Taper - installation for BUNKERED

Kath Fries, Taper, 2014, beeswax, twine, tree roots and light bulb

Bunkered “… responds to the dystopic landscape of a climate-changed future within the context of a domestic dwelling. The term bunker can mean a fortification, a shelter, a storage area for provisions, and a difficult situation. While encompassing all of these layered meanings, to be ‘bunkered’ also suggests a reaction to external forces that are threatening and are ultimately unpredictable. In Bunkered, a dynamic of dialectic oppositions is set: fortifications can fail, shelters can be permeated, stored items can be lost and difficult situations can be mitigated. Containing all of these oppositions is the encompassing figure looming large in the exhibition – that of the house. Suggesting comfort, warmth, protection and security, the domestic context is placed at the forefront of the Bunkered concept. The artists explore how the notion of a home could change when its surrounding environment is toxic.

In this way Bunkered forges a corporeal relationship with the notion of home in a climate-changed world. In mapping this future on a house, we also map these results on ourselves.

… The sense of danger reaches a heightened state in Kath Fries’s attic installation, Taper. The attic, according to Bachelard is a space where “fears are easily ‘rationalised’…”, however here Fries inverts this place to one where fears are realised. Resembling a malevolent parasitic plant, Taper’s root-like tentacles permeate the roof and remind us that this shelter will soon be reclaimed to the new natural forms that have adapted to the altered climate. 

… We are invited to speculate on a future way of life in an entirely familiar way - through the living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. By placing the concept within a lived environment, we experience the potentials of climate change not in the arms length relationship of a gallery setting, but rather up close, personal, with all of the sights, sounds and smells of a domestic context… Bunkered gives us the space to ask how we will relate to our notion of home when we are confronted with the psychological and emotional ramifications of life in a toxic climate, and ultimately questions, how will we live?"

Yvette Hamilton 

The House, the World

download the Bunkered catalogue

Kath Fries, Taper, 2014, beeswax, twine, rope, tree roots and light bulb

BUNKERED ARTISTS: Aaron Anderson, Lisa Andrew, Sarah Breen Lovett, Kuba Dorabialski, Kath Fries, Yvette Hamilton, Anna Horne, Rachael McCallum, Sarah Nolan, Office Feuerman, Katy B Plummer, Madeleine Preston, Marlene Sarroff and Lotte Schwerdtfeger.

BUNKERED

6 - 27 September 2014
Open: Thursday to Saturday 2-5pm
26 Ross Street, Forest Lodge, NSW 2037
www.branch3d.com.au

Opening Event: Saturday 6 September, 4-7pm (tickets)

Artcycle tours: every Saturday
Artist talks: Saturday 20 September, 2.30pm

BUNKERED is curated by Sarah Nolan, with an exhibition essay by Yvette Hamilton, and presented by BRANCH3D Gallery as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2014

Taper - work in progress for BUNKERED exhibition

Kath Fries, Taper - work in progress, 2014, beeswax, twine, tree roots and light bulb

BUNKERED is a group exhibition situated in an inner city terrace, which contemplates life in a climate-changed future. Fourteen artists are creating works that challenge traditional relationships to domestic spaces.

Kath Fries, Taper - work in progress, 2014, beeswax, twine, tree roots and light bulb

Located in the BUNKERED attic, my installation Taper features entwined roots that dangle dripping with congealed beeswax. They stretch down from the pitched darkness, through the ceiling beams, towards a solitary dim light bulb. The roots are dead, dried and fragile, trickled with beeswax and wrapped in twine, some are almost fossilised into stalactites.

An attic purports to be safe haven, the room furthest from the street and closest to the sky, an enticing quiet place for humans, flora and fauna seeking refuge from the outside world. But a garret is also traditionally a place of poverty and madness, where creatures and people eventually meet their demise.

To taper is to gradually grow narrow towards one end, to taper off; and a taper is a thin candle. Located in an internal space that narrows into a pitched roof, where wax stalactites and plant roots hang like upturned candles thinning to a dripped point, Taper implies that escape is impossible. Uncontainable toxins and pollutions leach through the earth and air, seeping into our interior spaces to potentially poison all aspects of our lives.

Kath Fries, Taper - work in progress, 2014,
beeswax, twine, tree roots and light bulb

BUNKERED ARTISTS: Aaron Anderson, Lisa Andrew, Sarah Breen Lovett, Kuba Dorabialski, Kath Fries, Yvette Hamilton, Anna Horne, Rachael McCallum, Sarah Nolan, Office Feuerman, Katy B Plummer, Madeleine Preston, Marlene Sarroff and Lotte Schwerdtfeger.

BUNKERED

6 - 27 September 2014
Open: Thursday to Saturday 2-5pm
26 Ross Street, Forest Lodge, NSW 2037
www.branch3d.com.au

Opening Event: Saturday 6 September, 4-7pm (tickets)

Artcycle tours: every Saturday
Artist talks: Saturday 20 September, 2.30pm

BUNKERED is curated by Sarah Nolan, with an exhibition essay by Yvette Hamilton, and presented by BRANCH3D Gallery as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2014

Download the Bunkered catalogue

The opening afternoon, Saturday 6 September, 4-7pm, is a free registered ticketed event. Tickets are available through Eventbrite. There will be six half hour timeslots scheduled for groups of up to 18 people visiting at a time. The meeting point is Forest Lodge Hotel, 117 Arundel Street, where BUNKERED volunteers will give you a designated time to visit the exhibition. All other opening times will not require a ticket, Thursday to Saturday 2-5pm until 27 September.

Bunkered exhibition invitation