Day is effectively overcoding the regional place/grass/location of
Hazelhurst with reminders of the places which its inhabitants are from.
Grass, of the earth, acts in a carrier role, recalling connections in
a common matrix, in a fusing of the symbolic and material realms in
which the population now dwells. Closeness is implicated in this bonding
with the earth and a compounding of the signifer in embedded matter.
The earth is thus charged with a kind of repository responsibility,
bearing the material imprint- the palimpsest - of what remains in memory,
of the places left behind. This acknowledges the tension between migration
and rootedness, and the psychic patterning that remains of "putting down roots" long
after one's roots are torn up.
Furthermore grass is a fitting material through which to work through
the exhibition brief of Still Different in the context of the history
of the Hazlehurst gallery and the philosophy behind the Broadhurst bequest.
First, it should be noted that Day has been working with the medium of
grown grass through more than a decade of projects, often in the cause
of institutional and cultural critique. Grass, in its associations with
colonialism, has often stood in as a metaphor for conquest and cultural
imperialism in her work, as well as materially signifying a re- or overplanting
of the natural environment. Yet, in this exhibition grass takes on a radically
different role, reflective of the generosity of the Broadhursts, a family
of visionary free thinkers - thinkers of social, politcal and cultural
difference of their time - through whose bequest of the house and garden
the Hazlehurst gallery complex was founded.
Originally from Manchester (the name appears in palimpsest), the Broadhurts
were philathropists and spiritualists who followed many of Rudolf
Steiner's principles. In the business of textiles (another rhizomatic
link), they gifted the means of production to their workers who were
often invited to enjoy the gardens of Hazlehurst, where the Broadhurts
were keen organic gardeners, and early advocates of the benefits of
composting and recycling. In line with their wholistic philosophy, the
bequest mandated that the gardens be preserved and complimented by either "'a place of culture'
or a community facility" (The Hazlehurst Story, Hazlehurst gallery
pamplet, 16).
The garden was crucial to their vision; the Broadhurts adhering to
Steiner's belief that "everything is related to the soil." (ibid, 12).
Hence, Day's project of imbricating the immaterial signifier of the letter
in the organic matter of grass, as cultural transmitter, intimately reflects
the Broadhurst philosophy of the unity of all spheres of life, specifically
as grounded in the relationship with the earth, and, as such, pays hommage
in the spirit of community in which the Broadhurts so passionately believed.
One senses they would have approved of Day's active cultural mapping in
the medium of grass, and also in the additional twist of the laying down
of the letter(s) underground, analagous to Freud/s desciption of laying
down the traces of the psyche in "the underground" of the
unconscious (Ben Broadhurst was also President of the Sydney Centre
for Psychic Research in the 1950s).
The second aspect of Day's show could be described as symbolically rhizomatic,
and an extension of her interest in museology. Local women, representative
of the cultural diversity of Hazlehurst, have been asked to bring along
a small object of personal importance for museum display. Day explains
the operation as an opportunity for a kind of showing off, an occasion
to show and share, but, as importantly, given the museum's historical
use of vitrines as institutional sites of cultural validation, also consolidating
the pluralist threads of local identity. Working from the grass roots
up, such a practice encourages patterns of emergence - akin to Foucault's
autonomous 'self-seeded' microcircuits of power. Therefore, the display
of these personal objects interrogates institutional function in relation
to community, inverting the top down hegemonic relations of power, and
replacing the museum's usual classificatory tree with wild, rhizomatic
anti-genealogy of whatever the women choose to bring in. Again there's
a synergy with the free thinking Broadhursts and their goals of empowering
community.
Making and Breaking Pattern Elizabeth Day
By Judith Duquemin
Pattern is a regular or repetitive form, generally involving types
of order and arrangement. Patterns are made according to certain rules;
however through a making and breaking of the rules of pattern making,
the conceptual realm of the artist’s intention is revealed. Pattern
becomes a vehicle for expressing Variation, a principle that William
Justema identified as ‘the intelligence of a pattern one could
say its conscience adding that Variation and Repetition are the two most
important aspects of pattern making, taking precedence over matters of
Symmetry, Rhythm and Balance. Variation, the act or the result of varying
something that differs slightly from the norm, is a reasoning that takes
on greater complexity when it becomes an expression of individuality
within multidisciplinary art practice. Driven by vastly different interests,
the artists: Elizabeth Day, Judith Duquemin, Kate Mackay, Shaun Morrow,
Giles Ryder and Justin Trendall acknowledge the value of pattern making
through a multiplicity of materials and models of expression. The result
is not so much the representation of pattern as predictable and precise
which is often the common expectation. The works in this exhibition are
linked by each artist’s acknowledgement that pattern making,
and pattern breaking, are important mechanisms for the development
of personal, professional and cultural identity. The outcome is a mixed
installation of complex art forms requiring intense contemplation and
navigation on the part of the observer.
Elizabeth Day works with everyday materials and processes with amazing
cleverness and humility. She acts out multiple roles as emigrant, sibling,
artist and educator with disadvantaged cross-cultural groups, through
combinations of sculpture, sculptural performance and installation.
Influenced by Fluxus and the artist Eva Hesse, she says: “I think of my work
as being closer to sculpture because of the use of actual process and
materials: the growing of the grass roots, unravelling wool, the chewing
of gum, the knitting and stitching” adding that “patterns,
processes, poetic resonances with everyday materials and meanings were
very much part of Hesse’s oeuvre”…”I especially
liked the way that Hesse imbued her pattern-making with her own emotional
electricity, and serious playfulness with ideas and states of mind”.
Knitting, stitching, weaving, mapping, documenting, the use of un-kerned
text, compositions of gum and the attraction to unconventional geometry
make up formal and informal arrangements of patterns juxtaposed within
patterns. “The of the earth series, of which five are included
here, are ‘cast grass’ formations containing birthplaces
within steel frames. They map and give recognition to, the vast cultural
diversity that describes Australian society, and refer to Day’s
experience as an emigrant from the English town of Wigan. A collaboration,
the works were created with the artist’s mother Margaret Day
who lives in Hobart. The Assorted Spat Out Ones, are gum on hessian
and are a series from larger works that consider the colonial imposition
of the prison as an idea and a reality on the Australian landscape
and the creation of the abject. Series: three, combines sculpture performance
and video aimed at addressing the intricacies of sibling relations.
Judith Duquemin questions selfhood through memories of Modernist Design,
mostly abstract geometric mid 20th century textile designs, encountered
during her formative years. The properties of flat colour, shape and
line peculiar to Modernist Design are symbolic of the articulation of
memory and an imaginary search for a vital self, with full knowing that
emotional memory is not accurate and occurs mostly through oblique associations
made with past events. Further, that selfhood is not unitary or stable
but adaptable according to gender, role, and class. It is through hardedge
technique, palettes of tertiary colours, geometric pattern, and mixed
media, that Duquemin has created non-figurative, non-representational,
abstract geometric images with a subjective twist.
Painted irregular striped textile has been replicated as acrylic gouache
paintings and digital prints. The Light Yellow, Magenta & Cobalt
Triptych is based upon a striped Catalan textile manufactured in Perpignan
in southern France. Swatches have been recreated as I Canvases involving
colours that are digital substitutes. “The various colour combinations
and textures provoke memories of denim, caravan parks and other features
of a sun-bleached southeast Queensland beach culture during the 1960s.
Through a screen made up of forty-two stripes, colours merge. Each narrow
stripe responds to those adjacent providing symbolic analogy for fuzzy
memories about the uniformities of country life”.
Kate Mackay resolves, in her way, the art craft dichotomy. She says: “The
work of art in general enjoys a privilege of meaning that is seen to
be lacking from a piece of craft. The craftwork is created from established
patterns for a useful purpose; the artwork is allowed to exist as a conceptual
construction. In these works the positions are equalised; the craft pieces
are released from their use value, and both the paintings, wooden constructions
and crocheted pieces are constructed following the same sorts of randomly
manipulated rules”.
Concerned with process and random difference within uniformity, outcomes
are not realized until the last colour has been included whether
it be oil paint applied through actual stencils onto canvas, oil paint
applied directly on to an assemblage of glued MDF blocks, or, coloured
yarn introduced into patterns for crocheting. Squares come alive through
painting and crochet to become three-dimensional forms that express
Mackay’s
concerns about relationships between painting and sculpture, as well
as between art and craft. She has created Red Square Painting, Yellow
Square Painting, both made up of four non-identical square canvases,
Wooden Cubes Yellow, and a conglomeration of crocheted geometric
forms titled: Crocheted Cubes and Crocheted Cube 2.
Formations of irregular spray painted pearlescent stripes on hand
rolled metal make up Giles Ryder’s aluminium ‘canvases’, imaginatively
titled: Divine Transporters and Spectral Magenta. The artist says: “Part
of my practice explores the idea of the readymade, in my choice of materials
and utilizing industrial spray painting techniques to mixing my own Auto
Lacquers. In contrast to the ‘readymade’ these techniques
give an effect of the ‘Custom Paint Job’.
His use of pearlescent paint is perceptually challenging, as the appearance
of the work changes with the fall of light, the position of the viewer
and the amount of clear pearlescent coats applied. The surface shimmers
and glows with light through flat, reflective planes of colour.
Like the idea of the ‘Art Car’, Ryder’s technique
is a reaction to mass production and uniformity, the transformation
of the ordinary to the aesthetic. The Art Car has a rich history whereby
a vehicle has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic
expression. It is an artistic experience in which the creator identifies
and defines his own uniqueness.
Art Cars borrow from a range of genres for example street art, advertising,
the automobile industry, folk art, outsider art, trends, politics,
sex, architecture, design, and photography. On this occasion Ryder’s
concern is fine art ‘furthering the concepts of reduction (of form;
space; line and material), the effect of colour (visual; as signature;
and psychological effects) and the experiential qualities of painting’.
Justin Trendall has utilized digital design software and print making
to produce Parthenon, a design for a section of a building. It is part
of his Monuments project, a body of work based around a series of imaginary
edifices that memorialize cultural modernity. Intricate patterns on three
horizontal lengths of gold and deep red silk mimic the wall of a building
like construction, while appearing to map a continuous coastline and
hinterland complete with place names.
Trendall’s technique challenges our understanding of the functions
of pattern, He combines ‘patterns of rational thought’ within
cultural history with ‘patterns of information’ that are
digital constructions. Repetitions of text and web like formations
on silk give the appearance of pattern that is decorative, except that
on closer inspection the lines are broken by folds and folding, by
the unevenly dispersed light on the luminous silk surface, and the
digitalized web like formations that lack clear proportion. The text
is a mixture of historical references and place names of personal and
geographical significance and each time the work is exhibited, it acquires
new meaning depending on context. Ironically one does not have to be
an architect, historian, or cartographer to appreciate how pattern
is playfully upstaged in this work.
Shaun Morrow rearranges pattern using his knowledge of painting, screen-printing,
digital animation and digital imaging, and, his subject base is as
diverse as his knowledge of multidisciplinary practice. He likes to
reference a range of issues that are ‘germane to abstract painting for example
Australian indigenous culture, and the exploration of metaphysical links
between a broad range of topics from religious belief systems to quantum
physics and microbiology’.
Labyrinth is an interactive digital animation of vertical black and
white bars on a brilliant yellow luminous field. It is modest, yet,
mesmerizing illustration of animated art that began as painting. Click
the fuzzy cursor on the right bar and patterns break up and begin to
dance. The trick is to negotiate the maze of moving particles to find
the right bar to click to create a new sequence! KInesin # 1-4 are
large digital prints of ‘a screen-printing process’. Paint instead of photographic
opaque medium is applied to acetate to create layers of colour, in this
case for digital photographs as opposed to conventional photo-stencils.
Morrow spent ten years in the ‘top end’ teaching screen-printing
to notable indigenous artists such as England Bangalla from Cadel River,
Kitty Kantila of the Tiwi Islands, and the Queenie MacKenzie late of
Turkey Creek.
Linking all of the works in the exhibition is the use of schema. Schema
are organizational and conceptual patterns of the mind and provide
opportunities for experimentation and conceptualization during the
creative process. E. H. Gombrich said ‘Without some starting point, some initial
schema we could never get hold of the flux of experience, Without categories
we could not sort out our impressions…it matters little what
these first impressions are. We can always adjust them according to
need. Indeterminate factors enter into the schema influencing the outcome
of the work, such as the choice of material (whether it be aluminium,
bubble gum, or silk), the mixing of genres (such as digital media and
printmaking, painting and crocheting, sculpture and performance) and
the freedom to expand and express individual thought within a cultural
discourse that allows artists to do so. Variations of a kind that explain
the making and breaking of pattern as an important psychological characteristic
of contemporary visual art practice.
© Dr. Judith Duquemin 2007