Colleen Raven Strangways UV Songlines - Alexis West

TARNANTHI the first light, we come forth, we appear.

We are the seed sprouting

Yet for millennia

We’ve always been here

An excerpt of a poem written in response to the 2015 TARNANTHI exhibition…

Tarnanthi the first light…

2023

Illuminate UV

Colleen Raven Strangway’s photography

Illuminates in this series of portraits in UV

8 portraits…

An amalgamation of the oldest continuing living culture captured through modern technology of digital camera. Colleen works with the subjects to paint, pose, style and illuminate their inner and outward divinity. She shines an inner light on these stunning First Nations models using these combined technologies and experimental artforms. Skin coloured using UV paint and ancient symbols that translate and connect across millennia…

Collen champions for her mob through her unique perspective allowing us insights to the breadth and magnitude so often hidden or misrepresented in our media…

These portraits individually and collectively

In darkness… without electricity

Warriors illuminated… with power…

With a flick of the switch

And surge of electricity

The magnificence and power is revealed…

Highly stylized

Colleen captures them individually in their epic solid strength

Their …presence

Skin bared

Painted up

Stories, dust and motifs on bodies

Reveal tenderness…

Wisdom

Strength

Collen reveals a deep love for her people through these portraits

Chosen

Painted

Posed

Loved

Appreciated

Illuminated

Thru her lens

I feel the essence of so many warriors behind them

Within them

Before them

In front of them…

Around them

Around us…

Thru the tilt of a head

Strength of hands

Look of defiance

Of challenge

Of love…

A Pose…

The Poise

Holding their space

I breathe…

I exhale…

Captured…

In a moment

That Echoes

On wavelengths of light

Ultraviolet

A moment

A millenia…

All that is seen and unseen

Warrior spirit

Resilience

Brilliance

Luminescence

Essence

Country

Life

Love

Light

Illumination

Illumination of now

Or presence

The present

The future

The past

The beyond…

Of our presence

Our glow

The patterns

The song lines

Of seen

And unseen

These portraits

insights

UV and electricity

Unborn warriors

DNA

Divinity

poignancy

The knowledge holders and power

Immense souls of universe, country, constellations

Perspectives

captured and held to illuminate…

shine forth and beyond …

in skin…

Aunty

Chin up

Chest out

And breathe

Song lines of country

And stories and kinship on skin… illumination into the beyond

Close your eyes

Breath in deeply

Connecting to own song lines within and singing into the here and now…

Young warrior looks deep and beyond the lens into the soul… the strength of past warriors shine bright

Every portrait shares a different story painted on their body and collectively they are illuminated together thru energy and vibrations

When in darkness you are exposed to colours patterns stories only one set of eyes look out at us…

all is energy in darkness

And it’s how black fullas operate… there is this hidden beauty with in the darkness of colonial oppression

And when exposed in light…

The exceptional brilliance

Sparkling…

For all to see…

I sparkle

I feel seen

I feel shiny

Deep beyond

here and into the constellations

Into the night sky

Where we all came from

And where eventually

we all belong

Tarnanthi…

The first light…

We come forth

We appear…

To Learn More Click Here

Botanical Biomechanics (aka aliens, tiny mirrors and robot arms) - Josie Dillon

Machinery twitches, recoils at its hinges. It pains the brain to waste the fallout. There are swatches of different styles, different thoughts, and they’re having a quiet conversation.

‏Out in the back room there are moments from a number of artists; snippets of who they are and what they make: worm food, bones, weaving and etching and writing, hands, waves, chopping, tinytiny mirrors, cabbages, and lines, holes and more lines. This is a woven together in-house guidebook from the Stockholm art fair, Hälsningar, that FELTspace attended in May this year. The resulting exhibition 5 months later feels delicate, generous, and considered, yet fleeting. It is interesting to be in a small space with mostly small (in dimension) art works from so many artists. It does feel like something that has travelled. Like memories or photos of memories from time spent overseas. Like someone has gone to the beach and collected their favourite rocks. And you can see all their subtle beauty.

‏In the front room there are moments of a different kind—still adjacent to a photograph—but they have a more stationary feel to them. Orson Heidrich’s process for this exhibition relied on photography, as well as metal (mainly aluminium and brass), which perhaps gives them this grounded quality. But the metals are delicately hung, suspended, where they would otherwise be found underground. The works on the left wall are all framed. They cannot stand on their own. Orson said even a breeze could crumple them all. That’s what is so cool to me about a process. That something that stood beneath tonnes of soil could be blown to bits in a breeze after being cut, pressed and prodded. Orson speaks about the importance of aiming for a ‘perfection’, while leaving room for the beauty found in mistakes. These framed works were ‘mistakes’, found while looking for the perfect thinness of aluminium. I imagine a clunkiness to the process, but what results is so delicate that it must be held within a frame. To be so beaten.

‏An artist’s choices are endlessly interesting to me. These choices can be something as simple as, “I chose to use this material because it is my favourite,” but if it feels important/exciting to you and the process, then it is probably vital to its creation. Personally, I don’t think something is worth making if it doesn’t excite me. Some of Orson’s decisions can be viewed as purely aesthetic or sometimes inadvisable, such as making a press from aluminium rather than wood. But is an aesthetic choice not just one that excites your senses? And excitement is infectious. I love the idea of making a decision that one is advised against, just because it feels important, even if others don’t really understand why. To me, this shows an intuitive faith in the extraordinary, in the joy of, “wow, how cool is this material?!” And that seems like something worth sharing.

‏I’ve heard both Orson and Ian Gibbons speak about machinery and impact. This can be read in the tactile and direct impact of a press on metal in Orson’s work, or in the broader more abstract impact of humans on climate, as in Ian Gibbon’s.

‏Ian’s videos feel like an excited embrace of visually captivating moments in nature, as well as a cautionary tale. They have a sci-fi feel to them, perhaps derived from his background in science, and as an educator. Educators and artists are both storytellers, and this experience as a storyteller can be seen in the subtle decisions made within Ian’s works. There are messages hidden in short phrases that echo an understanding or deeper meaning. In Critical Point, Ian played a game of Thesaurus Substitution, taking words from the Adelaide Botanical Gardens’ website. He put these words into a thesaurus, picking out the ‘best’ ones to create an in-video poem. Here we see more seemingly inconsequential or subjective choices that have their foundation in an intuitive intrigue. The mystery in the sometimes superficially disjointed words feels intentional; an invitation to exploration that a scientist, viewer and artist all ideally share. Here is left: scope for the imagination and room for pondering. Education, inspiration and momentum are all important to the discussion and slowing of climate change. It seems only necessary for an artist making work on the matter to make choices based on what has inspired, excited or moved them.

‏Global issues and global interactions are rife in this segmented and interconnected exhibition. Everything feels paused, though movement is evident. This gives me clues that consideration is necessary and my body’s stillness is too. I felt honoured to be in a space of Alien relics and their fantastical collection of sea rocks, and with my new understandings, I perhaps fear their invasion a little less.

Imagining a memory - Stevie Abram

A walk through the three new exhibitions at FELTspace this month, makes the viewer wonder if they just imagined it all.

A stillness permeates the one-way street, the only audible presence a low roar of tuneless city noise. Streetlights dimly carve out the shadowed edges of cars and buildings while human silhouettes pass through the glow of a well-lit thoroughfare in the distance. A bespectacled figure breaks away from the other silhouettes, disturbing the stillness and stops on the pavement beside a leafless tree. Turning to look at the building in front of them, they contemplate its façade dominated by a large window, their glasses reflecting images of a world outside their reality, a world of storytellers like those who existed before we learned how to record them with text and film.

Is this a scene from a movie, my imagination or a memory from the new FELTspace exhibition? Looped Narrative, Isabelle Rudolph’s video work showing as part of FELTdark, poses such questions.

Featuring people from Cuba, Mexico and Australia, they each recall a scene from a film that is memorable to them and a scene from their imagination or memory with no indication of which is which.

I listen to the narrative or read the translation, the words creating vivid images in my head, thinking about how films begin as stories without visuals, of how language has the power to evoke mental images based on personal experiences and memories.

At the same time, I think about our ability to translate and share the memories of visual experience through a narrative of our own creation.

Cinema, as Rudolph’s work suggests, ‘serves as a platform for making and sharing worlds,’ a medium that can transcend cultural and geographical differences.

It asks us to consider memory as part of identity, the experience of an event remembered differently depending on the individual, and our capacity to connect with one another through the sharing of these experiences.

Entering the FELTspace gallery, I encounter the first of Tara Denney’s work, a mass of what looks to be feathers shaped into a rectangle.

My tactile memory initiates the sensory association of softness only to be diverted when I notice four cast silver swans that occupy the corners.

The second piece catches me off guard in a similar fashion.

At first, it appears to be grey cardboard packaging, until I see the glint from a small hole and look closer to find it reveals another shiny texture beneath the grey surface.

Aluminium, Denney indicates as the material used, not pliable but rigid. There is a contrast here found in all their work which asks me to look closer, disregard what I initially see and ask what else it is saying.

A narrative begins to form the longer I look at the work ‘Only You’, the remnants of Glomesh bags sitting flat beneath the shell of an oyster long since shucked of its soft interior and replaced with a spherical brooch over a coiled silver necklace. Symbols of femininity asking to be reimagined.

Through Denney’s practice of ‘feminist methodologies’, they create a lens with which to see their work through the placement and contrast of the materials, generating questions of how we should view old associations, gendered or otherwise, in the present.

I leave Denney’s work and the bright lights of the exhibition to enter the back gallery, a contrastingly dark room with Ming Liew’s film essay, ‘How Will I Remember’ projected onto the wall.

In the few chairs at the back, I sit with another person in silence, both of us watching and listening.

Through associations with memory and image-making, the film presents us with Liew’s bilingual narration about grief, loss and their experience as a first-generation Chinese immigrant in Australia.

Accompanied by a duality of images, both static and moving, the work is structured in fragments, just like memory.

John Berger writes, ‘unlike memory, photographs do not in themselves preserve meaning’.

A photograph shows us a moment captured in time but, without context, the meaning remains elusive. Liew exposes us to this connection, creating meaning for the chosen images through a narrative.

The work also asks us to consider our own identity by examining what memories we share with others like photographs, and perhaps how to show our true selves by ‘revealing the negatives that didn’t make the cut.’

Leaving the exhibition, I wonder about the person who I sat next to, and what memories they hold that have shaped their identity in the present.

How will we both remember the exhibition?

Perhaps we will try to narrate this shared experience to others and they will form mental images in their heads of the scenes we describe through language.

Maybe they will even take something from our story, whether they believe it to be truth or fiction, something that will allow them to see their own memories and associations from a new perspective.

Pure transgression - Em Simmone

This month’s FELTspace exhibition explores the line between transgression and purity, mundanity and philosophy, human and machine.

Upon entering the FELTspace gallery, immediately we feel profound reverence for the carefully placed works, particularly those which make up Isabella Hone-Saunders’ Ritual Slaughterer, shown in the front gallery.

This is the largest exhibit, featuring physical forms of steel, ceramics, wrought iron, challah and cedar in addition to multimedia elements of video and audio. The proverbial star of the exhibit is ‘To float, so ungraspably’, or the ‘skip bin mikveh’, which is the central piece in the gallery.

A mikveh is an immersion pool which carries rich symbolism of transformation, purity, and cleansing, used for a variety of reasons in Judaism, mainly to achieve ritual purity.

Hone-Saunders’ version of this is a bent, rusted-out skip lined with contrasting oyster-blue tiles. A piece of Perspex holds a thin layer of shimmering water that tricks the eye; one could believe the tub was entirely full.

The skip’s glistening crystal-like water permeates with piety, while its oxidised outer layer is symbolic of the human tendency to erode and transform the simple purities of God and religion into something more sinister.

For Hone-Saunders, an example of this ideological curdling is seen in the occupation of Palestine. The artist spoke of their pro-Palestinian views at the exhibition’s opening, saying the work attempts to “demonstrate that Judaism is not inextricably linked to Israel’s Zionist genocidal agenda”.

The idea of erosion can also be seen in ‘Friday Night’ – challah drenched in adhesive to prevent decay. ‘Friday Night’, like the entirety of Ritual Slaughter, pays homage to familial ties. The traditional ritual of baking challah for Shabbat was an act of personal research in the artist’s reconstruction of their Jewish identity.

The intimacy of family is palpable in the gallery, with photos of their great-grandfather’s home giving us a rare peek into the personal realm of those who devote their lives entirely to God.

‘To float, so ungraspably’ also references family in its materials. The artist’s father worked as a builder, and likely tossed waste into skips bins like this one. Hone-Saunders has intentionally converted the skip from an object of refuse to one of cleanliness. They do say it’s next to godliness.

Duality pervades the work. Hone-Saunders “reframes rituals through an activist, queer and anticolonial lens”, unshrouding the illusion of religion with illusionary water. Hone-Saunders’ artistic statement references kissing their friend in the bathroom stalls in Adelaide’s first synagogue (now queer club Mary’s Poppin), the same halls their grandfather performed shechita and where the rainwater and tap water hashoko (to kiss) become pure in the mikveh.

Hone-Saunders reforms archaic structures that seek to exclude, borrowing and transgressing in the process. The bent-out dilapidated skip bin perhaps symbolises the bending of faith and dialogues surrounding the culture we are allowed to belong to.

According to halakha (Jewish laws) based on the Talmud and Oral Torah, to be Jewish by birth, you must be born to a Jewish mother. This restriction saw Hone-Saunders (whose Judaism follows a paternal line) unable to bathe in the St Kilda East Mikvah, despite having 37 per cent European Jew heritage encoded into their DNA. Pointedly, this DNA result, once a piece in the exhibition, was stolen from the Melbourne gallery it sat in.

The work in Ritual Slaughter is diverse, nuanced and entirely intimate, offering a glimpse into Hone-Saunders’ personal history, and causes us to think about the relationships we forge within our own family.

In the artists own words: “I don’t have culture, but I do. I borrow, I transgress”.

Moving to the gallery at the back of FELTspace, the browns of wrought iron and bread are replaced with neon blue, yellow, and green. A lighter air awaits.

Golden macaroni by Madeleine Minack and Kaijern Koo asks us to examine the big questions, which is a vague enough premise to almost instantly dismiss. However, sincere ponderance is to be encouraged while in the space.

Paddle pop stick sculptures transport me to a simpler, less jaded time.  Weaving like chooks in a tightly packed coop, we are asked to re-examine what informs and influences us through quirky miscellanea – which includes chook bean bags.

Outside the gallery, Paige Glancey, Anika Gardner and Nic Scage’s Maladjusted screens at sundown on the front window, presenting a hyper-reality of Moonta’s abandoned copper mines.

The work consists of an AI bot iterating beyond its greedy overlord’s coding, creating glitchy feedback effects, retro colours and gaming text which harks back to the world of Roland Edirol V8 analogue video mixers from a decade or so ago.

This dated aesthetic, mixed with the AI narrative “as understood by ya miners at the pub”, presents a sense of irony and humour.

Standing and staring at the flickering image, a sentiment we last felt while watching Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner washes over us.

We’re left sympathising with the on-screen Replicants as they fall into a desperate embrace. Error. Error. Error.

Reflections on a room - Michelle Wakim

The September—October FELTspace exhibitions are about the spaces in which we exist – their evolution, urbanisation, construction, deconstruction and our interaction with them.

Edges of the everyday - Anisha Pillarisetty

In FELTspace’s August–September graduate exhibition, interactions between materials, bodies and processes are brought to light.

Breaking apart - Connal Lee

The fragility of language, humanity and the Australian landscape are all explored in three new exhibitions just opened at FELTspace.

Forever fleeting memories - Iona Mackenzie

While experiencing three new exhibitions on show now at FELTspace, writer Iona Mackenzie found echoes of ephemeral moments past, repeating in the real world.

IMOGEN ZIEMEK

1. Halloa (interjection)
   A loud exclamation; a call to invite attention to something or to incite; a shout.

The latest exhibition at FELTspace, including work from Siying Zhou, Carolyn Craig and Aleda Laszcuk, takes into consideration art’s ability to educate and its desire for social justice, bringing together three artists looking at themes of othering, privilege and death. 

Siying Zhou centres her exhibition Calling The Dead around the town of Ararat, a town that boasts its title as Australia’s only town founded by Chinese immigrants. Calling The Dead plays out like a tennis match of documentation. Including six screens in the front gallery, the timing of the videos meanders through a loop of roughly 30 minutes, jumping across screens, one speaking to the other. In the middle of the room are images of gravestones, with a voiceover reading out the engraved names. On the left wall is Henry, speaking of funding issues and future projects to be done at the Gum San Heritage Centre in Ararat.  On the right wall is Heather, who talks of the difficulties of finding the right names and dialect to put on the headstones which prior to Gum San, “were just numbers in the ground”. The last two screens, situated at a low angle, show the grave stones being dug into the ground, and a blank screen as it’s mirror image, as a call for contemplation. 

The style of editing renders the interview as disorientating and difficult to follow. One screen fades to black as the other begins again, sometimes both playing at the same time, while the captions for both Henry and Heather are included on the same video.  At the forefront of the exhibition’s interviews are two white Australians, suggesting a white saviour narrative. The exhibition engages critically with Australia’s perception of immigrants, bringing forth these issues in it’s outwardly documentary style, combined with experimental editing. 

At risk of virtue signalling, Zhou’s exhibition brings forth the issues within Australia’s perception of culture, colonisation and its history.  Reaching from the ceiling to the floor, is the work A portrait at Langi Ghiran state park. The digital scan, displayed on a curtain, is portrayed as an extension of the editing style in the video works, where the film photograph of dense bushland is partially obscured by a slice of black fabric, stitched together. This could be seen to symbolise Australia’s colonisation as a black mark in history that is first and foremost written by, and in favour of, Europeans. 

The appropriated LED sign, flashing the word “Halloa”, situated above the doorway to the back gallery, provides a link to Carolyn Craig’s exhibition Bacterial Nervosa. 

Combining performance, photography and sculpture, Craig’s sculptures of folded aluminium sheets with etchings and printed images taken from a performance by Craig, act as an imitation of breathing: the inflation of a chest upon a deep inhale; the triangular breathing pattern of meditation. 

The sounds of gendered slurs, those typically aimed at women, seep out of the earphones that sit atop the petri dishes, that have slowly grown black mould since installation. Portrayed in black and white images, Craig performs her interest in respiratory intricacies, in static movements, and swirling, scratchy etchings symbolising the artist’s erratic breathing creates a link to the exhibition’s title using the Latin word Nervosa, nervous. 

Formally speaking, Aleda Laszczuk’s film draws parallels with Craig and Zhou’s work in its white palette becoming tainted by the past: a damp towel hung on the railing in the bathroom; greasy finger marks left on the light switch; the vase in which to put the flowers gifted, that one time. Objects in a domestic space are marked by the experiences surrounding them. Dust collects in corners and spreads when stirred. The screaming white of the projection during the FELTdark showing mirrors the institution of the white cube gallery space, which spills out onto the street of Adelaide CBD. 

How can art make an impact? How can it aid in overcoming a sadness so profound after heartbreak?  What weight can art carry when racism is so deeply ingrained in some, women are still unsafe to walk home alone at night, and fires and floods continue to damage cities and landscapes? 

NAOMI WILLIAMS

A response to July exhibitions

The river, once in the liminal space of dawn now comes alive with the sounds of birds and flowing shadows.

Dappled light plays on the surface while water playfully sings.

Water-

It can

flow gently or it can crash.

Clear water at the bottom while muddy water floats at the top

Delve in. Dare to be immersed

in the ambiguity before it

becomes clear.

Yarra- Birrarung-

pluck gently at

my heartstrings to protect you,

to keep you alive as you have kept those creatures alive.

Your upright sticks like

standing guards ready to stop

those who trespass.

Thank you, Birrarung, for showing us who we are in your muddy reflection, Are you like us? We can only hope to be more like you, giving life, flowing while offering a still moment of peace, you seem to see the value in the small and the great expanse of your reaching arms.

We are alone with the moving water and the sound of the birds.

Does your H2O makeup connect you to the Sana, your neighbour in the community of Earth? Sana meaning to shine, to be simple, praise, straightforward, in Arabic. Our path is straightforward- protect the givers of life or cease.

In Latin, your name means healthy, sane or sound. The sound of you keeps me sane but yet you are not so healthy by our actions.

Please will the rivers conspire to touch the hearts of men, women, and the liminal in-between to say, humans, you are not protecting us, rather we are protecting you,

so get out of the way,

or fear a river’s wrath.

Perhaps you will call those at dawn, before they fully awaken and remember their selfish taking ways, or as the sun comes up remind those that already love you of the fierceness of their love. As a mother protecting a child, a child clinging to their mother. The race is on. We drink to your health as the countless species that depend on you.

Please, we ask you, you ask us, Let me

Survive.

FREDA DRAKOPOULOS

S-O-M-A 

Freda Drakopoulos

The exhibition Body Work explores how the soma is used in places of labour or implicated by acts of labour. This is considered by focusing on modalities of labour that occur on and within our bodies. Kate Bohunnis, Maya-Victoria Pask alias Queenie Bon Bon, Henry Wolff, and Stephanie Doddridge are among the artists taking part. The works chosen for this exhibition rethink and challenge depictions of labouring bodies.

How can the labour undertaken organically across our own bodily bounds, be present, at a time when our bodies are subjected to so many social restrictions?

In Greek the word or term ‘soma’ refers to the body, the human body. Soma is a term that can transfer and transform. I have taken the term soma as it takes precedent in this exhibition, this is done through the synchronicity present in the themes of labour, implication, acts of, and how the body is inferred in these themes throughout the exhibition. The synchronicity present is ever evolving throughout transcendence with, and how soma is referred to in each artist's work.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity. 

Is when a combination of events or things seem to be related but it is not clear what the obvious connection is. Though, there is a series of simultaneous connections, it is hard for even anything or anyone related to the event/things to pinpoint the connection. Thus, there is a higher and sometimes dark force at play.

Body Work operates through this type of synchronicity. Whether it is through the psychological, industrial, political, personal, physical, or a combination of all. The higher power at force in this exhibition contains the works and at the same time allows for each to hold its own agency; an autonomy through its own synchronicity.

The soma is a carrier of this sense of synchronicity. Through the mental and the physical, through the implications of industries that hold labour and power over the body, the soma holds itself and brings all things that seem to be related to it to the surface in Body Work.

Maya-Victoria Pask's work focuses on the soma’s position as a labour agent. Maya is a sex worker, a writer, and a performance artist. Themes of care and activism are explored in their work. Maya advocates for the abolition of "intersecting violences that targets and criminalises the most marginalised members of our community" through their work and social action.

Guests were encouraged to wear one of Queenie Bon Bon's t-shirts to the exhibition opening as part of a participant performance/standing in solidarity to demand the decriminalisation of sex work in South Australia.

The intrinsic labour associated in working in industries and materials that are still founded on old gender stereotypes is central to Kate Bohunnis' latex work. The project considers the labour involved in working in these settings and within these defined bounds. The work within the exhibition conceptualises the soma as a locus of labour. Latex, which refers to the skin and clothing worn on the body, as well as the work's actual presence, speaks about material agency.

Henry Wolff encourages people in their workshops through close dialogues and gestural practice. Henry's work investigates the relationship between soma, labour, and purpose. Examining whether we sacrifice our bodies in the pursuit of a higher and greater understanding of the soma.

Stephanie Doddridge's sculptural works explore the relationship between mind, skin, and material cloth in response to the concept of embodied psychological labour. Stephanie investigates the physical and psychical effects on her experience of embodiment by considering the soma as a place of abjection.

Sss mmM

 Oohh Aaa

When we think about the human body, some may consider their own human body or others. Some may consider how a human body exists in space and place. When the human body is used to navigate space and the world it lives in, it requires a deepened understanding of itself, before it can even understand its own surroundings.

This understanding is rarely reached in one's lifetime. A negotiation is placed as a boundary between the body that one inhabits and the external bodies of the other/s. At times, this boundary can also be present in an individual's body, separated away from any external influence of/or any/body/ies.

AN Internal Dialogue Of The S-O-M-A

I don’t know how to hold you, if I can’t hold myself.

I don’t know how to hold myself, if I can’t hold you.

I don’t understand how my body is supposed to exist.

I don’t understand how I am supposed to exist in my body.

Sometimes when everything begins to feel heavy, I don’t know how to support you.

Sometimes when I support you, everything begins to feel heavy.

When I have to sacrifice my body, sometimes, I like it.

Sometimes I like it, when I sacrifice my body.

When I have to sacrifice my body, it hurts me.

Sometimes it hurts me, when I sacrifice my body.

I feel certain urges in my body and I don’t understand how they’re supposed to sit.

I think it is…

Testing the edges of the body.

Pushing the body to its limits.

Making the body experience vulnerability.

Objectifying the body.

Allowing for the body to understand its fragility.

Abject.

Lick, lick, lick, lick.

Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick.

Rub rub rub.

Lack, lack, lack.

Ack. Ack. Ack.

I was floating in a body of water.

I was in the water and my body was in the body of water.

It became one as I floated in it.

 Through it.

 Within it.

 Around it.

 With it.

 Along it.

 For it.

It.

Aah!

 Aaah

 Aaah

 Aaah!

S O

                       M A

                                                 S O

                                                                                    M A

S O M A

S O

M A

S O

M A

S O

                                 M A

JENNY SCOTT

A response to the June exhibitions at FELTspace on Kaurna Yarta from one hour and thirty minutes in the past (AWST), after Zoom conversations with some (but not all) of the exhibiting artists, which is entirely my own fault (sorry Andrew Ananda Voogel).

We cannot reflect on Seiichi Kobayashi’s show Space and Improvisation (or really, anything at all) without referring to the context of the current global pandemic.

The emergence of COVID-19 last year meant that this exhibition, originally planned for 2020, was postponed, and the artist had to return to his home country of Japan where he remains today. Seiichi subsequently set up a home studio in his shared accommodation, created these new works, and then posted them back to FELTspace in time for his June opening.

As Riley O’Keeffe points out in his eloquent exhibition essay, Seiichi uses the same physical elements as traditional Western painting – but with the introduction of computer-generated content.

His practice involves programming code to create patterns, which are then screen-printed onto mounted canvas or paper using oil paint instead of ink. As the oil paint is pushed through the fine mesh of the screen, the integrity of the digital image becomes subject to the vagaries of the thick paint, how it sits and settles onto the paper and board.

Subtle levels of the unexpected seem to be welcomed by Seiichi throughout this process, from the results of adjusting digital variables in his code to the unique finishes produced by the silk-screened paint. He’s coding tangible textures, hand-crafted translations of programmed patterns, where the paint plays a role in creating the glitch.

In any case, the history of this exhibition is true to its title – considering the different types of space (domestic, studio, negative, geographic) and improvisation (inherent to Seiichi’s artistic process, and seen in the urgent need to adapt his practice) involved.

And since they’ve been photographed, Seiichi’s works have now become pixels once more, allowing me to experience them via my computer screen from Goomburrup (Bunbury, Western Australia).

Jesse Budel’s sound installation Crepuscule, found in the darkened back gallery of FELTspace, was built of audio streamed from a global network of open microphones at the particular moment of twilight.

In the vein of Reveil, an online event broadcasting live audio streams from across the world at dawn, Jesse combines the accumulated sounds of dusk – which are further mediated by meteorological data from the same locations.

Of course, as this work is not available online, I’m just writing out my understanding of the concept (i.e. ‘here’s my beginner’s take on a contemplative aural installation I haven’t actually experienced’). And this combination of sounds and space will never be presented in the exact same format again (is FOMO still a thing?).

Jesse and Seiichi’s works can be linked conceptually through the idea of artistic control – a timely topic, as control over our lives (or at least the illusion of it) seems to have been stripped away from us in these current circumstances. Both artists could be seen to be collating materials over which they have ceded some control.

They set the boundaries – Seiichi decides the variables that will generate his coded patterns, Jesse chooses the audio effects he will assign to different weather conditions – and then gently explore what emerges, in collaboration with the outside forces at work (the program, the ambient noises, the movement of paint and the strength of the wind).

As recent history proves, we cannot completely control our external circumstances but we can control our expectations – and in our Zoom chats, both artists noted different expectations they had confronted during this exhibition run.

Jesse notes that some gallery visitors seemed confounded by the lack of the visual in the darkened space, a purposeful decision to encourage sensory focus on the sound elements.

Seiichi worried his exhibition, so radically changed from his initial plans, might seem ‘boring’.

(And in applying for the FELTspace writer’s program in early February 2020, I imagined myself swanning into the eventual opening night, ‘why yes, I am the writer, I just flew in…’)

During these unexpected times, it’s useful to reflect on our personal sphere of control, a concept that I struggle with on the regular (‘grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, etc. etc.’).

Perhaps we all need to work to accept the nature of this moment in time – set some boundaries, gather things from the world, see what emerges – reflecting on what we can take and how we can use it, what we expect and what we get.

ELEANOR SCICCHITANO

A monster we can see

Walking through FELTspace in May feels like a journey through the apocalypse; dodging

monsters in the front room, finding shelter in a post-apocalyptic hideaway in the back, and

then the shy first encounter with a stranger played out in the window as we walk away.

Three exhibitions, separate but drawing on a single story of destruction, survival and

uncertainty that characterises the world of late.

For over a year now, we have been pursued by a monster we cannot see. A microscopic

virus lurking on the handle of a shopping cart, transferred from friend-to-friend through the

once comforting act of a hug. For me, an ominous sense of dread has hung across all my

interactions outside the home, and this is from the relative safety of Adelaide. Nearly

invisible threats existed before the pandemic. The steady destruction wrought by climate

change, the creeping rise of temperatures drying the Earth. Pressure has mounted for many

years, finally bringing the land to a breaking point in 2019 and 2020 which saw fires, floods

and extreme weather wreak havoc. Capturing this sense of destruction, Tasmanian curator

Victor Medrano brings together four artists to explore the idea of the kaiju, a sub-genre of

Japanese cinema, and the name for the gigantic monsters who populate these worlds.

There’s comfort in the reality of the kaiju, and being able to see and touch that which tears

our lives apart.

In his video work, Tomzilla, artist Tom O’Hern thrashes naked around a cardboard set, flimsy

buildings knocked down easily by the monster; part human, part hairy beast. He has been

woken by the drills in the Great Australian Bite seeking oil, and risking this pristine

environment in the process. There is something comical about this man/monster. Like a

child having a tantrum and destroying their toys, Tomzilla brings about the destruction of a

paper city. Underneath the comedy, there is a sense of the futile, the frustration about not

being able to do anything. Tomzilla seems to be having the temper tantrum we all want to

have, brought on by the helplessness felt by many. With no power to make change, our only

recourse is to vent our emotions through wild movements and grunting ineptitude.

Lou Conboy’s photographs of two fighting kaiju pick up on a sense of futility and abandon.

They pose on a beach, performing their fierceness for the camera, before launching into a

sword fight. The series ends with the two kaiju seemingly interrupting their fight to gaze and

point at a plane as it flies away. Now they are alone, costumes glittering in the sun. No

onlookers, no audience, no one to watch them perform, and no one to be awestruck by

their power. Has the audience tired of their struggle and decided to just leave them to it?

Abandoning them to their own devices and their own eternal back and forth. Whatever they

were fighting for, it now feels obsolete. The world is no longer interested. Their flashy dress

is for nothing they have no one left to show off to. They belong to the old world, kaiju left

behind whether by progress, fabulous technology or a world that considers them outdated,

and is ready for the next big thing.

Robert O’Connor’s wall hanging explores the myth of Santa Clause, reframing the historical

figure as a kaiju. Written across the banner are the saint in various guises; Krampus a

horned, anthropomorphic figure from Alpine folklore, assisting St Nick to scare misbehaving

children; Cernunnos, the horned Celtic god of animals, nature and fertility, or travel,

commerce and bi-directionality. This leads to more recent depictions, the jolly, round face

of the Coca Cola Father Christmas, ruddy cheeked and laughing. O’Conner speaks to the

long history of this figure, a strange man who breaks into our houses, punishing or

rewarding children. Rendered in what appear to be hasty scrawls, this blanket captures the

enduring myth of St Nicholas. He is reminding his audience of the long history of monsters

in cultures across the world, the strange man and beast who crawls in our window at night,

rewarding good and punishing bad children. O’Connor hits on the purpose of these tales, to

scare children into good behaviour.

Moving around the space, Crosswell has hung a collection of what appear to be remnants of

these battles, titled EKUL. Frames, draped in fabric that has been ripped and torn, coated in

concrete. They move between being remnants of images; the way we have constructed our

lives online, the way the media have framed news stories; and the remnants of physical

structures that have made up our world; cities, bridges, sky scrapers; the buildings that have

become a scar on the Earth, replacing nature. All of this artifice has come down, ripped

apart by the kaiju. Whether it’s the physical or the image that is being destroyed, the

destruction is complete. The veneer has been stripped away, and the skeleton is violently

laid bare, exposed in the aftermath.

Making it through the monsters, we emerge in the backroom. The Last Artist has decreased

the size of the gallery, hemming us in, making the space smaller and more claustrophobic.

The walls are constructed from cut-offs, salvaged boards and espalier, hastily patched

together to form walls. Purple lighting invokes a sense of sci fi, emergency lights glowing

darkly. Propped haphazardly on ledges are paintings, impressionist portraits of buildings

recognisable as Adelaide landmarks. Is this the future of FELT, to be converted into a bunker

where the survivors of our current destruction can cower and wait for danger to pass? Like

Conboy’s photographs, the paintings invoke a sense of nostalgia, a longing for the world

‘before’.

Though Grant Parke tells the story of his arrival in Adelaide in his video Come Fly With Me,

installed as part of this May FELTdark showing, it takes on a sense of navigating the world

post-pandemic as we emerge from lockdowns. Two strangers engage in an awkward

encounter on a train, hindered by an unwelcome guest. They are both lonely, one a new

arrival and one widowed, adrift following loss and relocation. Rendered in simple lines that

move and wriggle across the screen, the animation has a sense of being constantly shifting.

Parke expertly captures a sense of nervous energy that comes with a new encounter,

especially one with a stranger.

The story being told in FELTspace in May is one of destruction, followed by renewal and

hope. They are the stories of now, and the future. Perhaps having had this glimpse into the

world to come, we will rethink the decisions being made, or navigate new ways to move

forward.

MELANIE COOPER

On approaching midnight.

Would it help if I told you?

That I always worried

About time – 

In childhood,

The impossibly long stretch of it

Reaching back and forth

in and out of murky unknowns,

Sometimes suspended

And then superseded 

by the rapid slippage

between this age

And the next…

Read More…