Cryptic Abstractions

Ambiguity is a powerful artistic strategy. When artists choose to conceal certain meanings of their work the more intriguing it becomes. However, ambiguity can also spark disregard - due to confusion, anxiety or condescension. These two different reactions of the unknown also typifies the intercultural dynamics of our post-colonial and global age. Cultures collide when there is fear or intolerance of what people do not understand. On the other hand great innovation and insight can come from the intrigue and fusion between cultures. In both instances of art and intercultural encounters the response either reveals peoples negative insecurities or positive openness to the unknown.

The exhibition Paintings from Remote Communities: Indigenous Australian art from the Laverty collection, Sydney – currently on show at the Govett-Brewster art gallery – gives New Zealanders a long overdue view into some of the most innovative contemporary art to come out of Australia. In doing so the exhibition also highlights the use of ambiguity as an innovative artistic strategy and the positive outcomes of cultural fusion.

Aboriginal artists living in isolated areas of Australia were originally given acrylic paints and stretched canvases in the 1970s so that they could participate within the European art market which favours transportable paintings. Therefore, Aboriginal artists of the 70s transferred sophisticated cultural traditions some that date back 40,000 years into the European tradition of easel painting. Organic patterns that once responded to the surface of the land, body or bark now tested the parameters of the rectangle. In shifting form a temporal site-responsive art-form to an autonomous and marketable art-form – at a time when European artists are doing the exact opposite - these artists interrogated the history of painting and contributed great innovations to contemporary art. However, the subsequent anthropological style representation of their work in exhibitions ended up exposing sacred knowledge that would normally be kept secret. Some designs that traditionally only existed ephemerally as sand drawings or body paintings – normally being erased during a ritual – was now recorded in acrylic paint that would be visible for at least a hundred years. This cultural misunderstanding has lead Aboriginal artists over the last few decades to strategically develop new idiosyncratic visual languages that encrypt ancient knowledge. Will Owen explains in the accompanying exhibition essay that this strategy termed ‘buwayak’ or ‘invisibility’ developed from the artists of the Yolngu people of Anhem Land, Northern Territory. The results are wild alluring compositions that both defy European painting conventions and retain sacred meanings. Such covert strategies also instil great wonder and invite the viewers - outside the artists’ culture - the chance to actively contribute their own interpretation of the imagery.

The curation of Paintings from Remote Communities respects the artistic strategy of buwayak through limited use of didactic information about specific paintings - letting the artworks speak for themselves. There is even no thematic narratives ensued via the exhibition layout rather curator and gallery director Rhana Devenport has chosen to represent the thirty-four artists in regional groupings. While each artist’s work is distinctly individualistic in style many share similarities with cartographic and microbiological imagery. Of the most striking is Helicopter Joey Tjungarrayi’s work entitled Tjuwiligarra 2002. Viewed best from a distance this intense painting evokes both fear and beauty. Intrepid blood red and russet lines seem to navigate the perimeters of the canvas and reverberate around a black void. The void has a frighteningly pupil-like appearance from which things are observed or consumed like a vortex. More importantly however this painting also resembles typographical maps, electromagnetic fields or microscopic life. Visual imagery that keeps reoccurring in modern science that has also been embedded in the art of ancient cultures around the world – significant perhaps of innate instinctual knowledge of the world and our place within it.

Another significant artistic development featured in the exhibition is the integration of textiles and painting. Emerging out of the traditions of weaving artists such as Regina Wilson applied their knowledge of making mats, bags and fish nets to painting. Wilson’s work Syaw (fish net) 2005 depicts intricate grids of threadlike lines - painted in irregular shaped clusters of different weaves and interlaced at the fringes much like a patchwork quilt. The result is a mesmerising matrix of tort and tatted line upon which one could consider the metaphors of intertwined diversity within communities or the patchwork adaptation of multicultural fusion. Wilson’s paintings also critique the support and surface of easel painting. The odd threadlike painted lines applied upon the carefully stretched and primed canvas surface both reveals and undermines the material preciousness implicit within the European convention of painting.

Paintings from Remote Communities is a visually stunning and dynamically conceptual experience that will either intrigue, confuse or elate. This exhibition also proves that not only is cultural diversity a precursor to innovation it is also that which keeps us healthy as communities and individuals.

Wondering About Wilderness

Images courtesy of Govett-Brewster

It is easy to assume that nature is clearly definable but as we well know in Taranaki ‘nature’ can be perceived, experienced and thought of in many different ways. For instance, Mt Taranaki, by its foreboding presence and seismic murmurings, reminds us human occupants that life here is tentative (approximately 50 years until eruption so geologists tell us). However, from the air this looming giant looses its majesty appearing to be held captive by a circumference of grassy pastures. Similarly, while walking along clear cut paths through Taranaki’s goblin like forests we could view nature as charted and containable. Or, as a fuel resource when we witness oilrigs that suck and fleer oil and gas. Nature in Taranaki can be simultaneously perceived as a sightseeing reserve, sporting playground, site for industry, a placid backyard garden or a terrifyingly sublime wilderness. Depending on your particular worldview further classifications could be made, since ‘nature’ is culturally and politically relative.

The current exhibition New Nature at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery explores these and other contradictory preconceptions of ‘nature’ and our interaction/relationship with it. The exhibition takes place in and outside the gallery. One artwork can be found on the coastal walkway near Egmont Street. If you have come across an odd black object in that vicinity which serves no rational purpose then it is quite possible you have already experienced it. Standing roughly six feet tall and perched at the end of a wooden platform is an ominous looking black pod. Extraterrestrial in appearance this pod appears as though it might have flown and landed there. At first glance it could also be taken for an electrical substation or scientific device – it even emits electronic buzzing and crackling sounds. Although, the sound often changes from something mechanical to resembling jovial electronic music for a 1980s computer game. A few feet away from the black pod is a wind turbine busy generating electricity. Obviously powered by the turbine the pod could be seen as a type of dwelling. One could imagine a scientist (or even a small green alien) crouched in there with a cup of tea and computer studying data from the surrounding wild coastline.

A nearby sign informs us that the pod is an artwork entitled GROUNDHOG made by a collective called I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation) a group who individually are involved in the fields of art, engineering and science. GROUNDHOG is a replica of a pod which I-TASC has planted exactly 7,721 km away in Antarctica – currently equipped with weather recording technology to collect data that will aid their design of a mobile Antarctic dwelling. Some of the sounds emanating from the GROUNDHOG pod are recordings from this weather data. Other recordings are music made by members of the I-TASC group while they were in Antarctica. The stark contrast between the geometric and high-tech appearance of GROUNDHOG and the wild bolder clad coastline draws to mind the common assertion that ‘nature’ is something distinct from human habitation.

The collision of science, technology and nature is also a topic grappled in a series of objects by artist Joe Sheehan exhibited inside the gallery. Resting in a display case is a remote control intricately carved out of black jade. Rupturing the surface of the jade are growths of quartz crystal jutting out in various places. Crystals have long been imbued in mystic religions and science fiction as having similar invisible energies and properties like infrared technology used in remote controls. For me the work signifies scientific endeavours to harness or understand the sophisticated deign of nature to develop new technologies. While also suggesting the futility of such a pursuit as nature’s resilience and adaptable prerogative will ultimately foil human attempts of control. Accompanying the remote are other objects carved entirely out of pounamu and other types of greenstone from around the world including a fully functioning cassette tape.

There are many other artworks in this exhibition that explore the concept of nature through other perspectives. In my opinion the exhibition is let down by one or two works that promise great things but don’t quite deliver. One of which is Fiona Hall’s native flax and grass garden on Pukaka Marsland Memorial Hill Park surrounding the war memorial. The concept of the work is well researched and insightful. Unfortunately, due to its lack of visual/physical presence in the location, contrived spiral composition and infant growth it fails to insight debate about war as the artist was intending. The work resembles the result of a garden makeover reality TV episode rather than a well considered artwork. This may change however, once the plants reach maturity. There is a wide selection of other artworks on show including computer animation, paintings, photography, rug design and installations. New Nature is a bold and alluring exhibition that challenges preconceptions and contributes to contemporary ideas on what is ‘natural’ and how we define ‘nature’.