Kath Fries Studio

Enclose - Extreme Prejudice exhibition

My new work Enclose is currently being exhibited in Extreme Prejudice, curated by Nike Savvas for the 2018 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize at National Art School Gallery.

Kath Fries, Enclose, 2018, oyster mushrooms, beeswax and glass terrariums, 170x170x15cm

Enclose is a continuation of my work with oyster mushrooms and beeswax, exploring how our senses are entangled with our material and immaterial surroundings. This wall sculpture is an attentive meditation that conjures ecological interconnections, specifically the complexities of human and nonhuman relationships. The dried oyster mushrooms in Enclose are ones that I have grown in previous installations. Mushrooms spring up rapidly – almost overnight – but these fascinating forms are actually just a small section of a much larger mycelium network, usually underground, hidden from human sight. Enclose considers our human habits of discrimination and valuing things only as separate entities, so the isolation of these fungi specimens belies how they really exist in the world. Yet the circular clock-like arrangement also suggests the passage of time, underlying cycles and bio-diverse connections. Enclose resonates with material metaphors that operate in several directions, drawing attention to the unique differences of each specimen and asserting that nothing can exist or evolve in isolation.

Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize 2018

Exhibition Dates: Thursday 15 March — Saturday 12 May 2018

Opening & Prize Announcement: Wednesday 21 March, 6pm

National Art School Gallery, Forbes Street, Darlinghust NSW

Opening Hours: Monday–Saturday, 11am–5pm

nas.edu.au/place/gallery/current-exhibition

Guest curator Nike Savvas invited 19 established artists who each nominated an early career artist to participate in this exhibition. This inter-generational pairing reflects the generative mentoring relationships in our artistic communities. Nike Savvas: “I have selected artists whose practices evidence discriminating, uncompromising and highly individualist approaches to art making. In a cultural climate beset by hype, hits, corporatisation and swinging social agency, the next iteration of this exhibition titled Extreme Prejudice seeks to highlight the personal and critical imperatives that belie and drive such single-minded work.”

Artists:

Richard Bell & Megan Cope

Vivienne Binns OAM & Jacob Potter

Vicente Butron & Gemma Avery

Richard Dunn & Adrian McDonald

Sarah Goffman & Connie Anthes

Agatha Gothe-Snape & Aodhan Madden

Gail Hastings & Dan McCabe

Tim Johnson & Hayley Megan French

Lindy Lee & Kath Fries

Stephen Little & Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier

Jonny Niesche & Mason Kimber

John Nixon & Lucina Lane

Rose Nolan & Renee Cosgrave

Kerrie Poliness & Melissa Deerson

Elizabeth Pulie & Zoe Marni-Robertson

Huseyin Sami & Consuelo Cavaniglia

David Serisier & Oliver Wagner

Jenny Watson & Annie O’Rourke

Hilarie Mais & Conor O’Shea

The Red Project: Cochineal cactus installation

This work engages with tactile material metaphors and layered local historical narratives pertaining to the colour red. Used for colouring fabric and cosmetics red, cochineal dye is traditionally made from macerated cochineal beetles, native to Mexico, who live solely on prickly pear cactus leaves. In colonial times the British aspired to set up a cochineal industry in Sydney, sending cochineal beetles and prickly pear cactuses with the First Fleet in 1788. However synthetic dyes soon replaced the insect-sourced pigment and value plummeted. Yet the prickly pear cactus thrived here and choked thousands of hectares of farmland. The plant seemed utterly impossible to eradicate, until 1926 when an Argentinian moth, Cactoblastis cactorum, was introduced as a method of biological control. Unlike the more infamous cane toad, the cactus moth delivered a remarkable biocontrol success story, almost completely eradicating the prickly pear cactus. Today the naïve colonial directive, which disastrously introduced this plant and seeded one of the world’s great biological invasions, is merely a forgotten historical stain.

The prickly pear cactus leaves in my Cochineal installation have been burnt with melted sealing wax stamps. The green plant cellulose is gradually turning brown and decaying around each seared branding, echoing the story of the bio-narratives of the cochineal beetle and cactoblastis moth consuming the cactus.

Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire
in historic underground chamber (detail view)

THE RED PROJECT

3 - 18 March 2018

The Coal Loader Tunnel and Chambers

2 Balls Head Drive, Waverton NSW

Open daily 10am – 5pm

Artists talks: 11am Saturday 17 March

ARTISTS: Jessica Birk, Gloria Florez, Kath Fries, Tina Fox, Nathalie Hartog Gautier, Nola Jones, Penelope Lee, Debbie Mackinnon, Michele Morcos, Virginia Moorfield, Ingrid Morley, Anne Numont, Denese Oates, Meri Peach, Mandy Pryse-Jones, Tamsin Salehian, Alma Studholme, Helen Sturgess, Janet Tavener, Jane Theau, Alex Thorby, Ingrid van der Aa, Sandra Winkworth and Basia Zielinska.

Curator: Alison Clark

www.northsydney.nsw.gov.au/redproject

Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire
in historic underground chamber

Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire
in historic underground chamber (detail view)

Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, red sealing wax (detail view)

Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view)

Touching Impermanence - PhD thesis archive

Finally my PhD thesis is completely finished and archived in the Sydney University Library eScholarship Repository.

Katherine Fries - Touching Impermanence: experiential embodied engagements with materiality in contemporary art practice -

https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/17880

http://hdl.handle.net/2123/17880

Taleamor Park: open studio day

For the Taleamor Park residency open studio day and artists' talks, Saturday 27 October 2017; I spoke about my process of creating site-responsive installations and sculptures, the specifics of being attentive to a particular time and place, embodied research working with locally sourced milkweed seed-fluff, cuttings from a tree hit by lightening, found objects, corn leaves from the farm fields, a tree stump growing turkey tail mushrooms and charcoal from the bonfire. taleamorpark.org

Kath Fries, Taleamor Park big barn studio, open day exhibition

Kath Fries, Stalk, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff, tree sections and charcoal

Left: Kath Fries, Turkey Tail, 2017, tree stump, charcoal and growing turkey tail fungus
Right: Kath Fries, Churn, 2017, tree log and found object

Kath Fries, Turkey Tail, 2017, tree stump, charcoal and growing turkey tail fungus

Kath Fries, Churn, 2017, tree log and found object

Kath Fries, Drift, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff, spiderwebs and windows

Kath Fries, Drift, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff, spiderwebs and windows (and my arm)

Taleamor Park big barn studio - some of the open studio day visitors looking at my work

Kath Fries, Taleamor Park small barn studio, open day exhibition

Kath Fries, Pet iii, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff and twisted branch

Kath Fries, Pet ii, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff and twisted branch
Kath Fries, Seam, 2017, milkweed seed-fluff and notched log

Kath Fries, Pet ii, milkweed seed-fluff and twisted branch

Kath Fries, Seam, 2017, notched log and milkweed seed-fluff

Kath Fries, Taleamor Park small barn studio, open day exhibition

Kath Fries, Pet i, milkweed seed-fluff and log

Kath Fries, Held, 2017, corn leaves and sunlight

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Thanks NAVA for supporting this project!

Taleamor Park: residency explorations

I'm currently an artist-in-residence at Taleamor Park, an ecology focused retreat for artists, writers, scientists and humanists, in the countryside of Indiana, USA. Continuing with my practice of engaging with present time and place by being attentive to how our senses engage with our surroundings; I'm responding to the seasonal transitions of autumn in this site. There is a plethora of quiet activity here, from the falling colourful leaves, the cornfields ripe and ready to harvest, chipmunks frantically foraging before winter begins, the tapping of woodpeckers, buzz of busy honeybees, scuttling ladybugs, deer grazing, and mushrooms springing up in the fields and woodlands. taleamorpark.org

Kath Fries, Fall - leaves on log, 2017, Taleamor Park

Observing the colourful autumn leaves, reminded me of the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, particularly his ephemeral installations with leaves. I collected an array of yellow, orange and red maple leaves, and placed them according to their tonal transitions along a fallen log. The cyclic intonations of the word 'fall' resonated through this process, from the the season of autumn, being pulled to the ground by gravity, returning to origin as nutrients are decomposing being reabsorbed by the earth for the next cycle of growth and regeneration in spring.

Taleamor Park woodlands

Taleamor Park woodlands' pond

Layered leaves and reflections

Chipmunk peekaboo

Ladybugs (Coccinellidae)

Fungi finds

Beehives at Taleamor Park

Taleamor Park is situated on a 375 acre farm, with woodlands, ponds, organic small grains and vegetables, fallow hillsides and fields, hazelnut and chestnut trees, beehives and acres of conventionally farmed corn, soybeans and wheat. The corn is currently ready to harvest, with the corn heads so ripe and heavy they are hanging upside down pulling against their tall storks, and the long dry leaves are un-peeling and falling away.

Corn field

Corn in the field

Taleamor Park studio with corn leaves, morning

Taleamor Park studio with corn leaves, morning light

Taleamor Park studio with corn leaves, evening

In the spaces alongside the cornfields, various wild weeds are allowed to grow, providing shelter and habitat for birds and insects. The milkweed plant (Asclepias) is seeding at this time of year - and the spreading of this 'weed' is encouraged, as milkweed is the sole food-source of the endangered Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) an iconic pollinator species. Growing milkweed with the intention of supporting butterfly populations is often called butterfly gardening. Such concern for preserving insect habitat is heartening, especially given that recent scientific research has found that global populations of flying insects have fallen by as much as 80% over the past 30 years (more info).
I had just missed the departure of the butterflies on their annual monarch-migration to the warmer south, but I was enchanted watching the wind dispersed milkweed seeds flying up and away across the cornfields, seemingly spreading far and wide. Hearing about local efforts to assist Monarch butterflies by planting and growing milkweed in the hedgerows, I began collecting some of the milkweed seed fluff, scattering the actual milkweed seeds around the hedgerow spaces.

Milkweed seeding by the cornfields, Taleamor Park

Milkweed seeding by the cornfields

Milkweed seeds

Looking around the property for other sculptural materials, I was invited to take some of pieces of a tree that had been cut down after a recent lightening strike. As I've been creating installations with logs, tree stumps and fungi in Sydney over the past 12 months, now finding an entire felled tree on my doorstep seemed opportune...