Accumulation and accretion: walking, listening and learning waterways

Installation in the foyer of the National Museum of Australia in conjunction with the Waterways Country Symposium 2022.

Materials: rusty objects, coffee cups and other found items collected from waterways on Arrernte country in the Northern Territory, and Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Yuin Country in the ACT and NSW. Recordings of frog songs collected on Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Yuin country.

Visitors were invited to contribute to the installation by creating drawings inspired by water life on the materials scattered across the marble museum floor.

This collaboration with the wonderful Amanda Stuart grew from our participation in the Sullivans Trail project initiated by community artist Nicola Lambert and developed in close collaboration with Ngunnawal community members Uncle Wally Bell and Aunty Karen Denny.

Amanda and I were part of a group of artists, scientists, teachers and researchers observing and responding to the diverse life-forms and materials that form the ecosystems of Sullivans creek. Over several months in 2021-22 we undertook a series of walks following the creek from its headwaters to its confluence with the Molonglo river in Lake Burley Griffin.

We became interested in the interactions between materials considered to be rubbish with the complex life that forms the waterways.

In April 2022 I moved to Mparntwe/Alice Springs on Arrernte Country. This move gave me the opportunity to experience a place where the rivers and creeks are dry for most of the year, occasionally filling and flooding. Amanda had lived for many years in Canberra on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, and had recently moved to Yuin country and was spending time learning the rhythms of the hills, valleys and waterways of her new home environment. Our conversations often took place on the phone in early mornings while we were out walking our dogs 2500kms apart.

The interactions and impacts of humans in these environments are visible in the food containers, coffee cups and rusty tins that litter both the desert creek beds of Mparntwe and the Kambri/Sullivans Creek.

Canberra Times exhibition review by Brian Rope: Spirits, Permeating Ecology and Poisonous at PhotoAccess look at nature in different ways

Combining photography, drawing and video projection, Poisonous investigates the microscopic world of Canberra waterways – a realm invisible to our eyes and critical to our survival.

This project navigates the complexities of the ‘health’ of our waterways and looks with awe and wonder at the molecular structure of minerals and microbes that are both toxic poisons and useful contributors to the ecosystem.

Huge charcoal drawings present layered and mirrored images of the waterways infrastructure in Canberra, bridges, storm water drains and the dammed Molonglo River that forms Lake Burley Griffin. Over the surface of these drawings I have projected video footage of the microscopic waterlife inhabiting these locations.

VENTRE - from the gut

LUCA’s Daughters
Tuggeranong Arts Centre, April–May 2022

The word ventre has associations with womb, gut and the bowels of the earth. We are thinking about action and instinct – about gut feelings and creating, as sentient bodies.

We asked: how can we embrace non-hierarchical structures to co-create with our audiences? What would that look like? Can we resist static choices to move towards an evolving, risky and nourishing creativity? How does this reflect on a greater musing of structures within society?

We asked: our friends, relatives and collaborators from across the world to give us instructions - provide us with prompts - tell us about an offering they would like to have made to the space in their absence. We were motivated by the distance we felt from loved ones during COVID - we wanted to reach out and make connections. We also wanted to mark the moment of returning to working in the gallery, face-to-face, to honour the time away and to share the joy of returning.

Visitors to the gallery were invited to respond to the prompts, available on cards on the wall. Some of them did this, others took time to type up their own instructions and add to the growing collection of cards. Two photographers documented the actions in the gallery, and the participants added the images of their actions to the walls.

Who are LUCAs Daughters?

LUCA was the ancestor of all living things; the Last Universal Common Ancestor. LUCA’s daughters Ellis Hutch and Slipper George work across performance, installation and visual arts. They value collaboration, experimentation, and play. Working with the tensions of being in relation; the push and pull of living organisms collaborating, competing, risking, dreaming, worlding and wording; they have questions about risk and risk-taking. Indulging in hissy fits, unruliness, and disaster prepping; they investigate the cages we choose, the costs of living, the generosity of causing trouble and the power of disobedience and nonsense.

Photos: Sean O’Keeffe and Helen Braund

Interview with artists:

https://www.livingartscanberra.com.au/tuggeranong-arts-centre-contrasting-conventions/

The Lake was created for Local Jinni’s delightful Scoot and Screen tour of Canberra urban spaces in March 2022 and shown as part of the Surface Festival.

Water collected from Lake Burley Griffin and Sullivan’s creek was videoed through a microscope and layered up with images of the lake surface and surrounding infrastructure then projected onto a ‘curtain’ across the path in Glebe Park.

Tour participants could ride their electric scooters through the curtain and into the projections. Performers holding micro projectors created an immersive moving installation of watery images.

Thank you to performers: Caroline Huf and Pablo Latona

Thank you to volunteers: Bridget Baskerville and Shiara Astle

The lake is my beginning. I was born on its shores and have lived within walking or cycling distance all my life. Like me, the lake is born here and the result of actions of an invasive species, designed and constructed by humans over the river flats of the Molonglo river that have been transformed into Lake Burley Griffin.

The body of work River diary is an ongoing project which commenced in early 2020. It incorporates live performance with video projections, soundscapes, drawings and photographs. The sound and imagery was recorded at sites around and on the lake focusing on the interaction between environmental forces and human architecture.

The first phase of the project focussed on Sullivan’s Creek and was exhibited in late 2020 as part of Contour556 across two venues. Two huge charcoal drawings were exhibited at the Mixing Room Gallery at Thor’s Hammer and a series of performances were presented at the Sloughing Studio incorporating performers wearing head-mounted data projectors showing footage of the waters and architecture under the Mark Oliphant Bridge across Sullivan’s Creek.

Link: Rain birds recording on soundcloud

Rain birds

When I lived near the Jerrabombera wetlands on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, I would hear the call of yellow-tailed black cockatoos flying past in the mornings. As I lay in bed, my half-asleep awareness drifted over the wetlands and shifted through the Casuarinas following their calls.

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Walking up the road towards Targangal on Ngarigo Country, Pablo drew my attention to the way the ravens articulated the scale and distances of the spaces around us as they kited over the river between the mountains.

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Arriving at the fishing cottage near a bend in the Little Plains river on Ngarigo Country, the sky was filled with a raucous mob of some 200 black cockatoos. They shoved their way through the air, open-mouthed, shouting across the valley and settled in the tree-tops like a bunch of old cronies gossiping at the pub.

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Amanda and I were sitting in the office at the Art School on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. She heard a cockatoo calling and we ran outside to catch a glimpse of black blur disappearing west.

Exhibited in Elegy for Winter, 2019, curated by Annika Harding at M16 Artspace, Canberra and the online exhibition Self as subject, for M16 Artspace, curated by Jas Hugonnet in March 2020.

Lake polish, Parilanjärvi, January 2016

The weather has been warming up – from -20°C to -10°C to just below zero. In a few days it will be warm enough that the ice will develop a slick of moisture on the surface and the snow will become heavy and wet. Today it is still cold enough that the snow is light and powdery, as I push the new shovel with the sharp blade on its edge, I can make straight channels in the snow. Working my way up and down I create a clear, clean space on the surface of the lake, a black shiny floor, a stage, a window into the frozen world beneath.

For a few hours this is my world, the lake, the ice, the reeds and water-plants becoming visible beneath my feet, suspended in black. It feels good to work; the effort keeps me warm and the results are satisfying. Tomorrow my arms and back and legs will be sore, I’ll move slowly and stiffly, the window into the lake will remain for a few days then disappear.

The lake is opposite a collection of former school buildings in rural Finland where I spent two months undertaking an artist residency at the Arteles Creative Centre.

While walking the country roads in far below freezing temperatures I asked myself how do we make ourselves ‘at home’? How do we make a place for ourselves when we are far from home?

This effort may seem absurd, clearing a space on a frozen lake that will ultimately melt. But I’ve always been reassured by certain kinds of repetitive labour. If I feel unsettled, weeding the garden, knitting; making something that requires repeating a process is a way to be a body in the world, with a simple focus.

Domestic labour has been a recurring subject in my work since I first started making performances in the 1990s. I employ processes such as cleaning, sewing, sleeping, building and pulling apart to consider what it means to ‘inhabit’ and how this ‘inhabiting’ is done. I’m curious about what labour is and who engages in the work of making our worlds, and the different ways we have of perceiving and valuing work.

How we act in the world is a form of making ourselves as well as making spaces inhabitable for ourselves. Self is expressed through action – the crux for me is contradictory – I set up performances to appear in some way anonymous – a figure, a person who could be anyone – but by being the body in the frame, I am presenting a body of a certain age, experience and cultural background, enacting processes that locate me.

A working body has a particular relationship with the surrounding environment, different from a body at rest or a body in another mode of active being. While this process of actively engaging in making place through work has been a longstanding aspect of my performance practice, it has only been recently that I’ve come to think of the action as a kind of expression of self and a transformation in to a particular kind of body – I’m not only working the space, I’m working myself.

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This work was originally exhibited in the exhibition Elegy for Winter, 2019, curated by Annika Harding at M16 Artspace, Canberra. It was then exhibited in the online exhibition Self as subject, for M16 Artspace, curated by Jas Hugonnet in March 2020.

https://www.m16artspace.com.au/onlinegallery

Two Terra Nova crew members enjoying leisure time on the ice; British Antarctic Expedition 1910, pencil on paper, stop motion animation, dimensions variable

This work draws on imagery from English photographer Herbert Ponting’s film Great White Silence (1924) a documentary of the 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. Ponting’s film is a composite of short sequences stitched together with narrative intertitles presenting a sophisticated and layered representation of an expedition to Antarctica. Throughout the film viewers see many living creatures native to the region, from sea birds to seals, and even the fins of killer whales circling near the ice. We also see the various visitors; the ship’s crew of dogs, ponies, men and a single black cat.

In two sequences the film shows evidence of the bond between the cat and one of the men. They are seen in an intimate moment of play, the cat nestled in the man’s arms. As he goes to stroke her head she catches hold of his arm and hand. In another scene the cat sits at the man’s feet, and as he reaches up making a circle with his arms, she jumps upwards through the ‘hoop’ and lands sure-footed on the ice. While there are many spectacular and fascinating scenes in the film, this one stands out for me because of its joy and intimacy. There is a clear bond of trust between the man and the cat. I chose to re-draw a handful of frames, slowly, in pencil. Each frame represents a couple of hours of work, to create a sequence that is 15 seconds long, drawn on scraps of paper discarded by another artist. The work is an act of devotion and a collection of fragments.

I am is fascinated by the sequence because of all the complexity and contradiction held in the space of a few seconds of grainy footage. These two are interlopers in an uninhabitable environment. Their presence is contingent on the structures of colonial expansion that support them. Reading between the lines there is so much we can extrapolate, about colonisation, about the choice to go to places that are not our ‘natural’ habitats, about the agency of the other sentient beings that humans co-opt to serve their agendas.

This work draws on imagery from English photographer Herbert Ponting’s film Great White Silence (1924). Ponting’s film documents the 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica led by Robert Falcon Scott. In one scene a black cat sits at a man’s feet, and as he reaches up making a circle with his arms, she jumps upwards through the ‘hoop’ and lands sure-footed on the ice. While there are many spectacular and fascinating scenes in the film, this one stands out for Hutch for its joy and intimacy. There is a clear bond of trust between the man and the cat. Hutch has re-drawn a handful of frames, slowly, in pencil. Each frame represents a couple of hours of work, to create a 15 second long sequence, drawn on scraps of paper discarded by another artist. The work is an act of devotion and a collection of fragments. I resist over-explaining, laying all this out, because I want to stay with the moment of joy — of play — between these two individuals.

Exhibited in More than human: The animal in the age of the Anthropocene, curated by Dr Natasha Fijn and Julian Laffan, ANU School of Art and Design Gallery 2020

Into silence

 Installation view East Space gallery, Canberra, 2019

Antarctica is never still, consisting as it does of ‘phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture.[1]

One of the most compelling depictions of an animated world is Herbert Ponting’s film Great White Silence (1924)[2] a documentary of the 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. Ponting’s film is a composite of short sequences stitched together with narrative intertitles presenting a layered story of an expedition to Antarctica.

A single element is present in almost every shot: water, in its liquid, solid and gaseous states; in the form of icebergs, ocean, snow and gathering clouds.

I pulled Great White Silence apart, separating the sequences of footage into individual clips and removing the text intertitles. I found a mesmerising, moving, world-scape interspersed between the action of humans and animals, the heroic tropes and comedic moments. One clip, just a few seconds long, shows the heaving, roiling ocean shot from above with sea birds darting in and out of the frame. There is no heroic vista here; no horizon, icebergs or tiny figures trekking into the white distance. This is the starting point for my work Into silence.

To make the animation I broke the water clip up into individual frames, projected each image onto a roll of tracing paper, and drew over the projection with charcoal and pastel. As I re-drew each frame I removed the birds in order to shift attention to the water, creating an ambiguous space. Subtle traces of the absent birds are evident in the glitches and gaps in the animated surface of the water.

I immersed myself in this small rectangle of light and dark. In my drawing process I entered a kind of spatial reverie, focussed intently, spending months inside this rectangle, becoming intimate with the paper surface; with its texture and the sounds it made. My drawing of Ponting’s footage was a meditation, a way to empathetically connect with this moment by staying with the sequence over time.

The translation of each frame into the animation was a means of paying homage to Ponting and his work, as well as deconstructing it. In drawing I move through Ponting’s gaze into a new space. When I recently returned to look at that snippet of the film in its original context after making Into silence, I was surprised at its brevity, really just a few moments between two other scenes. I realised I’d been so deeply immersed in those few seconds that they became a whole world for me.

While making the water animation I made two other series of drawings of drifting icebergs. These drawings are included here as part of the larger series that contributed to Into silence.

[1] Wylie, J., ‘The Ends of the Earth: Narrating Scott, Amundsen and Antarctica’, in Cosgrove, D. and della Dora, V. eds. High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science, I.B.Tauris & Co, London, New York, 2009, 35.

[2] Herbert Ponting, The Great White Silence 1924, restored and republished by the British Film Institute Archive 2011.BFI restored and reconstructed the footage to replicate the film that Ponting distributed in 1924 – including his tinting which adds colour to sequences giving them various a blue, yellow or purple cast)

The so-called kangaroo-hop, is inspired by a mobility experiment conducted by Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission. NASA footage gives an insight into Aldrin’s process as he learned to navigate unfamiliar environment, starting with postures from within his normal range of movement on Earth. These included lateral steps and leaps reminiscent of football footwork and the seemingly absurd kangaroo-hop, experimented with on the Moon with the awareness that a new environment may require different movements.

Aldrin was establishing new parameters for movement and expanding his bodily lexicon to adapt to lunar perambulation. This learning process resonates with the way the global team collaborating the get Aldrin to the Moon had to learn to manage their vast undertaking, connecting satellites across the planet, communicating with the Astronauts and facilitating the global transmission of the landing. Aldrin’s mobility experiment provides us with a tiny fragment of a vastly larger picture.

To create the work, I have taken the footage of Buzz kangaroo-hopping and redrawn each frame using charcoal and white pastel on a long strip of tracing paper. The quality of the footage is so grainy and blurry that my own images drift towards abstraction. I accompanied the drawings and the animation with a soundtrack that combines Buzz’s description of what he’s doing with other fragments of audio that capture moments when the astronauts were expressing their awe, wonder and joy at what they were seeing and feeling while in space for the first time.

Mungo resonances

Lake Mungo is still. Even when there is a breeze blowing there is a sense of deep, quiet, stillness. I felt it the morning we got up early to watch the sunrise, and the day we were shown some of the secrets on the lunette; stone artefacts and petrified trees, there in plain sight if you know what to look for.

During the few days I spent at Lake Mungo I thought constantly about how I imagine and experience time, aware of my time there being so very brief in relation to the deep history of the place. I was awed by seeing the ancient wombat bones scattered on the sand right where the animal had died; and by the idea that footprints – marks that are usually ephemeral – could remain for millenia.  

My work is inspired by traces in the environment and the different life-spans of the animals and plants – from the bones and footprints that have been there for thousands of years to the shadows that are constantly moving and changing with the daily path of the sun, and the apostle birds I heard in the trees but only saw briefly.  

I put paper on the ground and traced the tree shadows with ink as they moved with the sun and the paper became stained and marked with the red dirt. I then drew the shadow images in charcoal and translated them into a series of etchings on copper plates. Rather than print on paper I’ve worked out a technique of pouring plaster onto the inked-up plate to create a tile bearing the image which is then installed on the floor. The plaster sucks up the black ink as it dries – and the other substances in the ink, the oils and chemicals become visible on the plaster surface, creating mottled yellow and red ochres.

Thinking about the contrasting senses of time, I created two further images I made into screen prints. I photographed the ancient wombat bones resting on the pink sand, and the white rectangles of paper I put down to catch the tree shadows. I transferred these images to silk screens and printed them onto paper, the black ink creating starkly contrasting images on the white paper surface. 

In 2017 I had the privilege of being invited to participate in a project that took me to Lake Mungo with a group of fantastic artists supported by The Art Vault in Mildura.

More on this project can be seen here: Mungo Prints

The resulting work was exhibited at the Mildura Arts Centre as part of the Australian Print Triennial in 2018 and at the Latrobe University Gallery in Bendigo in early 2019.

Articulations of the unknown

The sky is heavy with rain clouds, the roads are flooded, and we have the wussiest car in the Parachilna parking lot. One map tells us the trip will take us 8 hours, another says 3. The ranger at Rawnsley Park Station reports that the road to the east is open. The lady at the Blinman shop says the road marked “open” is unpassable. The man at the Copley caravan park smirks and tells us the road marked “4WD only” will be passable if we are not silly. We hesitate, face our fears and travel on. Our plan for extended night sky research is continually thwarted by the weather. The satellite dish that provides internet access has blown down and they need to send a helicopter to repair it. We are well out of mobile phone range. But we take our time. We take in our surroundings. We adjust.

Our week was one of slow walks and conversations. We ask ourselves how we can make sense of our experiences and how the idea of the unknown influences our perception. We consider how maps serve as both truths and fictions, and how we can approach translating our observations. As we proceed we bear in mind the histories of translating personal experiences of place into something transferable to others.

Articulations of the unknown was an exhibition of photographs, drawings, prints, and video that documented the process of traveling to, and finding ways to connect with, a remote and unfamiliar environment. The exhibition presented the results of a multi-phase collaborative investigation with Jessica Brooke Anderson that began with a research field trip to Arkaroola Wilderness Reserve in the northern Flinders Ranges SA and continued as Artists in Residence at the Megalo Printmaking Studios in Canberra.

Dreams and terrors was created in collaboration with Jessica Brooke Anderson and exhibited at Canberra Contemporary Art Space Manuka in Canberra in 2016. This contemplative installation of prints was made whilst working as Artists in Residence at Megalo Print Studio and Gallery.

The works were created in response to a journey into the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Our research site – the rich and fascinating Arkaroola Station – is a wilderness area marked by stunning ridges of sedimentary rock and alive with the stories of the original Indigenous inhabitants and marked by the complicated history of colonial settlement.

We spent our time at Arkaroola walking, driving and flying over the area, paying close attention to the details we observed in our surroundings, recording our observations in photographs, videos and drawings then translating them into screen prints and digital prints on a during our residency in Canberra.

Last Light

Ephemeral installation exhibited in All that fall: sacrifice, life and loss in the First World War at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia 2015

Interviews with the artists exhibiting in All that fall can be found here: http://www.portrait.gov.au/content/artist-interviews-all-that-fall

Curators’ essay: https://www.portrait.gov.au/content/reflections-all-that-fall

Background

In early 2014 the National Portrait Gallery invited three contemporary artists to make works for the exhibition All that fall.

I was commissioned to make a work in response to a cenotaph designed by Theodora Cowan in 1920. Cowan was known as Sydney’s first professional female sculptor, and had trained overseas, as well as running a portraiture business in Sydney.

According to Ken Inglis – author of Sacred Places: war memorials in the Australia Landscape:

“At the end of the war members of women’s clubs in Sydney, among them Lady Cook, wife of the former prime minister Sir Joseph, planned a monument honouring fallen soldiers in the name of the women of NSW.”

The curators Dr Christopher Chapman and Dr Anne Sanders asked me to make a work that would complement the elegiac feeling of the exhibition, and provide a place for audiences to engage in quiet contemplation.

My response was to consider:

1. Theo Cowan’s approach – her use of imagery, materials and the traditions she was working within and in response to.

2. Awareness that Cowan’s project was initiated by a group of women and considering their interests and the losses/sacrifices they wished to commemorate. The sense of the physicality of the losses sustained by those left waiting for family members that did not return, the bodily sensations associated with the experience of grief.

3. The themes of disappearance/absence and embodiment. Cowan’s sculpture was never made, the macquette has disappeared, the only trace of the object is a photograph. The proposed memorial itself speaks both of losses and hopes for an imagined future, looking forward as well as looking back.

Description of the work Last light:

I have created a series of thin wax panels that hang in a row in front of the alcove space in Gallery 8. The panels have been carved bas-relief style on reverse side and then used as screens for a video projection. The choice of this material is inspired by the historical use of wax in ‘lost-wax’ casting, as a substance that is used to create a work and then is melted or destroyed in the casting process. It also references the historical use of wax medallions as a medium for portraiture. The panels are pure wax with no reinforcement – this means the work is very fragile, and the wax itself will shift and slump a bit over time.

The lines and forms carved on screens using wood carving tools is evocative of the forms in the Theo Cowan work, but minimal and abstracted. The imagery is visible as light from the video is projected through the wax panels. When viewing the work from the front, the audience see dappled light shifting across the surface – a video of sunlight moving across a kitchen wall as the sun sets creating a meditative effect.

A case of polar depression was performed on 8 October 2015 as part of Playful Sound presented by Danny Wild at the Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman House, Canberra

Timelapse of performance stills available on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/151304496

This experimental and improvisatory work was inspired by accounts written by Douglas Mawson and Sidney Jeffryes describing their respective experiences overwintering in Antarctica in 1913. During the performance the audience are seated in an oversized cubby house immersed in projections of footage shot by Herbert Ponting on the British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1910-1913.

As the audience reads text transcribed from Mawson's diaries, they hear an unseen performer reading a letter written by Jeffryes, describing the his experience of the same events. Mawson, the expedition leader, was concerned about Jeffryes' increasingly erratic and paranoid behaviour; while Jeffryes' believed that Mawson had 'cast a magnetic spell on him' and that the other men on the expedition were plotting against him.

Playing with presenting different perspectives and merging truths with fictions, this performance collages images from one expedition with conflicting personal accounts written about another. The soundscape improvised by Danny Wild gave the audience impressions of Antarctica when in actual fact they were listening to field recordings of ice-walking in Finland and a wind storm on Kangaroo Island.

Lost astronaut series , Haukijärvi, Finland

exhibited in Innerspace, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gorman House, Canberra 2015

Read David Broker's catalogue essay here: http://issuu.com/ccas_canberra/docs/2015_-_innerspace___ccas

photo: Birgit Larson

My bed is an island on a frozen sea. The rocky cliff walls trapped beneath a dirty ceiling, exhale crisp breaths the same colour as the grey-cloud sky outside. The curtains crack a shaft of cold light over the smaller island-piles of towels, clothes and books.

In December 2013 I spent a month as an artist in residence at Arteles Creative Centre in Finland; it was the darkest and coldest part of winter. When I returned to the light and heat of an Australian Summer I began to notice features in my home that reminded me of the winter landscapes in Finland. Light coming through the cracks in the curtains looked like a frozen lake, or an icy horizon, or an aurora dancing across the ceiling.

I was fascinated by the way my experience of living in a new place had changed they way I saw my familiar environment and enabled me to see things I had never noticed before.

Timelapse of performance: https://vimeo.com/107974698

Team training exercise was performed in collaboration with Lucy Quinn for the Pocket Holiday, a performance event hosted by Danny Wild at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in 2014.

This is part of an ongoing series of performances where one element is the folding of a large origami object - in this case a paper crane.

Just the way some dancers will take on a lead or follow role when dancing with a parter the performers in team training exercise worked as lead and follow. Hutch - the lead - initiated the crane folding exercise and Quinn followed, mirroring or supporting Hutch's movements in order to create the crane. Each of the performers were wearing a small data projector on their heads and projecting time-lapse footage of the first Apollo moon landing onto the paper as they folded.

The performers did not speak to each other or make eye contact during the performance and the folding exercise was unrehearsed. They relied on body language and their awareness of each other through movement to communicate and share the act of creating the large folded paper object.

Lessons for astronauts, QL2 Dance studio, Gorman House, Canberra 2013
Performance initiated by Ellis Hutch and devised in collaboration with Steven Holland, Caroline Huf and Amy Fiveash
Video documentation: https://vimeo.com/73135407

Over a few short sessions four artists met and explored a series of stories. This project, devised by Ellis Hutch was an experiment in using a series of starting points to generate a collaborative performance event.

One of the starting points was grainy footage of Buzz Aldrin ‘kangaroo hopping’ on the surface of the moon conducting a mobility experiment.

It was played over and over in the performance space while myself (Ellis) and the three other performers (Caroline Huf, Steven Holland and Amy Fiveash) explored ideas and approaches, we responded to it through movement, through conversation, storytelling and questioning. We moved the footage around in the space, experimented with light and shadow and mapped and formed a relationship with the studio space.

A second element came into the work through the story telling process as I told the group a story relating to methods for astronaut candidate selection.

It was a story reported by Mary Roach, (Packing for Mars: The curious science of life in the void) a journalist who visited space research centres around the world asking the question what would it take to get to Mars?

In Japan she observed astronaut candidates undergoing psychological testing to assess their suitability for life on the space station.

The astronauts were put into a sealed/isolated environment they shared with other candidates and where they remained for a period under the observation of psychologists and mission staff. They were observed for their social habits, how they coped with stress and their skills undertaking certain tasks.

One of the tasks they performed was to fold 1000 paper cranes. There are specific reasons for this activity – the astronauts are given a deadline – they need to demonstrate their ability to maintain their manual dexterity and focus under pressure while completing a boring and repetitive task. As they make the cranes they attach them to a thread – this way the assessors can have a chronological measure of their performance, see how their work holds up over time – if they maintain the quality and are able to continue to work at a certain speed.

What appeals to me about the crane story is that it is a form of practice that does not simulate an actual process that would occur in outer space. But it approximates the emotional and physical skills required to operate in space – it is practical and poetic – scientific, aesthetic, useless and useful.

In lessons for astronauts two performers fold a paper crane from a piece of paper that is 3 meters square.

Enacting this process of folding an oversize crane does not work to simulate an astronaut’s experience but extrapolates on the story to take the audience into another realm. In the performance two individuals have to negotiate the manipulation of a large piece of paper to collaboratively build this object. The duration of the folding determines the duration of the performance itself.

Another two performers – mirror each other’s movements – alternately tracking through the space and shining a spotlight on each other’s actions. They do not actively engage with the first performers – inhabiting the same physical space but appearing to be somewhere else in time/space as well. 

#ellishutch

#art

#performanceart

#cbrartist

Frozen series 2012

Photographs of imaginary worlds created in my backyard in Queanbeyan, NSW Australia

All the empty places 

I’ve been reading about empty places, environments that evoke for witnesses or observers a sense of alienation; isolation; foreignness. The fictional, factual, reflective, historical and poetic texts I have encountered meditate on emptinesses in many different ways.

What makes somewhere empty?

What constitutes an empty place or space?

Is it possible for a place – a somewhere – to be empty?

To see an empty space, to write about it and to photograph it requires a presence – someone needs to be there to take the photograph or there must be some way of perceiving that environment remotely. 

Behind the camera, the photographer is present while remaining hidden – the space outside the frame – they choose to construct a void, a landscape; an emptiness. This moment of presence required to engage with and represent absence is rich with possibilities. 

Rather than think about emptiness as the opposite of fullness I imagine emptiness as having it’s own kind of fullness. The empty spaces of Antarctica are full of wind and whiteness, of the sounds of ice, cracking, falling, grinding and sliding. These empty spaces are full of the dead presence of extinguished explorers and traces of buildings disappearing beneath the ever-advancing ice.

They are full of the imaginings of people like me who may never travel there yet dream ourselves into their vastness. From remote vantage points we are always only able to access fragments to stitch together into our own constructed landscapes.

The emptiness of outer space and of the surface of the moon is even more remote – and possibly also more full. The moon, a stark, rocky sphere is our constant companion. I’ve read a few different articles recently that argue that by physically going to the moon, we lost the moon. Since astronauts first collected samples to bring home and documented its surface through photography, the moon has somehow lost for us the mythical and magical power it once held; it has been reduced to a lump of rock. 

I disagree – I was born after the first astronaut kangaroo-hopped on the lunar surface testing out the qualities of reduced gravity. The moon for me is still a magical place. It may be a lump of rock, but it is the same moon of fable and myth, the moon of Jules Verne’s imaginings and the moon that watches over the Owl and the Pussycat going to sea in a beautiful pea green boat.

Those remote, empty spaces are filled with the histories of the cultures that have observed them, documented them, attempted to own them, study them and visit them. When we engage with the act of observation we are projecting ourselves into those spaces, and we are also bringing the spaces back to us – absorbing them into our own identities, making them part of us as we become part of them. 

The spaces in this series of works are real and imaginary – a result of looking at my immediate surroundings through the lenses of my imaginary explorer self. These spaces are my world, but they are also their own worlds, able to be filled with other imaginings or gazed on as articulations of absences.

Written for the exhibition Crossing the Rubicon at Australian National Capital Artists Gallery with Erica Seccombe, 2012

Between 2009-2011 I was privileged to work with Helen Michaelsen and Mona Oren on v.o.i.d. The project initiated by Helen Michaelsen was developed through two collaborative residencies at ComPeung in Northern Thailand. 

Documentation of the work as it was shown at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in 2012 can be seen on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/48525724

http://www.compeung.org/artists/2011-2/mona-oren-ellis-hutch-and-helen-michaelsen/

http://www.compeung.org/artists/2010-2/mona-oren-ellis-hutch-and-helen-michaelsen/

Below is the text written for the project:

v.o.i.d.

Loosely referencing Friedrich Nietzsche the inspiration for and essence of the v.o.i.d project is
“when looking long enough into the void, the void looks back at you”.

voluntary
ongoing
internal
displacement

Designed as a collaborative project Mona Oren, Ellis Hutch and Helen Michaelsen have been working together on this project for 3 years. Meeting up in Northern Thailand in January 2010 and January 2011, they developed a series of video performances, each dealing with their individual v.o.i.d.

v.o.i.d. #01
Dreamt up as voluntary, ongoing, internal, displacement or v.o.i.d., the dictionary definition of the word void refers to emptiness, space, the cancellation of something and of emptying out. But what does it mean to approach the void, to enter it, to embrace it, to make it?

Void and as such the v.o.i.d. #01 becomes a space of possibilities. Stepping into the void, into the unknown, decisions are made to push personal boundaries and to step outside familiar comfort zones. Exposed to a vast external space, layers of internal spaces unfold with directions, both new and previously explored.

The chosen site, Mae Kuang Dam (เขื่อน แม่กวง), is manmade yet evoking a pristine environment. The 3 performance locations at the dam - an irrigation canal, a hillside wall reinforced with concrete, and a maintenance road on top of the dam - initially intrigue and challenge us. Then they intuitively guide us in mapping out our performances in response and as continuous interaction to those spaces and their dominant site-specific elements of water, height (air), and ground (earth). As a result they are temporarily transformed into v.o.i.d. spaces each with a quiet, steady pulse following their own rhythm.

Fluid, vertical, horizontal, rough, rugged, uneven surfaces that initially resist, demand endurance and reward us with powerful force once embraced in the process. Through our mental and physical interaction with the site, we, the performers, become the interface accessing “our” spaces. As a way of becoming at home we are engaging mentally, emotionally, and physically with our individual bodies in continuous movement. Not only do we situate ourselves in the space but form a contingent connection to the space, embodying the v.o.i.d.

What might seem to be ordinary actions, lifting and letting go, moving through pre-determined forms, and writing, traversing a surface back and forwards, are in fact highly charged, personalized actions visible in moments of tension, instability, imperfection and translated into temporary yet continuous movements. letting go by Mona Oren, a flower garland grows until it disappears into the distance, farewell by Helen Michaelsen, Tai Chi forms flow over the rough uneven surface of a little used road in a vast landscape, writing by Ellis Hutch, the transcription of a dictionary definition becomes a physically gruelling process.

The essence of the v.o.i.d. #01 yet remains what does it mean to act, to act out or to perform a series of actions with actions being deliberate and of individual significance, relevance, and urgency?

Ellis Hutch, Helen Michaelsen, Mona Oren
March 2010

v.o.i.d. #02
January 2011... one year later... still challenged by the essence of the v.o.i.d. ‘what does it mean to act, to act out or to perform a series of actions with actions being deliberate and of individual significance, relevance, and urgency’?

Hence v.o.i.d. #02 continues to explore this essence at Mae Kuang Dam (เขื่อนแม่กวง), this time focusing on the fluid element of the water with 3 individual approaches.

กลับบ้าน homecoming by Helen Michaelsen is Shiva’s return journey home, her final journey. A tribute to the epitome of free spirit... ชีวิตชีวา, the metaphor of life and energy. White soft hair is felt, touched and caressed. A gentle intimate gesture, repeated again and again, prolonging the inevitable. The touch activates memories of softness, of smell inscribed forever in my senses and into the skin of my palms, my hands, my fingertips. Her hair parts from my hands, releasing it to the air from where it continues its journey to the water. Floating past for a final salute, letting go by setting free... her hair regroups in bundles, weightlessly traveling the surface like clouds sailing the sky. Departing... once more displaying her silent power through fragile reflections in the water until slowly drifting away into the open space of the dam... becoming one with the fluid flow of the water.

holding on by Mona Oren starts at the roundhouse, 10.000 flowers are being needled to become a web of fragile existence. It is there where for the first time the love flower web evokes the illusion of existence, “reflecting” the circular roof structure of the roundhouse, imaginary and real. Transformation... the existence of the love flower web altered forever once released into the water of the dam, choosing to become this strong physical form of white light and noise. Refusing to be subdued by the power of the water, the love flowers discover their strength in dense unity and free floating form. Using the water as a mirrored stage, they totally immerse with their own reflection, traversing between reality and illusion.

breathing by Ellis Hutch, a floating net on the water surface... becoming one with the rhythm of the water... protruding and receding. Like a trap, the net becomes heavier and gradually starts to sink, with the vital signs of breathing subside swallowed by the density of the water.

Helen Michaelsen
February 2011

August 24 - September 29, 2012 v.o.i.d. was as a video installation at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Australia.
ccas.com.au; http://www.ccas.com.au/exhibitions/void 

December 3 -29, 2011 v.o.i.d. has been shown as a single screen projection in the group exhibition: ComPeung Revisited 2007 - 2011, at the Chiang Mai City Arts & Cultural Center, Thailand.
compeung.org

Helen Michaelsen, the initiator of the v.o.i.d. project, divides her time between Perth, Australia, Chiang Mai, Thailand and Paris, France.
As a cultural practitioner she is involved in various collaborative art projects. Together with Pisithpong Siraphisut she has established ComPeung (compeung.org), the first non-governmental artist in residence program in Thailand. Teaching multimedia @ Polytechnic West and running graffiti workshops, she passionately believes in creative engagement and education being prime catalysts for change and empowerment.

Mona Oren, born in Israel, lives and works in Paris. Studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. 
As a multimedia artist Mona Oren has exhibited her photography, video, sculptures and installations internationally in solo and group exhibitions and her work is represented in private and public collections in Europe, Israel, Asia and Australia.
monaoren.com

Ellis Hutch is an Australian artist, writer and performer who creates ephemeral, time-based video and installation works. Hutch’s work is informed by her fascination with how people construct the places they inhabit and their social relationships. She has worked on a diverse range of collaborative and solo art projects since completing her Masters in Sculpture at the Australian National University School of Art in 2000

Touching space, video installation, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, 2008, photos: Brenton McGeachie

Touching space explores the intersections between sign language and English, between codified sign systems and the half unconscious gestures we all make, between intelligible images and abstraction.   

I first began to study AUSLAN, (Australian Sign Language) after reading Oliver Sacks’ book Seeing Voices which investigates the history of ASL (American Sign Language) and discusses cultural, physiological and neurological factors informing the development of signed languages and the ways in which people who use those languages perceive and communicate. I began seeking out this material as I was curious about working with a language that uses space and time as key elements. Grammatical structure and the meanings created in the acts of signing are contingent upon location of the ‘speaker’s’ gestures in space, direction of their movements and the pace of those gestures.

Sign languages; languages that incorporate the use of codified hand gestures, facial expressions and body language to communicate complex abstract and concrete concepts exist across cultures and in many different communities around the world. Just as spoken languages develop over generations and incorporate grammar, syntax and semantics, sign languages develop in action across generations of signers/speakers. They form into regionally specific dialects, incorporate slang and jargon, and grow and shift in response to cultural change. 

AUSLAN, like the American, British and Irish sign languages, is a complete language in itself. It is not English. It has a different structure, word order, grammar and syntax. 

Touching space uses a particular kind of signed communication called finger-spelling. Finger-spelling is not AUSLAN per se. It is a method for spelling out individual letters of the English alphabet to effectively ‘write’ words in space. It is a kind of add-on to sign language, a way of introducing specialised terms or names for which no sign exists. As the Deaf and hearing impaired communities in Australia operate within a wider hearing culture and community where the dominant language is English, Australian Sign Language often incorporates the use of individual English words for the sake of clarity and convenience. Finger-spelling performs this gap-bridging function. I like to think of finger-spelling as a way of writing in the air. 

Touching space uses finger-spelling to spell out a poem ‘The secret’ by Emily Dickinson. I chose an Emily Dickinson poem because I am fascinated by the way she uses metaphor and visual imagery, and the slippage that occurs in her poems between representation and abstraction. Dickinson so effectively evokes the spaces between the physical and abstract, real and imagined, life and death.

The moving hands in Touching space have been abstracted to a point where they begin to evoke other imagery, medical imagery, strange skeletal creatures, trees and landscapes according to different viewers. I am interested in the way people’s brains can get caught in a kind of feedback loop, that experience of having a word on the tip of your tongue but not being able to access it. This has inspired the construction of images that move between being recognisable and being somehow abstract so the viewer has the imaginative space to respond and construct their own imagery.

The spelling hands create meaning if you have learnt to interpret the signs. Viewers’ brains make connections and construct meanings even if they cannot 'read’ the writing in space.

The Secret

Some things that fly there be, —
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.

Some things that stay there be, —
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.

There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!

The title of the work Touching space comes from another Dickinson poem, Dawn

When night is almost done, 
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It's time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.

Night light town 2006

Beeswax, light bulbs, power cords

Created for the exhibition Social Capital curated by Lisa Byrne at Canberra Contemporary Art Space 2006

The work Night light town is inspired by my research into the history of the Tocumwal houses.

In January 1942 the Japanese forces were moving south at a frightening pace and the Australian Government was concerned that Japan was on the verge of invading Australia. In response to this perceived threat the Government developed a number of contingency plans. One of these was known as the Brisbane Line Strategy – it involved the drawing of an imaginary line between Brisbane and Melbourne. In the event of an invasion the efforts would be concentrated on saving the corner of Australia south and east of this line.

In order to defend this part of the country the Australian Allied Works Council and the USA Air Force built Australia’s largest air base – known as the McIntyre Field – near the town of Tocumwal on the Murray River in New South Wales. This was to be a ‘last ditch’ base from which heavy bombers would be able to defend the south-eastern part of the country and conduct reconnaissance flights into occupied enemy territory. (Nelmes, MV Tocumwal to Tarakan: Australians and the Consolidated B24 Liberator, Banner Books, 1994 p65) The base had a number of special features, it was designed with the threat of  air attack in mind; all the facilities were spread over twenty square kilometres to reduce the risk of losing all the resources in one go. The fibro and weatherboard accommodation huts were designed to look like domestic houses and some of the roads were constructed as ‘continuous streets of Tocumwal’ (Nelmes p65) in order to disguise part of the road system and thus the base.

In May 1942 a series of contributing factors put a stop to the Japanese advance and the threat of invasion disappeared. The base was no longer needed for its original purpose.

As the Second World War came to an end the accommodation huts from the McIntyre field became sought after  in the national housing shortage that followed. Many of them were pulled down and transported to a number of locations. One such destination was hundreds of kilometres away in the Canberra suburb of O’Connor.

My interest in the houses stems from several stories I heard that were situated somewhere between gossip, rumour and urban myth speculating on a range of possible pasts for the houses. The first story I heard confused the name of the town Tocumwal and referred to the houses as the ‘token war houses’.

In these stories the origins of the houses varied, they always came from somewhere far away, somewhere else – in outback NSW or near Darwin or Alice Springs. The consistent element being that the places, the points of origin for the houses were very different from Canberra. The accounts of why the houses existed also varied, in some they were decoys, lit up at night to attract the Japanese bombers away from civilisation and real targets. According to another version the houses had been part of an army resettling camp, intern accommodation where soldiers returning from the war stayed. Yet another account claimed that the houses were kit homes that had originally been brought here from Norway.

The first time I heard one of these stories it stayed with me for weeks, it sounded fantastic, too strange to be true and yet, there was something about it that niggled at me. In my mind’s eye I could see houses lining dusty roads – marooned in the middle of a dry plain, the only other points of reference, occasional trees amongst clumps of grey grass. I imagined their interiors as shelters for scuttling creatures, lights coming on as the day wore out, naked light bulbs illuminating the dust settled in the corners and spider webs arching from wall to ceiling. I also had a clear picture of the houses on the back of trucks becoming larger, encountering mountains and other towns, winding through wooded hills and across green farmland.

These stories interested me because they cast the houses as decoys and protective devices, as fictional/deceptive objects which play a role in the protection of the nation. They were also fascinating because they had travelled. There was something powerful in this idea of houses that could simply be picked up and moved, something unstable, tenuous. How could telling stories about these imaginary travelling houses be bound up in the claiming of space and creation of place, and understood in relation to notions of the tenuous settlement of Australia by migrants? I was interested in unravelling the relationship between individual houses as homes and the idea of houses as symbols, and devices that have a place in mythology and memorialisation of World War II. Hearing the stories of the Tocumwal houses made me begin to think about the process of story telling as part of a larger process of constructing and inhabiting the places we live in.

Working with beeswax and light I created an installation of wax houses, shaped like the actual Tocumwal houses. I was curious about the way we see houses as permanent fixtures – as stable and safe environments – as shelters. Yet if we don’t constantly work on and in them, they break down and begin to decay.  The light bulbs inside the wax houses generate heat that softens and melts the wax over a period of weeks. As the wax melts the houses loose their shape, slowly collapsing in on themselves revealing the naked bulb inside.

Common time performed at Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre on 22 May 2004 was developed by Ellis Hutch in collaboration with Christina Merry and presented as part of the project "There's no time" curated by Barbara McConchie. The project was realised in the wake of the devastating bushfires swept through Canberra in January 2003 and touched on themes of memory, loss, duration, fragility and ephemerality. 

Read Ellis and Christina's presentation on this work here. presented as part of the Content(s) at Canberra Museum and Gallery by Craft ACT

Artist statement

Common time is the result of a collaboration between Christina Merry a lace knitter and performance artist Ellis Hutch. The work developed from a series of conversations between Hutch and Merry over a six-month period. In our conversations we discussed the significance of the objects we surround ourselves with and the spaces we inhabit.

The work takes two processes that are normally carried out as a means to an end – knitting and packing and focuses on the way these processes are performed. As Christina knitted Ellis packed up the furniture, transforming it into luggage. The sound of Christina's metal knitting needles was amplified in the space contributing to the sense of duration and rhythm of the performance.

For Common time Christina Merry produced a sampler quilt:

“The inspiration for this sampler quilt was developed from the quilts and hand knitted rugs that were made especially for the Canberra 2003 bushfire survivors. As I was one of those who lost their home in the fires I was very touched by this amazing generosity. It seemed appropriate to reflect the small amount of wool rescued from my once large wool stash into a knitting journey of experimentation on a scale I had not attempted previously.

Without compromising the integrity of the end result the lace quilt is divided into twelve samplers each of which begin in the middle and are worked out to the perimeter. Each sampler was then edged by a shamrock insertion and grafted together. The matching scalloped shamrock border was worked sideways and grafted to the samplers.

The sampler patterns were sourced from some interesting places, as I now had none. All are different sizes, which accounts for the pattern irregularities and can be considered a design feature. From inspiration to completion (well almost!) doing my own design was more time consuming and challenging than following my usually traditional patterns. Weighing approximately 350 grams and taking about 100 hours to make, it has become a truly unique expression of a quilt translated into knitted lace.

I am pleased with the end result that can only be measured in relation to the simplicity that this knitting has helped balance my life, on my own particular journey after the bushfire.”

Ellis Hutch produced a suite of cardboard furniture. Cardboard is such an ordinary material, it can be packaging, a playhouse and function as real shelters. It is easy to build with, and is plentiful. Because Ellis’ objects are made from this material they lose their specificity. This furniture it is not someone’s prized belongings it is just furniture, it could be anyone’s.

In developing this performance we took our time, to talk, to act, to breathe, to engage in a constructive process. We talked about how time gets spent, wasted, lost and used. Time is always relative. The title Common time refers to this shared process and also makes reference to the musical term meaning four beats to a bar.

Our Common time is informed by the regular habits and activities of our daily lives, the rhythms and patterns of domestic activity, the things we do when preparing for something else.

Imagining Antarctica was the title for a series of installation and performance works exhibited  between 2004 and 2008. 

The installations were comprised of drawings of Antarctic weather maps made with hot glue, and tiny projections of Antarctic explorers created by placing tea-light candles behind cutouts in paper cylinders.

This performance in May 2003 was produced for Domain, a festival of temporary public art in Canberra's CBD coordinated by Arts ACT and the ANU School of Art.

The work takes a light-hearted approach to exploring the interplay of public and private behaviours. The performers: Blaide Lallemand, Steven Holland, Emma Jean, Tricia Hanson and Caroline Huf were given the simple instructions to do what they would normally do at home on a Saturday.

The cardboard furniture was handed over to them, and they decided where to locate it and what activities to engage in. Members of the public wandered in and joined the group at times, taking advantage of a place to drink their takeaway coffee, or to chat to the performers.

The group changed location several times during the day; moving from the grassy common, through a large shopping centre and ending the day in a cold concrete courtyard.

This exploration of public and private took an unexpected turn as the performers carried large pieces of cardboard furniture up escalators and through the shopping centre. We were reminded that while a shopping centre may feel like a public space, it is tightly controlled and it was only a matter of minutes before the security guards swooped in and escorted the group to the nearest exit.

Light work performance and installation at Strathnairn Gallery, Canberra in 1999

Over a two-week period I hand cut tiles from blocks of Sunlight soap and tiled the walls of the gallery - gluing the soap tiles with a hot glue gun. 

The yellow room provided visitors with an intense experience of sensory overload - the smell of the soap was overwhelming for some. People entered the gallery repeatedly attracted to the glowing yellow light only to be driven back by the strong soap smell.

Rest 2000

A rest, in a musical score, is a notation indicating a space for silence. It does not necessarily indicate total silence – in the case of an ensemble or orchestra it is often used to draw attention to particular sounds – the silence of certain instruments throwing other sounds into relief affecting the overall atmosphere of the piece. Silences and absences enable us to focus on what is here and visible or audible, just as that which is present always alludes to that which is absent.

arrest – stopping – being held up – interruption

This object was constructed from old mustard-yellow curtains found in a skip outside a house renovation in my street. While it had connections to a domestic sensibility, it grew ‘out of proportion’, exceeded its boundaries, became somehow independent. I had in my minds eye, the strange paintings by some of the female surrealists, particularly Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning. This painting of a hallway is inhabited by two dreamy girls with long hair and a huge, mangled sunflower which looks as if it has just been dragged up the stairs.

That sense of displacement and misplacement in surrealist paintings creates a tension where things appear 'out of place' but there’s nothing accidental in the composition of the painting or the sense of strangeness it creates.

I see this object as an inhabiting device, a strange thing that I drag around as if it were a security blanket, yet is simultaneously an impediment, large and unwieldy. It enables me to claim space, to create a break – arrest – in the composition. It either highlights the absence of the human body or dwarfs it.