The photopolymer prints are finished! And now I have to trim them all!! (heck) (Photos coming soon)
I spoke with Natasha today, who'll also be installing in the Photo Media Studio for Seminar. We're planning on working around each other over the next few days to set up. I realised I have more work than I thought I did, so now the decision is whether all will be shown or if not how many will be put forward for review.
Conceptually, I think maintaining some kind of linear set up (along a wall) is important, however I also think it is important to give them enough space to breath between each other (they are after all individuals that make up a whole...). The current plan is to use two or three wall spaces to do this. I also still have a few printing plates on hand, and I'm wondering if it could be worth presenting some of them too - if so, a small shelf on the wall or some kind of off-wall pinning would look nice, I think... Will figure this out later this week.
On Wednesday I installed my work (working title: The Aggregates) at Public Record with the owner, Yuka, and will be opening on Thursday. Once that is complete, I can relax back into MFA thoughts :)
While I've been making more sound recordings, I haven't yet figured out a way to play them in an exhibition setting that I feel confident about... This week I'm working on assembling some surface speakers, which I hope may be an option for immersive installations in future. If I am able to get them functioning I may put them in the space for Seminar, but I'm also happy leaving them be and trialing them in DEMO in July, assuming I can still get into the space.
I've been enjoying experimenting with sound and printmaking, and while I want to continue developing these strands I don't want to abandon my moving image works either. Following Seminar, I think they deserve some attention.
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts over the past few weeks, mostly from Circuit Cast. I found this episode on writing really useful when thinking about my writing for the upcoming seminar and pop-up exhibition. I still struggle finding the balance between providing enough context for what I make through a wall text and veering into over-explanation. As Noel told me back in Yr 2 BFA, you don't have to explain the work to people...
Notes from Circuit Cast Podcast "Episode 113: What sparks the words?"
Gregory Kan
"I have friends that I take to an art gallery and who cling to the wall text like a life raft in the ocean... I want my text to be another drop into the abyss... In the encounter with the work, you're there to construct yourself with the work. The work is there to give you space to build into and onto, and to have a piece of writing that basically flattens that for you is kind of a terrible form of sacrilege... Like [going to see the Eiffel Tower and only getting a postcard]."
"Sometimes the thing I think about when making the kind of work I do is to give it space and invite the reader to play as much as possible... You do want people to feel helped at the same time... how do you hold someone enough that they can go and play?"
"The gift-curse of language [is] giving you what you can get the only way you can get it..."
Tina Makereti
"A story never ends, it's always a conversation."
"[All language obscures that of which it speaks], I think that applies to everything and something that is quite hard as a writer is to get to that point where you understand that you're not representing reality... You're making symbols on the page about the thing you're writing about... it's a different thing, a separate thing."
Exhibition visit: She Could Lie on Her Back and Sink (Gus Fisher)
This group exhibition features works from Tai Shani, Ann Shelton, Louie Zalk-Neale and Jayne Parker. As I volunteer at the gallery every two weeks, it's always a nice opportunity to spend time with the works in the space. The theme of the current exhibition revolves around the theme of witchcraft as seen through an intersectional feminist lens and the works explore the figure of the witch in Māori and European lore, indigenous and matrilineal knowledge and wisdom, and historic associations between women's knowledge and the natural world.
‘She was underwater now… Just like her grandmother, just like her grandmother’s grandmother. She could lie on her back and sink.’[1] She could lie on her back and sink explores artistic responses to the figure of the witch in the context of both indigenous Aotearoa and European lineages. Through film, photography, installation and performance, the exhibition is framed through an intersectional feminist lens where wise women* and customary knowledge holders are revered because of the way they engage with nature. Water is the unifying force between the artists, from the submergence of women’s knowledge in European pre-Christian practices to a vessel of swirling seawater, a hallucinogenic island and an underwater dancer. The exhibition’s title is a quote from a short story by novelist Pip Adam, commissioned by Ann Shelton for her new body of work, i am an old phenomenon (2022-ongoing), and refers to the historical practice of “swimming a witch” where hundreds of thousands of women were forcibly tried for witchcraft through drowning. This history informs Shelton’s new series and its visual realisation in the exhibition. Shelton’s works awaken past and present knowledge systems pertaining to the medicinal, spiritual, and magical applications of plants, animals and fungi. Turner-prize winning artist Tai Shani presents a feminist mythology of psychedelics in The Neon Hieroglyph (2021), which is inspired by her research into the history of ergot – a fungus from which the drug LSD is derived. In a newly commissioned installation and performance by Louie Zalk-Neale and their collaborators Tāwhanga Nopera, Neke Moa and Adam Ben-Dror, taura (ropes) are arranged to circulate flows of mauri through a self-contained seascape of rock, fibre, plastic and water. The exhibition concludes with Jayne Parker’s portrayal of a ballerina moving gracefully underwater in the short, choreographed dance spectacle The Whirlpool (1997). She could lie on her back and sink imagines a watery haven where our witchy selves can exist in harmony and new tendrils of knowledge are born. *“woman” and “women” throughout this text is intended to be inclusive of trans and gender diverse people.[1] Adam P. The Three Fates. i am an old phenomenon at Denny Gallery New York; 2022.
Seeing Shelton's works in the space reminded me of the possibilities for image exhibition. I think last year I began thinking about projections in space, off the wall, but I've somehow forgotten that there's no reason a 2D photograph or image has to be grounded on the wall either... Something to think about going forward more, especially in relation to the theme of omnipresence of the geology I'm investigating has...
I'm a sucker for installation works, so seeing Shani and Zalk-Neale's in the side rooms here has been great. The flood of pink light that accompanies Shani's really amplifies the psychedelic feeling of the work, and the use of stone, rope, water and sound in Zalk-Neale's has a wonderful bodily feel to it...
Ann Shelton, I am an old phenomenon, 2022 ongoing, photography series.
Louie Zalk-Neale, with Adam Ben-Dror, Neke Moa and Dr. Tāwhanga Nopera. Beyond your tadpole stage // Your spinal chord disolves, 2023, installation.
Tai Shani, The Neon Hieroglyph, 2021, 4K digital video.
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