'Decant' exhibition installation, 2014

My FCMG artist-in-residence project, Decant, has culminated in an installation that recalls the path of the Prospect Creek and the notion of flowing water as a metaphor for the passage of time. Just as I poured water through my ceramic replicas to erode their surfaces, there is similarly a suggested trace of water having flowed through the gallery space in the residue of the dry clay beds and linear flood debris on the walls. Visitors are encouraged to crouch on the floor and look closely at the dissected ceramic replicas and intimate video projections. Although cast from the same moulds, each of these ceramic  pieces is individually marked by time, erosion, cracks and ink stains. 

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink, mirrors, perspex, water,  wire,
found materials, sound and video projection. Total installation dimensions 6.2 x 7.27x 19.12 m

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink, mirrors, perspex, water,  wire, 
found materials, sound and video projection. Total installation dimensions 6.2 x 7.27x 19.12 m

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink, mirrors, perspex, water,  wire, 
found materials, sound and video projection. (detail view)

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink and
sound and video projection. (detail view)

Decant 2014 is an exhibition of sculptural and installation work by Fairfield City Museum & Gallery's inaugural artist in residence, Kath Fries. Responding to objects in the Museum’s collection that were found on the banks of Prospect Creek, Decant 2014 explores how the passage of time and containment of memories can be poetically reflected in the residue and trace of pouring water.

22 February - 12 April 2014
Stein Gallery, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery
632 The Horsely Dr, Smithfield, NSW 2164. Tues - Sat: 10am - 4pm 


Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)

Curator's catalogue foreword

Decant is an exhibition of sculptural and installation work by Fairfield City Museum & Gallery’s inaugural artist in residence, Kath Fries. Responding to objects in the Museum’s collection that were found on the banks of Prospect Creek, Decant explores how the passage of time and containment of memories can be poetically reflected in the residue and trace of pouring water.

Kath Fries, a Sydney based artist who works with a site-responsive process across installation, sculpture and drawing, has created a series of site-sensitive works which reference a number of Chinese ewers from the Museum’s collection. The subsequent work enables viewers to engage with items from the Museum’s collection in a new and thought provoking way.

Fairfield City Museum & Gallery’s collection is unique in that it documents the social history of the Fairfield area and highlights the impact that migration has had in creating a vastly multicultural Western Sydney. These Chinese ewers are symbols of the long and varied history of migration in the Fairfield Local Government Area (LGA), which began with early European colonists, and led to the transformation of the region into what was to become the signature produce of the area: grapevines, market gardens, dairies and poultry farms. Prospect Creek itself was a vital food source for the traditional owners of the area, the Cabrogal people, and also played an integral role in providing the Fairfield LGA with a rich plant, aquatic, hunting and farming environment*, which attracted and still attracts many migrant families. Fairfield has become a cultural mosaic made from the footsteps of many communities as they arrive, survive and continue to live in the area.

Fairfield City Museum & Gallery is one of Fairfield City’s greatest resources, at the forefront of creating and representing interpretations and exhibitions about our past, heritage, and of our culturally diverse communities.

Helen Johnson
Social History & Exhibitions Curator, 
Fairfield City Museum & Gallery Fairfield City Council

*Stephen Gapps, ‘Cabrogal to Fairfield City, A history of a multicultural community’, 2010



Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink, found materials,
sound and video projection. (detail view)

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay, ink and
sound and video projection. (detail view)


Decant - catalogue essay

Kath Fries’ intricate installation works are transient settings created primarily through the artist’s reflections on and responses to the world around her. Fries describes her work as ‘site-sensitive’; an outcome achieved whereby the artist quietly inserts herself into any given environment, explores its physical elements, investigates its social, political, historical context, and then discovers the unlikeliest fragment that is merely one small, seemingly insignificant component of the larger picture. And it is from this point that Fries creates; as though she has uncovered an unknown treasure and delights in deciphering its mysteries and artistic possibilities for herself.

Fries’ work is akin to the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 70s, the proponents of which had, at their core, the desire to break down the “dichotomy between art and life” * and to shun the institutional systems which nurtured the commercialisation and POPularisation of art. Theirs was a movement which focused on building micro-environments where various and apparently unrelated aspects of the everyday – particularly nature – cohabited with those of high art; and further, where the viewer’s interaction was paramount to the realisation of the work of art.

As a contemporary incarnation of Arte Povera, Fries’ practice combines labour-intensive process with found objects. In the artist’s micro-environments, objects, ideas and specimens that are often overlooked are given credence. Here, Fries creates intersections where art and the quotidian are considered under the same spotlight in order to invite the viewer to contemplate such innocuous items as holistic elements rather than merely fragments of the everyday.

Charged with leading Fairfield City Museum & Gallery in a more contemporary direction, Fries was given free rein over the museum’s collection of artefacts to channel her particular knack for reinterpreting non-art objects into art that activates the gallery space. What she uncovered was characteristically ‘Fries’ – two bulbous-shaped ceramic bottles, of Chinese origin, found in 1986, having once contained soy sauce or rice wine.

Decant is both a continuation of Fries’ ongoing themes of impermanence and memory, and a statement about the significance of the ewers to the rich socio-historical landscape of the local region. Fries’ installation consists of a series of crudely-constructed clay pots which have been moulded from the original ewers and delicately dissected. These replicas float on top of artificial clay beds which meander through the gallery, imitating the path of Prospect Creek, the site of the ewers’ discovery. An assemblage of bark, twigs and leaves, found on the banks of the creek, trail along the gallery walls, while sounds and video imagery of the water’s flow permeate from a miniature projection which escapes through openings of ewer replicas. Decant is a wholly encapsulating installation which draws the viewer into a space concocted through the intermingling of nature and artifice.

Most interesting are the ewer replicas from which the artwork received its name. Decanting – a fancy word for pouring – was the process by which Fries sought to imbue each identical replica with individual markings; to make each unique – or at least have the appearance of uniqueness. Once removed from their silicone moulds, the clay replicas were subject to the time-consuming process of having water continuously poured into them, in an act which mirrors the natural course of water through any landmass, whereby the earth is eventually transformed by the water’s constant flow. In Fries’ studio practice, the gushing of water onto unfired clay led to the erosion of the replicas, causing them to crack and break under the water’s pressure. And if the process were to be continued, the clay would simply dissolve and be returned to the earth.

The clay ewers have endless possibilities. They can be decoded, unpacked and analysed in a myriad of tangents that relate to Fairfield’s rich social fabric and its diverse peoples past and present; to the endless metaphorical significances of water itself; to the artist’s unusual process of making them as unfired, unfinished replicas of objects themselves long-discarded and obsolete; to the binary relationship between art and the everyday; and to the history of Postmodern and Contemporary art which at once accepts and rejects the notion of the unoriginal, the copy as art. Seeped in black writing ink, the ewers also reference traditional Chinese water painting, and more broadly, the act of writing itself – of recorded, forgotten and unknown stories.

Decant is thematically rich and invites the viewer’s interaction from many different, even competing, angles. But essentially, the work invokes a personal engagement with its materiality, forms, subject matter and the physicality of the space. Indeed, the success of Decant is derived from the surreal experience of being within the work’s artificial landscape, which strangely seems natural nonetheless. Fries has presented a site where art intermingles easily with remnants of the everyday, prompting us to consider the overlooked fragments – tangible and otherwise – which shape our own daily experiences.

Vi Girgis
Freelance Arts Writer & Casula Powerhouse Acting Producer Public Programs and Education

*Germano Celant, ‘Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerilla War’ in Flash Art, no. 5, 1967.

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)


Decant 2014, FCMG exhibition information panel,
Design: Ye Win, Text: Helen Johnson

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)

Kath Fries, Decant, 2014, earthenware paper clay and ink (detail view)

I would like to thank Fairfield City Museum and Gallery for this commission and the opportunity of being their inaugural artist-in-residence.

All photographs posted on this blog have been taken by Kath Fries, unless credited otherwise.

'Decant' - final days in FCMG studio

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, FCMG studio

During my last week in the FCMG studio, I focused on how the objects and materials interacted and sat together. I'll begin installing my work in the Stein Gallery tomorrow, its always an interesting - and sometimes surprising - process transferring and reconfiguring work from the studio into the gallery space.

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, FCMG studio

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay, ink and vines

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay, ink and vines

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay, ink and mirror

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay, ink, mirrors and vine

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, FCMG studio

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, paper clay and ink

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts from my FCMG studio.
I would like to thank Fairfield City Museum and Gallery for this commission and the opportunity of being their first artist-in-residence. The work resulting from my residency will be exhibited in a solo exhibition, 'Decant', in the Stein Gallery at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery (cnr The Horsely Dr and Oxford St, Smithfield NSW 2164), 22 February - 12 April 2014. Opening night: Wednesday 26 February, 6.30-8.30pm

'Decant' - works in progress FCMG - videos

While I was exploring the area around Prospect Creek, I noticed how the water flowed quickly in some areas and stilled to a reflective mirror in others. My video footage of these moments captures a particular sense of time and place. When projected into an object, this audio visual recalls the original ewer's journey down the creek, submerged and full of water. However the situation is inverted as the replica contains the creek, rather than the creek holding the ewer. Ruptures in the centre of the object allow water imagery to escape, much as the pouring of physical water caused the clay surface to dissolve and break when the replica was made in my studio. 

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, ceramic and video

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2013, ceramic and video

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, ceramic and video

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2013, ceramic and video

Although it may not be immediately apparent that the original ewers and their replicas are special or precious, there is something about cherished handmade everyday objects that inspires storytelling. To me, these ewers have an almost magical allure of intrigue and narrative, they contain histories and personal experiences which cannot be recalled or accessed. Projecting the creek into the hollow centres of the objects recreates the essence of the only section of the ewers story that is recorded, their discovery on the banks of Prospect Creek in 1985. But the initial stages of their journey, daily use and the conversations that occurred around them, can only be conjured through individual speculation and imagination. "Even when we don't actually know the stories, we frequently think of objects as repositories of narration. And we are likely to account for our 'things' by telling stories about them. Stories form contexts within which craft objects resonate with meaning." (Sue Rowley, There Once Lived… craft and narrative traditions, Craft and Contemporary Theory, 1997, p81)

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, video still 

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, video still 

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, video still 

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, video still 

This is the sixth in a series of blog posts from my FCMG studio.
I would like to thank Fairfield City Museum and Gallery for this commission and the opportunity of being their first artist-in-residence. The work resulting from my residency will be exhibited in a solo exhibition, 'Decant', in the Stein Gallery at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery (cnr The Horsely Dr and Oxford St, Smithfield NSW 2164), 22 February - 12 April 2014. Opening night: Wednesday 26 February, 6.30-8.30pm

'Decant' - works in progress FCMG - flood line

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, found materials

In addition to my ceramic pieces, I've been working with found materials to introduce a sense of the creek - the site where the ewers were discovered - into my Decant installation plans. My studio now houses a mass of debris: branches, vines, pine needles and leaves, which I've collected from the 'flood lines'  on the banks of Prospect creek. I'm planning to distill and reassemble this messy collection into a simplified lineal wall work that will trail around the gallery walls. 


Prospect Creek, satellite view - Google Maps

Viewed from above, the creek is a contoured organic line, tracing a topographical ancient path in the landscape. Our customary manner of interpreting existence as sequential linear time - in a straightforward notion of past, present and future - is such assumed behaviour it is difficult to unravel or to try to think of time in other ways. However the creek itself demonstrates the flow of time as simultaneously ancient and constantly changing, as Heraclitus said - you can never step in the same river twice.


Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, found materials

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - vines and flood debris up a tree, 2014

Kath Fries, Decant work in progress, 2014, flood debris FCMG studio

Kath Fries, FCMG studio, 2013, line ideas with found wire and vines

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - snagged flood debris, 2013

Kath Fries, FCMG studio, 2014, creek ink drawing, vines and ceramics

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - vines, 2014

Kath Fries, FCMG studio, 2014, found materials and vines

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - flood debris paths, 2013

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, flood debris - found materials

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - flood debris, 2013

Kath Fries, Decant - work in progress, 2014, flood debris - found materials

Kath Fries, Prospect Creek - snagged flood debris, 2013

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts from my FCMG studio.
I would like to thank Fairfield City Museum and Gallery for this commission and the opportunity of being their first artist-in-residence. The work resulting from my residency will be exhibited in a solo exhibition, 'Decant', in the Stein Gallery at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery (cnr The Horsely Dr and Oxford St, Smithfield NSW 2164), 22 February - 12 April 2014. Opening night: Wednesday 26 February, 6.30-8.30pm