An unsolicited acculturation. Charred non-native timbers, colonial pedestal and domestic ware, root systems, antique gold thread, hardboard canvas, paint, pencil, epoxy resin, screws, matte black tape.
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.
Weeds are plants out of context; unsolicited flora. Their perceived value altering through shifts in timeline or location. The acanthus, surely the apotheosis of the weed kingdom, entwines its way throughout art history. Its pervasive motif appearing on Greek Corinthian columns, William Morris tapestries and carved colonial furniture. It too has migrated from Western Europe and taken root in Grey Lynn gardens.
Unearthed root systems form a tangible figuration of Nature Morte.
Still life, that liminal space where utility is halted and decay transposed.
In trying to understand and quantify the world around us and our collective place within it, the Western tradition lies in collecting, classifying, storing and displaying.
Botanical drawings exemplify this taxonomical practice.
As Damien Hirst has observed, “ You kill things to look at them.” [1]
Abbie ReadAn Aculturation (detail of acanthus painting) 2020
As classified by the Department of Conservation’s consolidated list of environmental weeds, Acanthus mollis is a naturalised herbaceous exotic.
Surely the most consummate of weeds, the acanthus entwines its way throughout Western art history; its stylised floral motif appearing on Corinthian columns, William Morris tapestries and carved colonial furniture. In decorative form and botanical physicality, this prolific plant has migrated from Western Europe and taken root in Grey Lynn gardens.
Abbie ReadAcanthus Mollis photo, Grey Lynn Park 2020
Group Crit (including Abbie, Claudia, Megan, Abigayle, Te Ara, Salle and Victoria):
After an initial cold read, here are some notes of the comments made about the artworks:
Circle used as containment
Reference to Rachel Whiteread
Like a petri dish; a specimen feel but scaled up
The mud disc is lost
Reparation Aesthetics by Susan Best might be worth looking at
Have you read any Heidegger? (The Origin of the Work of Art )
Earth – brute matter of the planet
Opposites happening at once
Do you intend to let go of something here – past work?
Presence/absence – a bit glib. It doesn’t do it justice
The circle as a formal device
What are you saying?
Presence and absence is all within work 2 (the earth painting and white laser cut)
The laser cut works are good. Just displaying the 3 circles on paper would have been really strong
Practice based research (as opposed to research based practice) is what is happening. And through it you have come across something
Suggestion to look at the works of Alan Fletcher (MFA graduate)
Victoria is reminded of the work of Simryn Gill:
Simryn Gill Untitled (Interior) II, 2008
Cast in bronze from a crack in the ground formed during a long drought. The bronze makes permanent that which ordinarily is mutable and transient. It records but a moment in the cycle as the original earth rupture will continually change over time; through alternating wet and dry seasons, the crack filling with water and dirt then subsequently desiccating once again.
From the Examining Panel (Yolunda, Victoria, Balamohan, Dane and Elle):
Balamohan suggests that the poetry should reside within the artwork rather than within the artist statement. Be careful not to over repeat a motif.
The work is more interesting when I speak of the processes used to make the works
Elle asks about the seriality timeline-wise
Further trialing of object and image placement might benefit the installation
Building a meaningful awareness of context (primarily contemporary) is important.
Questions asked:
What were the decisions around the installation layout?
What lead you to make this work?
How do you see the works speaking to each other?
Where to from here?
Critical reflections – a discussion with Dane and Elle:
The soil was not needed on either of the ground works. It’s like an over-explanation of themes. I need to have more confidence in the audience to make the associations for themselves. My initial thought, in the placement of soil, was to juxtapose the free-flowing natural material alongside the dense, constrained and no longer potentially life-supporting bronze disc replication of it. I had worried that without the soil, the disc – a potentially ‘awkward’ object, might be too overbearing if left to stand on its own.
The earth circle painting and floor laser cut tucked in a corner could have benefitted from not being so tucked away. Trying the artworks in different configurations ands spaces to see how they work with each other would be of value.
Continuing working with paper would be a positive journey forwards. It might be useful to question the choice of the weight or type of paper used.
My Reflections:
This work stemmed from an exploratory stance of focusing on materiality and process, leaving all preconceived associations of meaning and intention behind. This is completely counter to my usual way of working. Though informative, I found this method to be not the most beneficial mode of art making with regards to my particular practice; as although encouraging me to fully encounter the medium at hand it ultimately leaves me with an object I have difficulty in comprehending. Making inexplicable artefacts is not my fascination point. My joy and drive comes from collating, creating and finding meaning and associations between objects. This exercise has helped me to understand and acknowledge that.
Lowenhaupt Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Park, Geoff. Nga Uruora: The groves of life – ecology and history in a New Zealand landscape. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995.
Waghorn, Kathy (ed.). Kei konei koe/you are here: Mapping Auckland. Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2011.
Petry, Michael. The Art of not making: The new artist/artisan relationship.London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2012.
Jeffery, Celina (ed.). The Artist as Curator.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
“For all representation is, by definition, a representation of an absent object”
– Eduardo Grüner (1)
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The disc of dried earth, a still-life of divergent cracks and fissures.
Soil and precious ores borrowed from the earth; an unsolicited collaboration.
Its temporal fragilities here replaced, here supplanted.
(This disc of dried earth exists no longer; dust to dust.)
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The incised image, graphic by nature, and thus a reduction; a distillation of the essential.
An allegorical render of something other; something elsewhere, removed or missing.
(This tracery is both real and unreal; a consideration of what is and what is not; what is stated and what is implied. It exists, tenuously.)
.
For it is the space betwixt the notes which makes the music. It is the cracks between that evidence the life within.
Artworks:
1. [Bronze cast earth disc, earth]
2. [Earth painting with raw umber pigment and grated charcoal, Laser-cut white paper, earth]
3. [Laser-cut paper on opposite walls]
(1) Eduardo Grüner, ‘La invisibilidad estratégica, o la redención política de los vivos: Violencia política y representación estética en el Siglo de las Desapariciones’, in Ana Longoni and Gustavo Bruzzone (ed.), El Siluetazo, Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo, 2008, p. 285 as quoted in mnemoscape, issue no.2.
Abbie Read In the Presence of Absences 2020. Installation view [1.] Bronze cast earth disc, earth.
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Abbie Read In the Presence of Absences 2020. Installation view [2.] Earth painting with raw umber pigment and grated charcoal, Laser-cut white paper, earth
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Abbie Read In the Presence of Absences 2020. Installation view [3.] Laser-cut paper on opposite walls
John Reynolds and Jin Jiangbo Performative Geographies
14 July – 8 August 2020, Starkwhite, Auckland
With a particular focus on John Reynolds, Fire and Ash, 2019.
Performative Geographies, 2020, installation views (John Reynolds to the left, Jin Jiangbo to the right)
Performative Geographies at theStarkwhite gallery features the artworks of New Zealand artist John Reynolds and Chinese artist Jin Jiangbo, arranged in a literal East/West divide. These thematically conjoined representations of islands, both terrestrial and semi-mythological, explore notions of ‘islandness’, [1] and the mutability of meaning contained within that word.
Jiangbo’s works exude a quiet opulence. They are precise and compact; colourful, ethereal ink renderings on a circular gold background, where depictions of landmarks exhibit less solidity than the (Hanzi) Chinese characters printed nearby.
Jin Jiangbo, Penglai series, 2019 Ink and wash on card 600 x 600 mm framed
The delicate gilt circles of Jiangbo’s sacred and mystical Chinese landscapes both echo and contrast with the glistening silver of Reynolds’ more organic-shaped imposing volcanic cone, as they complement each other from across the room. Both artists using localised mythology as a generative impetus.
John Reynolds, Fire and Ash, 2019, paint marker, pencil and acrylic on unstretched linen. 2.1 x 4 metres.
Reynolds’ work often alludes to literature, languaging (both written and pictoral), architectural structures, and site-specifity. In this instance, the title ‘Fire and Ash’ and its subject matter arose from a Sarah Treadwell essay about Austrian geologist Ferninand von Hochstetter’s 1859 map surveying the Auckland volcanic region.[2] In Reynolds’ copy of this essay, the pencilled notations in the margin highlight connotations which resonate with him, and show their influence on his choice of mark-making: Treadwell describes the landscape as “shimmering with dots of volcanic activity” [p.27] and “flying over the perforated and permeable city…weaving between the cones.” [p.28] These ‘perforations’ become ideally characterised by Reynolds’ signature diagrammatic motif of dots and dashes.
A seemingly amorphous iridescent silver form of irregular concentric undulations occupies much of the right hand side of the large Belgian linen canvas. Ray-like striations in metallic marker emanate from the centre. (Later these will be understood as the contours of terraced terrain.) A familiar semi-transparent silhouette in the background reveals itself as Rangitoto, at which point the striking silver shape becomes discernible as the same; a simultaneous plan and elevation of the picture-postcard Auckland landmark. “Which is about as figurative as I get”, quips Reynolds at his floor talk. [3] “If I burden the artwork with too much figuration, it loses some metaphoric undertone.”
The white-washed background carries intersecting stippled swirls, that meander and eddy as if in currents of wind or water. These playful trails and traces are interspersed by clusters of coloured dots: blues and greens proliferate over the horizon line where sky would meet sea, and more dusky reds and lustrous pinks over the apex of the volcano. On the one side, the rhythm and repetition of the lines free-flowing, and above the petrified lava cone more structured and static; emphasising the stoic perceived permanence of this venerable mountain.
John Reynolds, Fire and Ash (details), 2019, paint marker, pencil and acrylic on unstretched linen. 2.1 metres x 4 metres.
The slight tilt on the horizon line hints at a subterranean instability and lends a certain tension to the piece. This minor shift, possibly not borne of conscious intent, is nevertheless accepted as a relevant reminder of the underlying precarity of living in a volcanic zone; A terra firma not so firm; a portent of impermanence perhaps. Hochstetter’s map evidences the turbulent histories that has seen Auckland’s landscape ravaged by both lava fields and urban domestication. As the viewer’s eye navigates across the peaceable pale leylines of the canvas, the threat and fiery force of potential destruction is, in this moment, calm. The apparent disparity between the geometrical order of urban life and the geological knowledge of the chaotic power that may one day be unleashed is buried here, for today the mountain sleeps. It is perhaps this chaotic aspect that Reynolds is drawn to. His preference for using spray paint and oil sticks due, in part, to those mediums having “just the right amount of lack of control”. [4] Provisionality is a consistent theme within much of Reynolds’ work. His use of certain symbols, his signpost drawings for example, seem almost to be placeholders, not fully present or permanent, awaiting supplantation. So too Rangitoto.
There is a claiming, an implied ownership in cartographical classification. To map a place privileges certain subsets of information. It tells the subjective story of a place and of a time. If a map is, in essence, the illustrative dissemination of a set of selective data, then this too might be considered a map; the legend of which is locked away, as we are asked to bring our own set of perceived associations. This artwork lies within an intersection of painting and drawing, with an emphasis on mark making over definite figuration. Colour, pattern and line are utilised to delineate spatial boundaries and indicate inherent interdependencies.
Reynolds often explores the concept of time as artistic medium. From the sixty-second paintings for the Vacancy exhibition, Te Tuhi (2004), to Snow Tussock and Golden Spaniard (2007/2008), dubbed ‘the slowest artworks in New Zealand’, [5] which will only find their fullest expression in successive decades. Here, Reynolds questions the notion of stasis; a literal still life, or more accurately, a potentially explosive and destructive, currently dormant life force in its temporal docile state. Much like his outdoor art works, this is a topological conversation, a contemplation of shared histories of natural and manmade interventions in the landscape.
A timely and pertinent exhibition: in the midst of a global pandemic, there is currency in the term ‘isolation’; a word with the same etymological origin (insula – Latin) as the word ‘island’, meaning ‘standing detached from others of its kind.’ [6] A fact not lost, I am sure, on an artist noted for his adept appliance of languaging.
[2] Sarah Treadwell, “Hochstetter’s Map: Flight over Auckland”, in Kei konei koe/you are here: Mapping Auckland, ed. Kathy Waghorn (Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2011).
[3] John Reynolds floortalk, Starkwhite Gallery, 18th July 2020
My central point of fascination was about ownership and authorship and the taking over of another artist’s artworks or practice. Listening to the critical responses, I can see that many people felt more engaged by the cracked earth discs on my studio bench than by the finished Kintsugi piece.
The constraints of Covid lockdown meant that all artworks were necessarily displayed via digital photography (or video) online. I presented my kintsugi piece [Alchemy I; unsolicited collaboration, 2020] as being a physical object mounted upon a distressed grey wall (that therefore highlights the natural forces of entropy inherent in all things and removes the piece from the stark white gallery context).
Although, when viewed online, it would have remained identical, on reflection I feel that the piece operates more successfully as a photographic work than as a displayed physical object, in both aesthetic and conceptual terms; as it is the idea of the piece rather than the piece itself which is the more important consideration. To further the ideas of ownership and authorship, it would be interesting to commission a professional photographer to take the image that is ultimately displayed as the finished piece. By involving a third artist in a third medium, with each of us in collaboration overlaying each other’s art practices, I think the resultant artwork is made stronger.
I think Alchemy I; unsolicited collaboration was very lineal and literal in its translation from idea to tangible object, and as such suffers from leaving little room to breathe; the art piece and the ideas within it are closed down too quickly. I value and enjoy the interlaced layers of meaning I find behind and within the piece but perhaps viewers need some room to formulate their own associations and prefer a tad more ambiguity. At present I find it difficult to conceive of a way to make artworks addressing the theme of taking over another artist’s practice in a more abstracted way. But I would like to come back to this theme in a few years when my understanding of my own art practice has grown and matured.
Feedback from the faculty, cohort and guests:
People responded well to the idea of the earth being borrowed and it potentially being returned to the roots of where it was borrowed from, in its own form of ‘unsolicited collaboration’. There was also a response to the image of the cracks in the earth and the golden roots as having a healing association; perhaps even relating to the self and the therapeutic mending of perceived imperfections.
Questions were asked about the types of object that traditionally might get mended; which is an interesting consideration. The material context of gold was remarked on and it being both a mineral and a commodity. It being the literal standard to which currencies are measured against. It therefore signifies a particular kind of security.
Arte Povera (and its utilisation of limited resources) was mentioned as too Ai Weiwei’s artwork:
Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, [Triptych: black and white photograph]. 1995.
His radical act being part performance, part political commentary on cultural worth, symbolic power and historical value systems.
The idea of fissures resembling thread-like root systems (as seen in my studio in their early stages) seems to be fertile territory for further exploration.
We discussed containment: mud banks, wood (as seen in the background of one of my photos) often used as a structural containment device). Also we talked about relation to site. That an artwork need not necessarily take place within a gallery context. It might exist in the community or within the same place as the material was originally sourced from.
An idea was suggested that I might consider ‘guerilla kintsugi pothole filling’ (mending broken urban pathways in the community with gold). This has however been done:
Rachel Sussman, Study for Sidewalk Kintsukuroi #01 (New Haven, Connecticut), [photograph with enamel paint and metallic dust].
The circle was thought to be representative of Mother Earth and of the Earth being under enormous stress and the action of mending with gold, a healing process.
Some viewers found the aspect of having both the breaking and mending within the same piece to be a bit confusing; a complication; an anomaly.
Another artwork was mentioned in relation to the mark of one author overwriting another: Rauschenberg’s erased de Kooning drawing (1953). I watched a (sadly uncredited) interesting interview with Rauschenberg about this piece. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ). Apparently it was really difficult to erase and took two months to do so. He described it as poetry, not vandalism.
I found it very interesting to note that as he was stealing up the courage to ask de Kooning for an artwork of his to erase, he was prepared for his own idea to ‘fail’ and maybe the failure itself would be the artwork. Maybe the artwork would be about asking de Kooning if he could erase a picture, and that would be okay. Maybe the process itself is the artwork instead of a finished displayed object.
Talking things over with my supervisors it is agreed that I should experiment with not knowing; experimenting with no up-front rationale for the series of choices made. To put concepts to one side and explore.
Abbie Read, Work in progress: mud disc I, April 2020.
Oft unnoticed or dismissed, I am endlessly entranced by the slight or negligible; objects seldom considered of value or beauty; items seldom considered as objects at all.
I work with mostly natural materials: wood, earth, clay, mould and bacteria, utilising their materiality and innate associations to explore notions of contextual value and of life, still life and the absence thereof.
At present, I am contemplating generative and degenerative systems, both natural and enforced, and their inter-relational entwinings. My predilection lies towards Negentropy; a fascination for the natural processes of decay, interwoven with a desire to analyse and preserve. In so doing I inevitably order the chaotic, and perversely halt the living, mutable entity which first enticed me, in order to capture and immortalise its essence.
I am an observer, a collector and assembler; Artist as witness, compiler and instigator. I am interested in the practice and politics of display and the necessarily judgemental protocols which expressly determine what gets preserved or exhibited and how.
I enjoy the physicality of ideas made manifest; an embodied entanglement of symbiotic concepts and considerations. I am also drawn to what is not embodied; the interstitial space, the silence, the absences.
The aesthetics of my practice align with much of what is understood as the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi; a subtly intangible Japanese ideology which finds value in the simplicity of natural imperfections. It speaks to the delicate traces of impermanence and expounds that “the closer things get to nonexistence, the more exquisite and evocative they become.” (Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, 50.)
This viewpoint is shared by the Victorian art critic John Ruskin who also observes a certain sublimity in the monotonous or mundane and exclaims that “to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed.” (Ruskin, On Art and Life, 27.)
I have been looking at the works of land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, in particular his works with earth and clay. These pieces often acknowledge time and change as being connected to place. He asserts that “the challenge has been not simply to wait for things to decay, but to make change an integral part of a work’s purpose so that, if anything, it becomes stronger and more complete as it falls apart and disappears.” (Goldsworthy, Time, 7.)
The artworks of Pauline Rhodes and Charlotte Prodger also recurrently relate to the passage of time, within a specific environmental context alongside temporal traces of particular events and encounters.
Currently I am being more experimental in how I approach my art making, letting the materials speak and breathe in lieu of being prematurely and prescriptively tied to particular imposed meanings and interpretations. I am learning to bathe in the liminal, not race to encase the finite. Though this I find, is a delicate balance as it is always the coalescing of the myriad flickering ideas that sparks my joy in the creative process.
References:
Leonard Koren. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1994.
John Ruskin, On Art and Life. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
Andy Goldsworthy, Time. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Christina Barton, Ground/Work: The Art of Pauline Rhodes. Wellington: Adam Art Gallery & Victoria University Press, 2002.
Dane and I conversed about the value of proper archiving and possible digital online systems that might achieve this.
There was a valuable discussion about the languaging surrounding the concept of ‘beauty’ and it being a complex and loaded subject area probably best evaded at present. In particular, while assessing the merits of a kintsugi-ed mud disc, we decided it was more pertinent to describe the piece as ‘not operating effectively’ rather than in terms of its beauty or absence thereof.
On recommendation, I am ordering a copy of Dave Hickey ‘The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded”
Dane explained his affinity to G-clamps as both reference to the actions of construction (joining, pressing, containing) and as architectural objects in their own right. We looked at the work of Karsten Födinger with regards to containment systems and devices; his work showing the traces of action or event embedded within the art object itself, and a truth and simplicity of materials, often employing industrial forms of support or containment.
Karsten Födinger, Fluvial Yingbi, 2015, steel, soil, 246 x 600 x 203cm. Installation view: Antenna Space, Shanghai, China
We also talked of my search for tree stumps to use as a raw material for yakisugi – a Japanese technique of charring wood in order to add value (aesthetic, utilitarian and monetary) by increasing water-resistant and fire-retardant properties thus enhancing its longevity and preservation.
Studio works were mostly in the following categories:
More dried mud discs, with particular focus on the cracks and fissures.
Abbie Read, mud discs in progress, May 2020
We discussed the practicalities of casting these discs in different materials. Plaster might well dissolve the dried mud and intermingle with it producing a less than optimal result. A casting latex might work well – more research required. We also discussed the possible use of concrete as both a casting medium and end product; it having more pertinence to my field of interest than plaster. I appreciate the utility and solidity of concrete, and its use as a building material and containment device. I like the fact it is both ancient and modern and an amalgam of both the natural and manmade worlds. It is also subject to stress cracks of its own which could prove fruitful research-wise.
Dane posed the question of whether I might be keen to use specifically synthetic materials. I will ponder more on this but my initial response would be that it isn’t my main fascination point. Therefore if I used synthetic materials it would be to lend a definite quality or meaning to the artwork, probably as a counterpoint to some of the other materials used. (CCG industries might be worth checking out for casting materials and Jaycar for mould release agent)
Cylindrical cast dried mud towers.
Abbie Read, mud cylinders in progress, May 2020
These were imbedded with root systems of varying fragility. Although retaining their cylindrical outer boundaries, these works curve as the varying drying rates of the mud, stones and roots pull and cause tension in different areas.
Short video pieces.
Abbie Read, For the Fallen, ANZAC day 2020, 1 minute looped video (still frame)
An experimental series of video works I filmed in the dawn hours over Anzac weekend. Each focuses on a tree stump (with other living trees or plants featured somewhere in frame for contrast). Titled “For the Fallen” (after the poem by Laurence Binyon recited at each Anzac commemoration as an ode of remembrance). I spent one minute in silence filming each tree stump. The meditative breath of the witness off camera can be seen in the gentle rise and fall of the framed shot; an honouring of the lost and destroyed. Grey Lynn Park, the site of these videos, has a colonial history all of its own; a continual re-evaluation of its physical worth through a series of expansionist policies: Native bush felled to become a literal wasteland – a Victorian refuse dump. Then, European saplings planted and a gradual gentrification as nearby land prices swelled in value, and a circumvolution as the non-native interlopers are steadily culled and replaced by endemic species. These works were created during Lockdown level 4 and as such there is a natural yet unnatural hush in this urban park, a turning back of time. If exhibited, I envision these pieces in a series, each screen featuring a single tree stump on a 1 minute loop with the volume turned up high so that en masse there is a cacophony of silence; an aural physicality to what is present and what is not. (Dane suggested a trial of viewing the footage sideways or upside-down as it can sometimes throw up a completely different reading.)
Photographs and ethereal scans of composed interlacing root systems.
Abbie Read, Exploratory root scans, April 2020
I am drawn to the elongated shadows of the intertwined venal entanglements; they too interlace but are flattened by their mono-tonal reflection: all shadows have one tone, one depth.
Recommended artists to research:
Robert Smithson – tree works Matthew Barney – tree works cast in bronze
Peter Zumthor – and his use of trees in the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel (Germany 2007): A series of vertical cavities within the cast concrete walls of the interior space are the traces left behind by 112 burnt out tree trunks.
Zac Langdon-Pole, Te Whanganui-A-Hei / Cooks Beach 12.06.2019, 2019, sand photogram (1000% enlarged), made with sand from Te Whananui-A-Hei / Cooks Beach, Aotearoa New Zealand, archival hahnemuhle fineart print, 3012 x3940mm, NZD 42,000
Entering the gallery, attention is immediately drawn to the boundless dark chasm encapsulated in print across the room. Initially this magisterial image appears to be a telescopic documentation of the celestial panoply. A ‘window’ of expansive darkness populated by specks of light, it engulfs and seduces the viewer ever closer. The spectator becomes participant.
This aspect reminded me of a formative encounter with Yukinori Yanagi’s World Flag Ant Farm (1990), many years ago.
Yukinori Yanagi, Pacific. [Mixed Media. 282 x 405 x 1.8cm] 1996
The work, and a spectator’s understanding of it, transitions on the walk towards it; the physical and judgemental perspectives shift accordingly with each step forward.
A series of national flags are arranged on a distant wall. Gradually it appears that they are incomplete, crumbling. As the viewer draws nearer still, the flags appear to be shifting or stirring within their perspex frames. A final analysis reveals the presence of a colony of ants, busy creating tunnels through the coloured sand which constitutes each flag. As the ants transit and transfer sand from one flag to the other, they gradually erode the borders between the nations in a micro global migration. In this age of competing and fleeting attention spans, this ‘dance’ of audience and artwork, the enchantment and enticement to closer appraisal, is one I wish to emulate in my own art pieces.
Zac Langdon-Pole, Te Whanganui-A-Hei/Cooks Beach 12.06.2019 [detail], 2019
On closer inspection of Langdon-Pole’s work, the interstitial space is not interstellar. These imposing cosmic depictions are in fact enlarged photograms of sand particles taken from the beach after which each artwork is named. Viewpoint and perception are transported from the literally astronomical to the barely macroscopic. Our Solar System, comprised from fragments of ancient stars, echoes the sand as an ephemeral remnant of assorted scattered particles from other entities; a material measurement of the passage of time.
Our position, as audience, immediately shifts with this scale change: from insignificant and awe-inspired subordinates peering at a distant infinity to metaphorical giants able to trample the semi-crystalline subject matter underfoot; gods of our terrestrial domain. In this and his corresponding works, Langdon-Pole exalts the otherwise insignificant and for a brief moment transforms it from infinitesimal to infinite.
Other associations may be drawn to Buddhist sand mandalas; temporal renderings of geometric patterns made from coloured crushed stone, which are ultimately ceremonially erased symbolising the acceptance of the transitory nature of the universe. Langdon-Pole discusses, “thinking of a stone not as an object but as a momentary aggregate of sand. I am interested in looking at things as processes rather than in an essentialist way.” (Quoted in http://moussemagazine.it/zac-langdon-pole-francesco-tenaglia-2020/ by Francesco Tenaglia)
From the Artist’s talk I learnt that Langdon-Pole’s previous works have included hand carved meteorites encased in fragile nautilus shells (made by squid): one originating from the distant heavens, the other from the oceanic depths; both, in their way, non-terrestrial. The mapping of stars is all about the scale of time. It alludes to the colonial history of our astrally guided collective ancestors voyaging vast oceans, to discover distant lands; and moreover to the Christian missionaries adept at utilising their ability to predict eclipses to help convert the native enclave.
After winning the BMW travel project award, Langdon-Pole followed an equally migratory transit spending two years collecting small samples of sand from different geographic locations. His images are produced by making photograms of the sprinkled sand on light sensitive paper; a very analogue methodology.
The sand itself is of a particular time, as well as place. As time passes, the constitutional makeup of the particles will differ considerably. Therefore, the titles of the works include a date alongside the location of the place they were collected. An archive of a particular point in time and physical space; an earthly mapping. He speaks of the work being about time, space and matter; both celestial space and the pictorial space between the grains of sand.
I am reminded of the techniques employed by Film and TV directors in the time before the now ubiquitous CGI. Twinkling night skies were produced by fading between images of sprinkled salt grains (sugar crystals being too square), over a large, flat, black cardboard background.
Langdon-Pole talks of the influence of Japanese conceptual artist, On Kawara’s ‘Date paintings’.
On Kawara, Four Decades (Oct.13, 1970 / May 7, 1980 / Nov. 22,1990 / Apr. 16, 2000), [Liquitex on canvas in handmade cardboard box with newspaper clippings], 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000
On Kawara’s ‘Today series’, was made over the course of forty or so years, from 1966 onwards. Each canvas displaying one simple line of acrylic text of the day’s date; a frozen moment in time; a still-life of sorts, but one in which in which the memories and associations invoked are not pre-ascribed, as each piece is interpreted anew by each new viewer.
Zac Langdon-Pole, Cleave Study (ii), 2019
Other pieces in this exhibition:
Langdon-Pole gathers together seemingly disparate objects in a curated assemblage in which each object or juxtaposition of objects informs the reading of the entirety. Much like the Xenophora marine gastropod itself, as seen in Cleave Study (ii), which collects stray flotsam to attach to its own shell, becoming its own depository and assemblage art object.
The verb ‘to cleave’ has the unique distinction of having two wholly antithetical meanings: to cling together or to divide apart. This linguistic oddity is hinted at within the artwork by its pairing with a (plasticised) human tongue, which usurps the body of the fleshy sea snail. In alluding to language, the tongue highlights its own presence as a foreigner in the scenario: it is not a native speaker to that which is from a sub-marine domain.
Other works are comprised of artificial medical cross sections of seemingly osseous matter coupled with resin orbs with inert organic inclusions such as seeded dandelion heads. These ephemeral dandelion ‘clocks’ are reminiscent of the childlike games of telling time, as one puff send the seeds on their own migratory space journey.
Upstairs, in a traditional glass display case is a piece titled Assimilation study:
Zac Langdon-Pole, Assimilation Study (detail), [Painted wooden shape-sorter blocks, hand carved Campo del Cielo meteorite, artist designed display case, acrylic, MDF, paint], 2020
Upon viewing, it is immediately apparent that one of the component pieces is an interloper. The shape-sorting toy represents a first, infantile encounter with the physical world; primary coloured, basic volumetric shapes formed from prosaic wood and paint. In contrast, the singular imposter: an artificially manipulated authentic meteorite, is far from commonplace; its apparent mundanity belying its exceptional ‘otherness’ as a non-terrestrial object out of place.
This piece speaks to me of taxonomy and classification, of the intensely humanistic need to categorise, label and ‘sort’ all matter by colour, shape, material or other defining aesthetics; the action of which, designates either an intrinsic inclusion or exclusion of a certain object. This artwork, like the other works in this show, speaks of foreignness and of other-worldly migrations.
Just as sand is used in an hourglass to measure the passing of time, Meteorites are their own cosmic time capsules, encasing grains of stardust older than Earth itself. When we look at the night sky, we are looking at history, not just a distant memory of the past but a record of how the heavens looked hundreds of years ago. This exhibition reminds us to comprehend that we, on this planet, are minute particles in an infinite universe; a universe where ‘otherness’, as we might perceive it, is vastly more limitless and significant than humankind.
Abbie Read 