Kath Fries Studio: Confluencias group exhibition: Australian & Latin American Art @ Museum of Freemasonry

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Confluencias: Australian & Latin American Art in conversation

Museum of Freemasonry, Level 3, 66 Goulburn Street, Sydney CBD

18 March to 7 April 2013

Curated by Clay Paula and Helen Symons

www.confluencias.com.au

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Confluencias showcases works by contemporary Australian and Latin American artists, placed amongst the Sydney Museum of Freemasonry’s permanent collection. This exhibition explores philosophical ideas and symbolism, common to both the contemporary artworks and the Museum’s artefacts of ritual and rite, to create a visual dialogue and of insights, uncertainty and audaciousness.

Confluencias invitation: featuring images of artwork by Kath Fries, Craig Ruddy, Dulce Schunck, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Fernando Espinosa Chauvin and Eli Braga

Confluencias presents works by Graig Ruddy (Australia); Maria Fernanda Cardoso (Colombian-born, Sydney based); Queenie Lion Kemarre (Born Utopia Region, N. E. Of Alice Springs, Australia (1920-2009));Raquel Nava (Brazil); Emmanuelle Bernard (French-born, Brazilian based); Fernando Espinosa Chauvin (Ecuadorian-born, US based); Dulce Schunck (Brazil); William Yang (Australia); Leonardo Cremonese (Brazilian-born, Sydney based); Cleide Teixeira (Brazilian-born, Perth based); Kath Fries (Australia); Tina Salama (Australia); Rodrigo Munoz (Australia); Christine Drummond (Brazil); Sylvia Restrepo Botero (Colombia); Carmel Louise (Australia); Maria Guerra (Peruvian-born, Sydney based); Eli Braga (Brazil); Robyn Beeche (Australian-born, Vrindavan (India) based); Christopher Newman (Australia); Carmen Novoa (Uruguayan-born, Melbourne based); Jorge Portillo (El-Salvadorian-born, Melbourne based); Mauricio De la Rocha (Peruvian- born, Sydney based); Lariane Fonseca (Australia); Fernando do Campo (Argentinean- born, Hobart based); Reinaldo Valera (Cuba).

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic Centre statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Bound reinterprets and expands on a traditional illustration of Tubal-Cain (the first artificer of metals recorded in religious text) into an ongoing narrative of mankind's continuing struggle to claim domination over nature. This intervention installation involves the placement of a metal bronze tree branch - resting on the anvil below the hammer posed to strike - and the interconnecting coiled rope that links together the statue and the metal branch. These elements suggest that humans are inextricably bound to nature, natural cycles and elemental forces beyond our control. Bound relates to several ongoing interests in my site-responsive practice, focusing on materiality, spatiality and archetypical narratives, developing a personal aesthetic language that responds to the transience of existence, fragility of life and complexity of the world.

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Kath Fries is an artist who focuses on materiality, spatiality and archetypical narratives. "My practice is about developing a personal aesthetic language that responds to the transience of existence, the fragility of life and the complexity of the world. Echoing Arte Povera, my process considers and reassesses details in objects found on site, and in everyday materials that would usually be overlooked or dismissed", reveals Fries. For Confluencias the artist presents 'Itinerant', a sight-specific work, and the first ever exhibited in the dome of the MoF. The installation, commissioned especially for the exhibition, has been created using netting and feathers. Feathers are symbolic of migratory birds. They in turn remind us of freedom, of confluence, and of integration with the other. The netting denotes constraints put on liberty: constraints such as segregation, discrimination, and racial hatred, whereby "liberty and dreams can be curtailed," explains Fries.

extract from Confluencias exhibition text

written by Helen Symons