ARTICULATE: January 2015

26.1.15

FERAL4 OPENS FRIDAY 30 JANUARY 6-8pm

Artists in FERAL4 are Dominic Byrne, Sue Callanan, Andrew Christie, Richard Dunn, Sarah Fitzgerald, Aude Fondard, Veronica Habib, Richard Kean, Kate Mackay, Melissa Maree, Christine Myerscough, Melissa Jane Palmer, Katya Petetskaya, Jannah Quill, Elizabeth Rankin, Ambrose Reisch, Kathryn Ryan, Helen L Sturgess, Helen M Sturgess, Yoshi Takahashi, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Judith Torzillo and Jeff Wood.

FERAL is a progressive, overlapping exhibition program of over 60 artists that will be open Friday - Sunday 11-5pm between 9 January - 8 February 2015. Its five opening events are Fridays 9, 16, 23 + 30 January and 6 February at 6-8pm, each of which will show the work of a different combination of about twenty artists. FERAL is designed for artists to experiment with installation or location of artwork in an architectural space that is already altered by the earlier installation of other artists' work, and which will be altered again when another group replaces that earlier installation. The FERAL project is part of the broader Articulate interest in the relationships artworks form with their locations. It does this by focusing in particular on the contribution that the changing installations of artwork make to the constitution of a site.

Phaptawan Suwannakudt There, There 2014

When Phaptawan’s mother lost her memory,

she started talking in the Lanna dialect

of her childhood. Phaptawan sculpted the head

of her mother from the memory of the time

when her mother was a nun. The scattered

fabric masks are placed together and filled

with produce from local market.

(Funded by Asialink Art Residency Program

2014 at Ne’-Na Contemporary Art Space,

Chiengmai funded by Arts NSW)

http://phaptawansuwannakudt.com/

Dominic Byrne
http://www.dominicbyrne.net/

Elizabeth Rankin

Yoshi Takahashi
yoshitakahashi.com

Jeff Wood

Kate Mackay 2014
http://kate-mackay.blogspot.com.au/

Melissa Jane Palmer

Sarah Fitzgerald Arch 2015

Richard Dunn Untitled #1-6 2014 (detail)

Kathryn Ryan |Three collections for Articulate (2015)
http://piecesofpractice.blogspot.com.au/

Aude Fondard

25.1.15

LISA SHARP WRITES ON FERAL3

A progressive and overlapping show in which groups of artists come and go, overlap and then replace each other in a series of generational occupations of this unique architectural space on Parramatta Rd in Leichardt. One of the curatorial ideas brought out in the show is encapsulated in its whimsical titling – it is ‘feral’ as it arises out of a similarity in pronunciation with ‘fair isle’ – a type of cosy Scottish knitting (and the title of the 2014 show). So, like a wolf in a hand knitted vest, many of the artists interrogate the tension between a transgressive or surprising element clothed within a familiar domesticity, resulting in works that meld these dualistic Feral/Fair Isle tendencies, using a wide range of media and spatial approaches.

Starting in the middle with FERAL 3. At last Friday’s opening night a crowd had spilled onto the pavement, but pushing in through the heat and crowd runs you right in to a confrontation with Veronica Habib’s work, I Love What You Have Done With Your Hair consisting of suspended female underwear. In a reversal of expectation, the lingerie wears hair – long, strands of unruly human hair – emerging from places on the female body it is usually banished from social sight. It is an elegant statement that raises issues of social expectation, hygiene, taboo and conformity, underlied by a sense of wry fragility and humour. Veronica talked about adding more hair as the show progressed. A keen sense of ironic commentary also underpins a second work in the show, Doubling in which Veronica Habib is used as a pseudonym by another artist, Melissa Maree. Circular holes are carefully cut out from two ‘doubled’ McDonalds-issued work shirts and the cutout circle forms appear, confetti-like on the floor beneath. The circle as symbol of repetition and routine suggests the serial monotony of menial work. Mel explains, “the cutting of the uniforms served to create holes to acknowledge the space outside of the uniform”.[i]

Undulating on the floor beyond is Sue Callanan’s work, In the space of a breath: device for circulating air. This piece is activated by its occupation as performance by the artist during Friday opening nights. The ducting is, again, a familiar form whose function is transformed. Insinuating herself within the confined ducting, Sue’s body movements within cause the green, shiny form to pulse and undulate in a slow organic dance that is quite mesmerising – particularly when viewed from above. The moving form evokes the interactions of human activity within built space.

Nicole Ellis’ works, Soft Pole and Night Work, call to mind the effect of abstract geometric paintings. A black square on a white wall, a series of vertical poles, spilling forms of saturated colour and geometric pattern. There is no flatness here though. The materials anchor her work in the contemporary – meticulously arrayed yet familiar from the supermarket aisle, these fabric strips atop wooden poles poised in equilibrium against a wall could reference microfibre mops and a potential analogy for action painting.

Marta Ferracin exhibited in the Feral 2 show, and her works also have this quality, of enshrining the domestic. In Domestic totem brightly coloured scouring pads placed on white gallery walls are reconfigured three-dimensional paintings. In a keen attentiveness to the space of the gallery site they are also seen between stair treads, curiously animating the physical flow of the show as well as the space of the site. In another engagement the scourer pads take on the energy of animated character vigorously engaging with another artist’s work.

This leads to another element to the exhibition – its call for experimental responsiveness to site as well as toward other participants. 497 Parramatta Rd Leichardt had a previous life as a smash repair workshop. Within the gridded trusses, exposed beams and elongated ex-mechanic’s space artworks nestle, hang, project and declare themselves in relation to the structurally defined interior.

Helen L Sturgess has a suspended work consisting of cascading flesh pink tulle, which utilises the verticality of the double storey drop to dramatically insert this delicate, feminine fabric and its distinctly bridal connotations into the brutal brick and concrete gallery space. The material contrasts between pink tulle, Mel’s holey McDonalds shirts, and Nicole’s re-contextualized striped fabric also allude to a feminist dialogue activating the multiple and loaded meanings of materials.

The colour blue as a saturated screen-blue, derived by digital projection rather than pigment is an ephemeral yet the memorable aspect of Jannah Quill’s work, Virtual Bricks: Amplification of a Blue Space x 4. Its blue rectangular virtual form hovers just above floor level, close to the tangle of wires that feed it. Jannah talked about choosing this low position deliberately as it is at once a frustration of the traditional hang as well as an emphasis on its connections.

Glimpsed from below Julian Woods’ video work, Spirit: Life through Breath is fragmented by the triangular interstices of the exposed roof trusses. The slow, rhythmic expansion and contraction of the black and white balloon-like image is timed to the exhalation of our own breath in a curious episode of self-awareness of oneself as a viewer in the state of viewing. Bianca Burns’ abstract painting Spatial Study No.2 includes a tilted plane which projects into the gallery space however the placement of the work with its restrained palette within the site enables a new space to be activated in which architectural features echo the edge of the canvas and the painted linearity within.

download essay as pdf with images

FERAL3 works

Elena Tory-Henderson, Jannah Quill, Sue Callanan

Elena Tory-Henderson, Christine Myerscough

Ambrose Reisch, Martin Langthorne

Ambrose Reisch

Veronica Habib, Justine Holt

Nicole Ellis, Katya Peteskaya

Helen L Sturgess, Nicole Ellis

Veronica Habib, Helen L Sturgess

Judith Torzillo, Martin Langthorne

Tim Corne, Martin Langthorne

Elena Tory-Henderson, Helen M Sturgess,
Katya Peteskaya, Jannah Quill

Helen L Sturgess, Rachel McCallum, Julian Woods,
Nicole Ellis, Katya Petetskaya

Richard Kean, Katya Petetskaya

Andrew Christie

Andrew Christie. Rachel McCallum, Nicole Ellis, Helen L Sturgess

Helen L Sturgess, Julian Woods, Nicole Ellis

MELISSA MAREE WRITES ABOUT THE DOUBLING IN FERAL 3

download this text as pdf with images

What is Doubling?

The Surrealist notion of 'Doubling' is a technique used to fracture and destabilize an object/image. The uncanny shudder felt from duplication also draws on a crisis of identity of divisions of the self (Unconscious/conscious and/or binary of reality/illusion).

A sense of humour is found in Veronica Habib's 'I Love What You Have Done With Your Hair, Underwear Brief, G-String and Dress' which strongly inspired the bridged link between 'Doubling'. After conversation and consideration of Habib's choice of materials and ideas (clothing/hair and warping of the familiar codes/perceptions of body image/sexuality), I saw a strong link in my manipulation of Mcdonalds Uniforms. The cutting of the uniforms served to create holes to acknowledge the space outside of the uniform – that is left open to audience interpretation.

Doubling uses the pseudonym of Veronica Habib to show the value of collaborative authorship and the importance of acknowledging fellow artists in process-based projects. This acknowledgement involves speaking with artists in process-based projects in a means of verbal and non-verbal language. After much discussion with Habib I asked her if I could use her name as alias.

The idea of assuming an alias came from the 'Doubling' of Helen L Sturgess and Helen M Sturgess, two artists with the exact same first and last name who were placed in Feral 3's project week. The blurry lines between who was who, I felt created a unintended collaborative authorship. Extending on this idea the pseudonym opens up discussion for collaborative authorship, and visibility and invisibility of the artist in an artwork.

The idea of Doubling, also forms a dialogue with Andrew Christie's 'Echo' through the duplication and manipulation of everyday objects (basket ball hoops – Mcdonalds T-shirts). Christie's work echoes a sense of erotic doubling, where a hoop net is interwoven connecting the two together. If we think of Echo in literal terms the action of shooting a basket ball into the hoop would cause the ball to clot in this umbilical cord-like net. This poetically playful gesture suggests something deeper of the idea of the Everyday such as a feeling of repetition, monotony and mimicry that characterises everyday life.

The remains of the shirts also form a reference to Margaret Roberts 'Blps', where the leftovers form markers on the floor. Since 'Cutendpaste' a prior process-based show I participated in with Marg, I have been influenced by her spatial interests in merging abstract space with everyday familiar space. The abstraction of the everyday object (Maccas uniform) is an attempt to merge these two spaces, to draw on relationship between work practice and art practice. The instability of casualisation in the workplace is felt by many artists across broad spectrum of professions: hospitality, retail, and education. Doubling attempts to open questions on the impact of work relations on art practice, the holes acting as a point to see-through.

Melissa Maree

25 Jan 2015

24.1.15

FERAL 3 Opened last night

and closes at 5pm, Sunday 24 January, after which half these works will be removed and another 10 or so installed for FERAL4 which will open on Friday 30 January.

FERAL3 ROOMSHEET

Above photos: William Seeto

image Sue Callanan; non-voice sound: Jannah Quill

18.1.15

FERAL 3 opens Friday 23 January at 6-8pm

ROOMSHEET

Artists in FERAL 3 are Bianca Burns, Sue Callanan, Andrew Christie, Timothy Corne, Nicole Ellis, Veronica Habib, Justine Holt, Richard Kean, Blaide Lallemand, Martin Langthorne, Melissa Maree, Rachel McCallum, Christine Myerscough, Katya Petetskaya, Jannah Quill, Ambrose Reisch, Helen L Sturgess, Helen M Sturgess, Elena Tory-Henderson, Judith Torzillo, Allen Alain Viguier and Julian Woods.

FERAL is designed for artists to experiment with installation or location of artwork in an architectural space that is already altered by the earlier installation of other artists' work, and which will be altered again when another group replaces that earlier installation.

The FERAL project is part of the broader Articulate interest in the relationships artworks form with their locations. It does this by focusing in particular on the contribution that the changing installations of artwork make to the constitution of a site.