Permutations - back window installation




Permutations plays with narratives of interconnection across the transient zone of the Bearded Tit’s back windowpanes. The threads and felt fibres unfurl around tiny mushrooms and beeswax nodules on the clear glass, alluding to the permeability of inside-outside and shifting correlations between binaries and perspectives. A ‘permutation’ is one of several possible ways in which things can relate or be understood in relation to each other. Then in multiple, these possibilities are open-ended, unpredictable and co-evolving. Patterns, rhythms and connections develop and conjure relationships that merge and entangle.

A selection of my Respire sculptures can be found in the Bearded Tit's curiosity cabinet. The mushrooms in Respire are dried and dead, displayed like scientific specimens in glass lungs. But when growing, fungi - just like humans - breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, the opposite to plants. All living systems breathe. Breathing is unavoidably an interconnected ongoing activity; we are always breathing the same air as our surroundings. Each inhale and exhale reaches beyond our skin's porous boundaries.


These works continue my interest in the shifting relations of material narratives, interconnections and impermanence. 
Permutations and Respire are meditative site-responsive works reflecting on ways that we are entangled with the complexity of our surroundings and with each other. These works conjures attentive relationships between the contextual and the personal, spirituality and ecological systems, present time and layered histories. 


Permutations and Respire will be exhibited in Manybody Theory at the Bearded Tit, 183 Regent St Redfern, from 29 October to 14 December 2019. 


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MANYBODY THEORY
Featuring Nadia Odlum, Kath Fries & Eva Nolan
29 October - 14 December 2019

SHOW #43 The Bearded Tit

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Life is wonderfully chaotic! Caught up in intersecting webs of cause and effect, every action, relationship and idea we conjure has the potential to become part of a complex choreography of moving parts. It can feel overwhelming to see yourself as part of this infinite array of possibilities, where everything is connected to everything else. But isn’t that the joy of experimentation? Three artists in MANYBODY THEORY revel in the ‘in-between-ness’ of us and others, our work and the natural world.

In our STREETSPACE, Nadia Odlum nods to the messiness of a living arts practice in her installation 'Unseen In Between'. This work is an ode to the unrealised experiments and discoveries that sometimes arise from the cutting room floor. In THE SALON, Kath Fries’ dried oyster mushrooms and recycled textile fibres crawl up The Tit’s windowpanes and spring forth from the walls, holding fast on a bed of beeswax and entangling themselves in architectures. Inside the CURIOSITY CABINET, oversize specimens propagate inside glass lungs like scientific oddities. You as audience are implicated, as these bodies and yours stand across from one another while all inhaling the same air. On our TAXIDERMY T.V., Eva Nolan further complicates the human vs nature divide, presenting a slow, tightening mandala of intricately drawn species that that render such divisions absurd.

Hey, at least we can all acknowledge that “it’s complicated”.




This exhibition is taking place on Gadigal country, we acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land, to their elders past, present and emerging. 

Hive drawing sessions, Super-organism exhibition at Kudos Gallery



Hive drawing session, 19 November 2019 at Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen
Kath Fries, Penelope Cain, Barbara Doran and visitors Fiona Davies, Michele Morcos 


Hive drawing session, 19 November 2019 at Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, 19 November 2019 at Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen




Hive drawing session, 19 November 2019 at Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, 19 November 2019 at Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen
Kath Fries, Penelope Cain, Barbara Doran and visitors Fiona Davies, Michele Morcos 

Hive Drawing is a 400cm wide scroll drawing using handmade beeswax crayons, pollen and turmeric. Each participant joins their closed hand to the outline of a proceeding one and draws around its circumference, continuously building onto what has been drawn before. The subtle wax markings are then dusted with pollen and turmeric, making them more visible. Both honey and turmeric are often referred to as superfoods as they have natural active compounds with potent ant-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Brushing the turmeric and pollen onto the wax drawing by hand is also suggestive of the crisis of insect pollinator losses, in some parts of China farmers have to pollinate their crops by hand, painstakingly spreading pollen from plant to plant using a paintbrush. Hive Drawing (collaboration) brings people into contact with the tactile and aromatic nature of these materials, connecting them to each other via this haptic hand mapping. The work will grow and unfurl over the duration of the exhibition, tracing out further interconnections and shifting understandings linked by the honeycomb-like repeated shapes of each individual participating hand.

This work is part of the Super-organism exhibition by Kath Fries, Penelope Cain and Barbara Doran, exploring pattern finding and self-organising systems. The term super-organism is usually used to describe an interdependent social organisation where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Classically this term is applied to insects, but we are reinterpreting it more widely negotiating the interdependence of individuals and the collective nature of exchange systems. As the anthropocentric world has become increasingly digitalised, expanded notions around super-organisms as a mode of being are becoming increasingly relevant.




Hive drawing, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing session, Kath Fries studio, November 2019, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen

Hive drawing, Kath Fries, November 2019, Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing, Kath Fries, November 2019, Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen


Hive drawing, Kath Fries, November 2019, Kudos Gallery, beeswax crayons, turmeric and pollen

Our Super-organism project plays out as generative and responsive evolving conversations, beginning with an interest in honeybees as a typical super-organism and an indicator species of ecological change. This expands into creative engagements with human systems of economy from an individual and colony perspective; to systems of information exchange, from the analogue of speech, breathing and wing-vibration, to digital networks and eco-systems. Such creative engagements contribute to wider haptic discourses addressing the growing need to develop embodied practices of interconnection that draw on ecological resilience.

 … At this point in history, now that we have locked in ecological disruption on a scale our species has never known, we must learn the lessons of ecology. And the number one lesson is that resilience is the key. Resilience, not dominance, is the real strength, especially in hard times. And the secret to resilience is connected diversity, cohesion, cooperative coexistence. That means that in many ways our most important task right now is to build social cohesion while learning to live within natural limits ... all these point the way towards holding off the worst ecological impacts of climate disruption while building the resilience to avoid the societal collapse it could trigger …
Tim Hollo, As the climate collapses, we can either stand together or perish alone, The Guardian, 10/10/19 link

For this exhibition we have developed some physical outcomes from our conversations about super-organisms as modalities to negotiate the interdependence of individuals and the collective nature of exchange systems. In the gallery space, the works unfold this concern in an organic series of static, moving and participatory works, utilising physical space, sound and smell. Avoiding perpendicular lines, smooth surfaces and resolved edges, these works invite engagement, change and messiness.

Super-organism 
Kath Fries, Penelope Cain, Barbara Doran
15 October - 2 November 2019
Kudos Gallery, 6 Napier St Paddington NSW
Wed-Fri: 11am-6pm. Sat: 11am-4pm

Closing panel discussion: Saturday 2 November 2-4pm




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The artists would like to thank Cynthia Loh, Chloe McFadden, Carmen Scheib, Audrey Pfister, Vivienne Fries, Aryadharma Matheson, Fiona Davies, Michele Morcos and Paul Cordiero for their assistance and support.

This exhibition is taking place on Gadigal country, we acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land, to their elders past, present and emerging. 

Super-organism exhibition

Super-organism is a multi-media, multi-sensory project by Penelope Cain, Barbara Doran and Kath Fries, exploring pattern finding and self-organising systems. The term super-organism is usually used to describe an interdependent social organisation where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Classically this term is applied to insects, but we are reinterpreting it more widely negotiating the interdependence of individuals and the collective nature of exchanges systems. As the anthropocentric world has become increasingly digitalised, expanded notions around super-organisms as a mode of being are becoming increasingly relevant. 

Our Super-organism project will play out as generative and responsive evolving conversations, beginning with an interest in honeybees as a typical super-organism and an indicator species of ecological change. This expands into creative engagements with human systems of economy from individual and interconnected perspectives; to systems of information exchange, from the analogue of speech and wing-vibration, to digital networks and eco-systems.

Super-organism
Penelope Cain, Barbara Doran, Kath Fries
16 October – 2 November 2019


Opening: 5–8pm Tuesday 15 October
Participatory drawing sessions: 2–4pm Saturdays 19 and 26 October
Panel discussion: 2–4pm Saturday 2 November 

Kudos Gallery: 6 Napier St, Paddington