Kath Fries Studio: August 2013

Threshold installation

Kath Fries, Threshold, 2013, cast bronze, rope, charcoal and steel doorway,
500x400x120cm

Threshold is an intervention installation within the old steel levered doorways of the Incinerator Art Space, designed in the 1930s by Walter Burley Griffin. This doorway marks the original passageway through which ash from the incinerator passed into the outside world, forming the soil that nurtures today’s trees and parklands. In Threshold, the metal doors seemingly sprout metal branches and twigs. Bronze cast under intense heat using a ‘lost wax’ technique, these branches were burnt from the inside outwards, replacing the impermanent wood with bronze, rendering the branches’ temporary shapes into permanent forms.

Kath Fries, Threshold, 2013, cast bronze, rope, charcoal and steel doorway

Interconnecting, coiled and frayed ropes form root-like forms and link the metal branches to the steel doors. Trailing downwards the rope-roots encircle and claim mounds of charcoal on the gallery floor. As the draping rope-roots explore and entwine the heritage steel door structure a quiet, almost mediative, narrative evolves reflecting the passage of time and reminiscent of the giant strangling tree roots embracing the ancient temples at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Threshold infers an inescapable metaphoric bind - humans are inextricably bound to nature, natural cycles and elemental forces beyond our control.

Threshold is being exhibited in Connexion Points - 2013 Willoughby Sculpture Prize until 22 September.

Kath Fries, Threshold, 2013, cast bronze, rope, charcoal and steel doorway

Connexion Points - 2013 Willoughby Sculpture Prize

Incinerator Art Space

2 Small Street, Willoughby, NSW

31 August - 22 September 2013

www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/prize

Exhibiting artists include: Alan Rose, Andrew Lavery, Anthony Alston, Ariella Friend, Bethany J Fellows, Bianca Jane, Craig MacDonald, Diarmid Campbell, Douglas Cham, Elianna Apostolides, Ingrid Voorneveld Morley, Jane Gillings, Jenny Pollak, John Wright, Jonny Niesche, Julian Day, Karen Farrell and Amanda Hale, Kasane Low, Kate Scardifield, Kath Fries, Kelly-Ann Lees, Ken and Julia Yonetani, Laine Hogarty and Tamsin Salehian, Lauren Carroll Harris, Libby Tulip, Lisa Giles, Lucy Barker, Margarita Sampson, Marguerite Derricourt, Mariana Martin, Martin Rowney, Mellissa Thompson, Michelle Cawthorn, Miik Green, Niomi Sands, Pollyxenia Joannou, Rhonda Pryor, Richard Dunlop, Ro Murray, Sam Smith, Scott Chaseling, Stevie (Sarah) Fieldsend, Susie Hawkins, Sylvia Griffin, Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe (Makeshift), Tracey Sarsfield, Vilma Bader, Wade Marynowski, Wona Bae and Yeehwan Yeoh.

Willoughby Sculpture Prize 2013 - Connexion Points

Connexion Points: sites of exchange/types of exchange

Our living experience is dependent on connections. Throughout our lives we build a complex network of relationships with places, spaces and people. We engage in emotional, spiritual, physical, virtual, intellectual and cultural connections. Some are permanent and others are fleeting, some are deliberate while others are incidental. This confluence of daily exchanges, oppositions and developments form connection points to become a traceable web of interaction and influence that shapes our world.

All the while, the modes through which we relate and the types of connections we undertake are allowed to evolve rapidly via technology. New conduits for communication develop and the way we engage alters. Accelerated sharing of information has the potential to spark tensions and conflict resulting in new ideas and developments in economic, scientific, political, ecological, geographical, interpersonal, cultural, technological and artistic fields.

Methods for connecting may have increased but our motivations to form bonds remain the same. We wander through our natural environments to invigorate our physical and spiritual selves. We engage in business and social activity in our built and virtual landscapes but ultimately, we seek an understanding of place, self and culture to establish a sense of belonging. These sites of exchange and types of exchange are our connection points. The effects of our interchanges resound with each other and their traces are recorded in our environments to incessantly weave the fabric of our community.

Venita Poblocki (Curator, Willoughby Sculpture Prize 2013)

Interview about Threshold, North Shore Times, 30 August 2013, page 3

Elapse installation - Making Ground

Kath Fries, Elapse, 2013, stringybark, beeswax, twigs, shadows, thread and video projection
(detail view)

Kath Fries, Elapse, 2013,
stringybark, beeswax, twigs, shadows, thread and video projection
(detail view)

Kath Fries, Elapse, 2013,
stringybark, beeswax, twigs, shadows, thread and video projection,
700 x 800 x 60 cm

Elapse is currently being exhibited in Making Ground: Blue Moutains as Material, until 6 October 2013

Blue Mountain Cultural Centre Gallery

30 Parke Street, Katoomba, NSW

Making Ground features work by artists using found natural materials, from the Blue Mountains and surrounds, as a key element of their artistic processes. The exhibition serves as a visual reminder of the rich plant life and varied terrain occurring within the Greater Blue Mountains area. Artists include James Blackwell, Lexodious Dadd, Pam De Groot, Kath Fries, Michael Hoffman, Tony Lennon, Teekee Marloo, Scott Marr, Paula Martin, Brook Morgan, Simon Reece, Bill Samuels, Jacqueline Spedding and Chris Tobin A Blue Mountains Cultural Centre exhibition curated by Rilka Oakley.

www.bluemountainsculturalcentre.com.au/blue-mountains-art-gallery/current-exhibitions

Elapse - work in progress

A few months ago I was invited to propose a site-responsive installation using locally found natural materials, for the Making Ground exhibition at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Gallery. I began by looking around the Katoomba area and thinking about what materials I might use. As always, I was struck by the amazing mountain vistas - and noticed that these views were often framed by dangly stringybark hanging from incredibly tall eucalyptus trees.

Kath Fries, Elapse - work in progress, 2013, stringybark

On closer examination I discovered that the ribbons of stringybark are surprisingly tough and robust, but also flexible with a strange sort of bendy elasticity, perhaps because the bark contains eucalyptus oil. Although stringybark trees grow all over Australia, the ones in the Blue Mountains are particularly tall, averaging 40m. These species include Blue Mountains Ash - Eucalyptus oreades, White Stringybark - Eucalyptus tenella, Peppermint Stringybark - Eucalyptus piperita, Brown or Blaxland's Stringybark - Eucalyptus blaxlandii, Messmate Stringybark – Eucalyptus obliqua. Extreme height, space, size, distance and endurance; seem to be recurring phenomena in the Blue Mountains.

Kath Fries, Blue Mountains Stingybark, 2013, photo

At many of the lookouts around Katoomba, these tall trees and their stringybark frame the lengthening afternoon shadows and short trajectory of winter sunlight across the surrounding valleys and mountain ranges. Stringybark ribbons mark the passage of time, in a way like arms on a clock - but moving in a much slower cycle. When just a sapling, these trees begin to form bark as they grow upwards towards the sky. As the tree matures the bark becomes stringy and dangles down, eventually falling to the ground amongst the leaf-litter, waiting for a bushfire. The stringybark burns quickly fuelling the fire's heat that enables the eucalyptus gumnuts to burst and regenerate. Then then cycle begins again with a new tree growing from this seed.

Kath Fries, Blue Mountains Stingybark, 2013, photo

Another natural material that I have been using increasingly in my artwork over the few months, is beeswax. Traditionally beeswax has been used to polish and preserve wooden objects and furniture, but contradictorily I've been experimenting with combining beeswax and stringybark to enhance the notion of fragility and continuous natural cycles. My melting, torn and crumbling layers of beeswax bring to mind recent alarming reports of increasing honeybee colony collapse disorders in Europe and America. The catastrophic implications of the European honeybee dying out around the world, seem almost apocalyptic. This issue was a key point in my recent installation Dwindle, (link to more info). Nature's finite ability to adapt to human impact is an issue I consider widely in my artwork, and our difficulties in managing bush fires is an underlying consideration in Elapse.

Kath Fries, Elapse - work in progress, 2013, stringybark and beeswax

While still only in the early planning stages of this work, I had to give it a title for the exhibition catalogue. Challenging myself to choose one word that encompassed the passage of time and the gravitational movement of stringybark ribbons falling, I decided on Elapse - with its various meanings: to pass, intervene, lapse, pass by, slip away.

Kath Fries, Elapse - work in progress, 2013, stringybark and beeswax

I always find the process of taking something natural and organic from the outside world into the sterile internal gallery space, to be an interesting exercise in re-focusing on materials and forms. Stringybark shapes seemed to have notable shift removed from a mass to just individuasl. None of the singular strands of stringybark I've collected hang perfectly straight - although outside on the trees they appear to. However, I love the shapes and textures of them, the contortions, bending and buckling. These facsinating shapes cast equally interesting shadows.

Kath Fries, Elapse - work in progress, 2013,
stringybark silhouettes

The Blue Mountians Cultural Centre Gallery has a ceiling hight of 7m - not as tall as the 40m trees outside, but an impressive vertical space for a gallery. The ribbons of stringybark I'm working with will reach almost floor to ceiling and give a sense of the massage size and age of the environment outside.

Kath Fries, Elapse - proposed installation, 2013, digital collage

Elapse will be exhibited in Making Ground: Blue Moutains as Material at the Blue Mountain Cultural Centre Gallery.

30 Parke Street, Katoomba, NSW

23 August - 6 October 2013

www.bluemountainsculturalcentre.com.au/art-gallery

Making Ground, exhibition invitation

Making Ground features the work of fourteen artists from the Blue Mountains and surrounds who use locally-found natural materials as a key element of their artistic process. The resulting work is diverse and serves as a visual reminder of the rich plant life and varied terrain occurring within the Greater Blue Mountains area. Artists: James Blackwell, Lexodious Dadd, Pam de Groot, Kath Fries, Michael Hoffman, Tony Lennon, Teekee Marloo, Scott Marr, Paula Martin, Brook Morgan, Simon Reece, Bill Samuels, Jacqueline Spedding and Chris Tobin. Curated by Rilka Oakley.

The 2013 John Fries Memorial Prize Finalists

Congratulations to the 2013 John Fries Memorial Prize Finalists: Lucas Abela, Aaron Anderson, Svetlana Bailey, Maureen Baker, Ella Barclay, Chris Bennie, Serena Bonson, Sarah Contos, Keg De Souza, John A Douglas, Sophia Egarchos, George Egerton-Warburton, Benjamin Forster, Dara Gill, Greedy Hen, Samuel Hodge, Simon MacEwan, Vincent Namatjira, Liam O’Brien, Jess Olivieri & Hayley Forward, Tom Polo and Bryden Williams.

2013 JFMP opening event invitation

2013 JFMP Finalists Exhibition:

Gaffa Galleries, 281 Clarence Street Sydney

24 August to 14 September 2013

Winner Annoucement: 7pm Tues 27 August

Artist Talks: Wed 28 August & Sat 14 September

The John Fries Memorial Prize for emerging and early career visual artists is a non-acquisitive award of $10,000. This annual prize is open to all artists resident in Australia and New Zealand who are not currently studying and whose work is not represented in the collection of an Australian state, territory or national public art gallery. The event is administered by Viscopy/Copyright Agency and the prize has been donated by the Fries family in memory of former Viscopy director and honorary treasurer, John Fries, who made a remarkable contribution to the life and success of Viscopy.

I would like to thank the guest curator Sebastian Goldspink, guest speaker Dr Gene Sherman, Viscopy/Copyright Agency, Gaffa Galleries, and Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Felicity Fenner and Dr Sanné Mestrom for joining me on the judging panel.

To view the exhibition catalogue online please go to www.viscopy.org.au/current-exhibition and you can follow the exhibition on facebook www.facebook.com/JohnFriesMemorialPrize