Misc thoughts on studio work
Western concept of landscape as inherently anthropocentric; I want to explore the idea of a "non-human landscapes" - landscapes that take place within entities, geologies, etc. and from the view point of non-living beings. I want to explore a temporality that isn't human in nature... Flux of scale, perception, influence, etc.
Realised that I've gone from a pretty in-depth lichen investigation to focusing purely on the historic stone walls, which is a bit of a pivot! I think this is still relevant to the overall themes in my practice, but it's dawned on me recently that I've been in a bit of a research hole. Not a bad thing, just conscious I still have other things I'd like to explore in future, perhaps in tandem with what I'm looking at currently. The current point cloud works, I think, very much explore human-geological moments and the intersections with our own timelines, as well as those that go beyond what we can conceptualise. Digging more into the concept of landscape and the illusion of being static, while exploring the unique elements within it...
Have begun playing with sound again - trying to find ways to integrate it into the video montage I currently have. Maybe it's a little same-same as last year's video work, but I think it may help ground it a little. If I can find a way to incorporate sound without it detracting from the video works I've been making, I may do so.... (I guess that's something that's perfect to explore in critique)
Auckland Museum - Stonehenge exhibition
Recently had the opportunity to visit the Stonehenge exhibition at Auckland museum. It was really beautiful and informative, and interesting to see the different ways in which the exhibition had been put together. There was a combination of research, artefacts, and speculative narration throughout it. Ultimately we likely won't ever know the full history and significance of the site and the henge, but the archaeological research that was presented helps paint some idea of what might've taken place. The parallels between the different stone sites (origin and end point) and astronomy really create a sense of ongoing presence about the place - its something I think we can still related to in the present; particularly the connection between sites and materials... (Though someone brought up on Pagan rituals and who is currently focused on ecological interconnection and temporality, perhaps I'm also a little biased!). It's also something I'm thinking of in relation to my own work currently - the idea of moving one mountain to multiple places; how much of that mountain remains in its material; the dispersal and creation of new things from materials of one location to another; etc...
I wasn't a huge fan of some of the the speculative elements of the exhibit, particularly the dramatized videos features a fictional character from the time it was built (it felt a bit forced), but it was curious being aware of that element of things. In a way it helped me think more about how the rest of the exhibition had been structured - how each element was set up, the different installation choices that were made in order to tell the overall narrative, etc., and the general fiction of it all (the knowledge that we were being presented with information in a structured and considered way through a particular lens). As I'm interested in exploring via and themes of geology, semiotics, history and ecology, I think considering elements from such exhibitions could help inspire my own installation choices...
Of the artefacts present, the stones and tools were most interesting - and I realise, some of the only 'real' artefacts from the site that were there, alongside reproductions and models; I think the henge models allowed people to visualise and imagine the information we were presented with, which helped counter some of the information dump effect. The museum cases (of rocks, antler picks, and other artefacts) were curious - I think each artefact had both its own presence and one that was felt as part of the exhibition; and the effect having 'traditional' museum displays set up alongside historical information , archaeological information, and speculative or fictional narrations was really effective in creating both an overall atmosphere and consistent theme. Moving through the space in a linear fashion also added to this; something to consider...
Gus Fisher - The Sentiment of Flowers
I've begun volunteering at Gus Fisher Gallery again, which means I have the luxury of being around their exhibitions more often than I usually would :) While I didn't take many photos this week, I've been really enjoying the current exhibition, The Sentiment of Flowers. As a nonbinary artist working in the general field of ecology, it's lovely to experience for me; I'm still unpacking a lot of the content and works, but below are some notes from the exhibition publication and loose thoughts.
From the gallery website:
‘What queer can offer is the identity of I am also. I am also human. I am also natural. I am also alive and dynamic and full of contradiction, paradox, irony. Queer knocks down the house of cards and throws them into the warm wind.’[1] The sentiment of flowers brings together artworks by leading Aotearoa and international artists that broadly resonate with the theme of queer ecologies. The exhibition embraces a non-binary approach to thinking about nature by encouraging us to abandon ideas of human exceptionalism in order to understand how queerness is an integral part of life for all living organisms. In ecology, queerness enables infinite possibilities and is broader than sexuality or gender identity. Deconstructing and moving beyond reductive dualisms that serve to give the word ‘natural’ its agency, artworks in the exhibition employ a range of destabilising strategies central to queer theory. The exhibition looks at artistic propositions for a queer ecological future and addresses a range of concepts including biohacking, eco-sexuality, the decolonisation of nature and posthuman ecologies. [1] Johnson A. How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time. Orion Magazine; 2011.
Some favourite works:
Laura Duffy, From Emergence of After, 2022. Single-channel video, sound 22 minutes 52 seconds
From Emergence of After grapples with two parallel contradictions: that queerness is the most natural thing, and that all bodies are no longer natural. The video imagines the earth after humans have vanished, where new life blossoms in darkness and drinks from toxic waste. Duffy’s work draws on fetishistic film devices such as food, cosmetics, fragrances, technology and commercials. She creates her videos in a lab-studio setting where decaying flowers and other detritus are left to ferment for lengthy periods. Filmed intuitively over multiple night-time sessions, Duffy creates a filming environment open to chance, unfamiliar materials and collaboration. In the video, surfaces glisten and perspire. Droplets reflect light back to the viewer, and objects appear in fragment. Gloopy, viscous substances drip onto tree branches, fuzzy edges and leggy fronds enmesh, flowers bloom and die in continuous motion, their lifecycle on loop. Each video frame is short, only allowing a glimpse of the image before it is usurped in darkness again. This darkness is also metaphorical in the way it relates to the erasure of queer histories. As stated by the artist, “I feel like I am looking into the darkness, trying to see, feel and hear.” For Duffy, nature has often been weaponised to enforce normative codes and queerness in relationship to nature cannot be untangled from culture, politics and power. She has been influenced by other artists in the exhibition - Mary Maggic’s freak science methodology, and Richard Orjis’ video Jerusalem. From Emergence of After seeks pleasure for impure and unnatural bodies, summoning up queer transmissions, to search for an unfindable ancestral body.
I've really enjoyed Duffy's work for some time now, and the scale, the dark atmosphere, sound and alien-esque biological subjects emerging from the darkness in this work creates an amazing effect. It feels very other worldly, and at once very familiar...
Richard Orjis, Jerusalem, 2021 Single-channel video, sound 2 minutes, 52 seconds
Jerusalem comprises a series of short clips filmed on the artist’s phone at Hiruhārama/Jerusalem on the Whanganui River. In 2017, the Whanganui River gained legal personhood at the signing of Te Awa Tipua which recognised the river’s indivisible and living whole. Grounded in queer ecological thought, Richard Orjis’ work reflects on intimacies, pleasure and control. Filmed in black and white, Jerusalem is overlaid with a voiceover that acknowledges the body of the river and queer politics as multifarious and evolving. “Pain body, pleasure body, queer body, celebrated legal body.” Referring to ecologically damaging histories of the river as a resource to be mined and distributed such as the impact of the Tongariro Power Scheme, the voiceover conjures the river’s anger; “Yelling my body my rules. My body, my choice. You’re not the boss of me.” Jerusalem weaves the story of the French Catholic nun Mother Aubert to the Ngāti Hau river settlement in 1883. Aubert was a nurse, herbalist and educator and was thought to have cultivated the first cannabis crop in Aotearoa. She used the income from her range of medicines to support a home for orphans and the under-privileged in Jerusalem. The religious order founded by Aubert, the Sisters of Compassion, was one of the first groups to assist those living with HIV AIDS in the 1980s. Noting the different histories of settlement along the river, from Aubert in the late 1880s to the formation of a commune in the 1960s, Orjis’ film emphasises the mana of the river as a site of cultural and spiritual significance and the legal and attitudinal shifts towards bodily autonomy and personal freedoms.
Alicia Frankovich, Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies, 2019-22. 16 dye-sublimation prints on PVC backlit polyester; 3 SD videos, colour, vertical, duration 5 seconds
Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies depicts over 100 images of phenomena including plants, fungi, rock, bacteria, plastics and planetary space. The collection of images is wide-ranging in both content and form, each with their own lush vibrancy and intricate detail, and can be viewed in any order. The work is informed by German art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924-9), a project intended to map an expansive version of art history through non-hierarchical groupings of idiosyncratic images. Mnemosyne Atlas engages with First Peoples’ knowledge systems as described by Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith and provides models for understanding research production in ways appropriate to the challenges of our present. In Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies Alicia Frankovich questions dominant categorical systems that assume universalism and acknowledges that we exist in complex and dynamic relationships to non-humans. The Atlas’s format resembles a digital workspace or computer desktop and combines medical and molecular imaging alongside those sourced from the internet and photographed by the artist. She describes the Atlas as a sort of “ephemeral or temporal binding of the moment” that provides reference points for the present time and space, the meaning of which will shift as they move into the future. Informed by concepts of the Zwischenrume, the spaces in between, and the Denkraum, room for thought, Frankovich resists declaring a new fixed taxonomy. She echoes feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s call of “staying with the trouble” as a framework for rethinking our relationship to other species amidst climactic disaster. Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies embraces wildness, disorder and desire through constantly shifting image worlds that speak to the porousness and intermingling of species, bodies and matter. As Frankovich claims, “There is an undoing of the question of whole earth and whole subject.”
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