Kath Fries Studio: September 2016

Over the past few months I've been working on the Future Stratigraphy program and exhibition, for New Materialism in Contemporary Arts research cluster at Sydney College of the Arts. Future Stratigraphy explores ways of understanding, engaging and envisioning the materiality of landscape, and the repercussions of human impact on the Earth.

Kath Fries, Within and without, 2016, (detail view), beeswax, tree trunks
and Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms)

My work in the exhibition is a bioart installation with tree trunks, beeswax and growing oyster mushrooms. Within and Without 2016, reflects on attempts to restore forest biodiversity, questioning how we value and experience the enchanting complexities of such ecosystems. Echoing recent scientific research into Mycorestoration, a process in which Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms) are used to rehabilitate abandoned logging roads, this work invites viewers into embodied engagements with these processes, to touch the logs, smell the beeswax and watch the fungi grow.

Future Stratigraphy exhibition focuses on art practices that metaphorically and actually engage with various layers of complex geological strata showing traces of human impact, referred to as the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch that begins when human activities started to have a significant global impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems; causing mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluting the land and oceans, altering subterranean, aquatic and atmospheric layers. In a multi-disciplinary response to these discourses, Future Stratigraphy asks, ‘how will current human activities reveal themselves in the layers of the future?’ Questioning our understandings of deep and future time, engaging human relationships with matter and materiality, these art practices explore traces and scars of human presence on Earth, challenging how we work with, exploit, understand and attempt to rehabilitate our planet.

Artists: David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, Emma Robertson, John Roloff, Tracey Clement, Josh Wodak, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto, Elaine Gan, Kath Fries, Sean O’Connell, Penny Dunstan, Bryden Williams, Dell Walker, Kenneth Mitchell and Madeleine Boyd.

Exhibition Opening: 5 October 6 - 8pm
RSVP

Symposium and artist talks: 18 October 2 - 6pm
Free registration

Exhibition: 6 October to 29 October 2016

Monday to Friday 11am - 5pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm
Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, Balmain Rd, Lilyfield NSW 2040
New Materialism in Contemporary Art research cluster

Gaffa has hit its first decade, and I'm proud to say that I've been working with the Gaffa team since 2006, when it was fist founded by Aidan Li and Kelly Robson at 330 Crown Street in Surry Hills NSW.

Gaffa Gallery at 330 Crown Street, Surry Hills
Opening night of our Four Steps Forward exhibition, 19 October 2006

I exhibited my first installation works at the Gaffa space on Crown Street, in a little group show titled Four Steps Forward 2006. Then in 2007, when Gaffa moved to 1/7 Randle Street in Surry Hills, and I was involved in several more exhibitions, Through the Eye of a Needle 2008; Lure Allure Illusion 2009; Queen and Country 2009; and Le Fil (the thread) 2009. In 2010 Gaffa moved to 281 Clarence Street Sydney, and I exhibited in the launch exhibition Fidelity 2010; then a solo exhibition Proliferation 2010; Art and About 2010; There 2010; and a performative collaboration in 2011; then I worked with Gaffa on the John Fries Memorial Prize 2012 and John Fries Memorial Prize 2013.

Gaffa has been very important for my practice in this formative decade, and I know it has been for many other emerging and early career artists. As well as being friendly, reliable and supportive; providing affordable exhibition space and being open to unusual experimental works; Gaffa has been a meeting ground and connection point for artists, so many friendships and professional relationships have grown from this place.

Thank you Gaffa, I'm delighted to have my work included in your Ten Years Exhibition.

Gaffa gallery Ten Years Exhibition invitation

GAFFA - CREATIVE PRECINCT: starting from humble beginnings as a small studio and gallery space in Surry Hills founded by Aidan Li and Kelly Robson, Gaffa is now a multi leveled Creative Precinct located in the heart of Sydney's CBD next to Town Hall Station. The ground floor houses long term tenants, Level 1 is a dedicated gallery level of four gallery spaces run by a curatorial team, Level 2 has jewellery workshops and studio spaces and Level 3 houses more studio spaces and a rooftop that has beautiful views of the Sydney CBD.

To date, Gaffa's jewellery workshop level is the largest of its kind in Australia and was the basis of Gaffa's beginnings. Now, in 2016 in our tenth year of operating Gaffa has grown into a larger entity that prides itself on providing a space to both established and emerging artists to foster their practices and exhibit their works. We remain committed to nurturing cross-platform collaboration, collectivity and cohesion within the contemporary arts community and to contributing to a wider converstaion in the Sydney art scene.

Gaffa is truly an individual, with no other one arts organisation acting quite the way that we do.

gaffa.com.au