comments made:
Charred wood pieces, tree roots or branches – some painted, some natural with wire (thread)
Tape – a grid system employed as a display structure
There seem to be 4 different groupings
Layout appears very considered. Has required time, effort and thought
Gold (or copper) on wood is a surprising element, an extra enhancement
Shelves: incomplete, not necessarily usable as such (some have screws, some don’t)
It resembles a crime scene. Definitely leans to a forensic read
It’s almost performative, but like a still life of the aftermath of an event
The charred quality gives the sense that something has happened, or will happen; a consideration for some further act perhaps
Or perhaps it’s a “look what I found”, possibly from the same site – but the plant drawing adds an aspect of time
Rendering burnt vs. natural – process speaks heavily
Time and age
A house that has bunt down? Sad, distressed… this is all I have left (grouping & arrangements)
The odd one out: the painting of the plant and the uncharred plate
The painting is interesting as it skews the reading; a rendering of plant life
Tape leading to the wall. Is it part of the wall?
Footprints are noticed on the tape – boundaries have been broken by someone
Tape possibly acting like a painting structure, framing the work?
Theatrical – the colour and type of tape mark – reminiscent of places of performance…
Or of an art gallery – so as not to move too close (but not necessarily here as the tape is too close to the objects
Comments after the reading of the artist’s statement:
All the elements are about modes of display (shelves/platters/pedestal)
Not read as shelves (the two holey ones read as planks but of no practical value as they are too worn)
These objects have a resonance to human presence
Is there a performative aspect to the work?
That is the interesting moment… “you kill things to look at them”
Modes of display: inspection. Trying to reckon with them in a taxonomical way – a formal happiness. They belong together because they come from the same place
Burning – prioritise this. The moment – you don’t know what happened first
Display – not normal; the displayed rendered useless
Archeological dig – objects not in a museum’s vault but haven’t quite made it out to exhibition
Japanese charring / ikebana (with the roots?). Muted tones. Window displays encountered at a shop? (maybe that’s to do with scale)
The weed work – not an easy set. Liked trying to see how things fit – decayed/painted. Set and preserved… botanical illustration
It seems found… sits alongside different modes of operation and connections
Discarded now. Even though they are dislocated. I’m missing something?
The forensic read: preservation, looking at them together and the way they sit oddly together
Care taken in the arrangement. Trying to work out the rules/parameters of arrangement
The roots all face the centre suggesting cyclical nature
Plates and plinths are display items/relate to display
Reminded of Anthony Gormley’s Field for the British Empire with an overwhelm of multiple iterations of floor bound objects
Binding at the joints – the painting frame also (some binding pre-charring some post)
Didactic/simplified or reduced. The gold contributes more onto this (a consideration)
There’s a narrative quality in the layout/the grid
I go back to a house that has been burnt. But there are aspects that make you want to go elsewhere – painting on a twig?
Mainly ritual
The Domestic – not there with the plants – gnarly strong opposition to the roots and other construction objects – things growing on their own then not
What has been pre-bound and what has happened pre-binding?
The painting, is really important. It adds another layer – a sense of consideration. The binding functions like the drawing
Cyclic nature with the arrangement of plants and objects
Narrative quality – grid
Observation, decoration and display brought together
Overall evaluation:
The floor layout, with its taxonomical (and even forensic and archaeological) associations felt true to my sensibilities and art practice. It also felt true to the museological timeline I feel that it references. The mode of display itself alludes to certain established museological rites.
As Simon Sheikh points out in Constitutive Effects: The Techniques of the Curator (2007), museums have their own performative rituals; exhibitions perpetuate the cycle of certain modulated behaviours and values and it is not only the objects or artworks being curated but the potential audience also. (p.175)
The tape lines on the ground create a formal delineation; a containment; a set or a subset. Continuing these demarkations to meet with the wall incorporates the gallery itself as part of the site-specific context.
The Ikebana reading was unexpected but as a Japanese traditional technique, alongside that of the yakisugi wood charring, it forms another potential layer of unconscious cross-cultural entanglement.
To me, one of the more interesting aspects of the work is that all the objects are in places or positions they are not usually found. Theirs is a literal ‘uprooting’; they have been removed from their original contexts either by orientation, geography or placement. In conforming primarily to the mode of display their practical application has been rendered useless. What could be a more apposite rendering of nature morte than an uprooted plant? A literal ‘still life’.
It was very informative to note how the inclusion of the painting (and to a lesser extent the gold thread bindings and uncharred plate) was an important agitator to what might otherwise have been a binary and simplistic read. The work needs a couple of disruptions like these.
It was interesting to note who made what comments as often each read provided a direct correlation to their own art practices; a reminder perhaps that all audiences bring their own filters, issues and concerns.
I feel that there is an additional intimation as yet undiscussed. Any depiction of burning wood or trees, especially when encountered alongside colonial furniture, must (subconsciously or otherwise) bear a relationship to the consequent ‘scorched earth’ policies surrounding land ownership in New Zealand. This is charged and potent territory and requires further investigation and a respectful awareness to all concerned.
References:
Sheikh, Simon. 2007. ‘Constitutive Effects: The Techniques of the Curator’. In: Paul O’Neill, ed. CURATING SUBJECTS. Amsterdam: De Appel, pp. 174-185
Abbie Read 