Exhibition Essay: Drawn from the ground
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead; his eyes are closed” – Albert Einstein
Produced over a period of four weeks in 2012 whilst on
residency at Bundanon Trust in country New South Wales, Situational, the latest
solo exhibition by Sydney-based artist Kath Fries, brings together a unique
body of work that reflects on the artist’s experience of slowing down and
quietly observing the conditions of the landscape. Through a process of first
sourcing, then re-contextualising found natural and man-made materials in her
studio, Fries has created a poetic body of work that reflects on distilled
moments of interconnection with the Australian landscape. Spanning
installation, sculpture, photography and video, hidden within each of these
works is an intricate network of micro narratives that illuminate aspects of
the landscape, whilst also reflecting on the evanescence of experience,
fragility and the transience of existence.
When describing the concept of negation in his seminal text
Being and Nothingness, Sartre uses an everyday, yet rather complex example to
describe perception. He asks us to picture that we are running late for a
meeting in a café with a friend – in this case named Pierre – who is always
punctual. As we enter the café, knowing that we are late and expecting, with
some anxiety, to find an impatient and frustrated Pierre, Sartre asks us to
imagine the café in its entirety, complete with the smell of freshly made
coffee and pastry; the sound of cutlery clattering and people chatting; the spatial
arrangement of the space with its chairs, tables and décor; and the sight of
the waiters as they busily go about their duties serving customers. He calls
the example of this all-encompassing experience the ‘ground’: a synthesis of
the perceptual attributes that present this arrangement of elements as a ‘café’
to our intuition. In our mind’s eye we scan the café, eagerly looking for
Pierre. Where is he? Is he still here? Has he left? Franticly, we isolate
various objects in the café as they command our attention, lifting themselves
above the ground only to melt once again, almost instantaneously, back into the
nothingness from which they came, as Pierre is nowhere to be seen. His absence,
as Sartre suggests, fixes the café in its evanescence where it remains only
ground: an undifferentiated totality to our marginal attention. If, however, we
were to find Pierre sitting quietly in the back corner of the café, his figure
would instantaneously emerge from the ground as a solid, arresting presence
that would command our attention. The whole ground would surround and assert
his being in the café waiting for us to meet with him - the very reason for our
quest - yet always remain only a backdrop, a self-negating compilation fated to
disappear into nothingness once again.
The point of this lengthy reference to Sartre is to
illustrate that our image of the world exists for our attention, conditioned by
our daily goals and ambitions. When our attention is fixed on an object, the
ground exists only for that experience, surrounding it and asserting its
validity. However, what if we did not have any intentions? What if our
intention was to simply be with, and observe the landscape?
During her residency at Bundanon Trust, Kath Fries’ artistic
practice was characterised by such a process. Taking long walks around the
Bundanon property, Fries would focus her attention on items in the landscape
for their significance and presence of being. When in a state of receptivity,
the mind, as Aldous Huxley suggests, does its perceiving in terms of the
intensity of existence, profundity of significance and relationships within a
pattern. Fries would capitalise on such moments of encounter by collecting
items she had a connection with – including thistledown, kangaroo fur and mossy
tree branches – drawing them, quite literally at times, from the ground.
Although the objects she selected whilst on these walks resonate strongly with
the surrounding landscape, they are materials that would usually go unnoticed
or be readily dismissed.
Fascinated at how objects change in different contexts,
Fries would return to her studio where she would untangle, manipulate and
reconsider the items she sourced during her walks. For instance, her work
Horizons is made up of small individual fragments of rotten wood sourced from a
termite-infested log, another work presented in the exhibition called Worlds
within. Intrigued by the complex shapes, forms and cavities of each fragile and
disintegrating piece of wood, these works reflect on themes relating to decay
and impermanence, whilst also serving as a record for the passing of time. In a
similar manner, Fries’ work Spring scramble serves as a record of one of the
many daily activities that occurs at Bundanon during dusk. Made from kangaroo
fur collected from barbed wire fences surrounding the property, Spring scramble
is a reference to the springtime daily ritual of kangaroos migrating from
paddock to paddock. The fur – after being spun and felted – is wrapped around
discarded pieces of fencing wire, which is twisted into shapes that replicate
the motion of kangaroos climbing through fences. Drawing such items from the
ground provides them with a new sense of significance and purpose, revealing
some of the hidden micro narratives that constitute the environment surrounding
Bundanon Trust.
Fries’ use of photo media is essential in that it echoes her
process of drawing items from the ground. Her astute awareness and connection
with the landscape is perhaps most vividly felt in her photographic and video
works. Shot and filmed in her studio, the photographs and video included in the
exhibition focus our attention on a singular object framed within windowsills
overlooking the outside landscape. The long loop in her video piece force us to
slow down, almost to a mediative state, and observe each object as it interacts
with its surroundings. The experience of this works is holistic in its
suggested incorporation of the senses: we can see the object and its
surroundings; hear the sound of crickets and birds; almost smell the scent of
the bushland outside and feel the wind as it blows through the studio; however,
a certain sense of ambiguity sets in at the fixity of the frame and our
inability to see beyond. Channelling our attention to one single object, Fries
reminds us that our experience of space is not a differentiated experience
between the ‘in focus’ and the ‘out of focus’, background and foreground, but
an indiscriminate and relative condition.
What this exhibition then draws together is a poetic
conglomerate of personal experiences that reflect on universal conditions.
Through her observant scavenging of the landscape, Fries has drawn materials
and objects of insignificance and decay from the ground, providing them with a
newfound sense of purpose that demands our attention. This practice of drawing
items and isolating them for their presence of being is replicated through the
various artistic media she employs, capturing intimate moments of
interconnection and personal experiences of time and space. Not only do the
works that make up Situational strongly reflect the landscape that surrounds
Bundanon Trust, they also point to the infinitesimal experiences that make up
the infinite, and our understanding of place.
Samuel Zammit, 2013
Samuel Zammit has a Master of Art Curatorship from the
University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from National Art School. He
has been a curatorial intern with the 2011 Singapore Biennale and a writer in
residence at Firstdraft Gallery. As well as a freelance visual arts writer,
Zammit is currently the Program Coordinator at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian
Art Sydney.
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