Points of Departure

Exhibition Essay commissioned by Onespace Gallery for their group exhibition DEPART, 2020.

Jackie Ryan, Not at a monument (from the Isolation Vacation series) (detail), 2020, Digital UV print on acrylic, 29.7 x 42 cm, Edition of 8. Image: Courtesy of the artist and Onespace Gallery.

Collecting work made within 2020, DEPART offers a timely platform to engage with our individual and collective experience by asking its artists the question on everyone’s lips, how do we begin to respond to this unique year? The exhibition enters 2021 with volatile hindsight, tender reflection and a cautious sense of optimism for the future. We have been united by the events of 2020 in our fragility and our resilience, our panic and our calm, our intelligence and even our abundant stupidity. We have lived through history in the making—something that will be taught for years into the future. Artists such as the eleven included within DEPART reinforce art’s capacity to react during times of crisis as well as its ability to articulate the texture of our contemporary experience.

At the heart of the exhibition’s ethos is the inclusion of Dan Elborne’s Where They Burn Books 00069-00079. This series (first started in 2016) was influenced by the 1933 Nazi book burnings and sees dark forms contrasted against pristine white porcelain, referencing the preciousness of knowledge. Made using compressed ash from burnt books, the darker vessels of knowledge appear beyond repair. Viewers may wonder what a series inspired by an event from 87 years ago has to do with 2020. The answer is the renewed relevance of preciousness, resilience and survival found within these objects. Moving to Melbourne at the start of the year, Elborne faced all sorts of restrictions and closures which challenged his capacity to create. During Stage 4 of lockdown, Elborne condensed his studio to his small Melbourne balcony and substituted his studio kiln with his home oven in an attempt to accelerate the drying process of these works. Elborne states, “Fitting for a work produced in lockdown, these pieces are particularly awkward when standing alone, but like us, collectively stand firm”. This 2020 rendition of Where They Burn Books reflects our stark reality and is the outcome of persistence and commitment to one’s artistic practice.

For Ross Booker, immersive experiences on location were essential to his practice prior to 2020. The inability this year to undergo regular excursions in the Northern Territory gave him the incentive to shift his perspective and to rely on what he remembered of these landscapes. In The morphology of light, what is obvious to those who know Booker’s oeuvre is this work’s unanticipated commitment to the colour black. This aesthetic interjection runs parallel with Australia’s infamous ‘Black Summer’ bushfires, which has seeped into the psyche of Booker and has permeated our present memory of this sunburnt country.

Adopting a satirical tone, Jackie Ryan also reacts to our separation from travel in her series Isolation Vacation which embraces the mentality—if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. Ryan’s pastiche-style works takes viewers on a riveting tour of unreachable holiday destinations contrasted with the monotonous reality of the isolation bubble.

Tamika Grant-Iramu’s recent works, Rosalie Place I and Rosalie Place II draw on the minute areas of the domestic that she has become almost too familiar with during the course of isolation. These works extend from her existing Rosalie series, which investigates the displacement of an antique toy bear in a suburban Brisbane landscape. By combining elements of still life with local flora, Grant-Iramu is able to create a new world which her bear and curiosity can adventure to. The result evokes the curiosity of childhood, reimagines the familiar and seeks knowledge through exploration. They offer a close inspection of her domestic space and reveal the ‘other worlds’ she was able to discover through her practice.

Zoe Porter’s Lockdown Triptych similarly considers our relationship to the natural environment. The triptych, created during isolation, depicts delicate forms sitting between animal and human that act as a psychological self- portrait for Porter. These creatures evoke a state of decay and transformation and provide us a glimpse into the artist’s feelings of dislocation as well as highlight the destruction of non-human animals through human impact.

Sebastian Di Mauro’s textile work Catching Stars reveals money as a binding agent that enables us to survive. Depicting the US $1 bill on its surface, Di Mauro emphasises our particularly polarising demand for money in surviving this year. The need for greenbacks has been on par with health services and acts as a reminder of the system that Americans (as well as the broader Western world) have to abide by. This has been enhanced in light of the recent election of JR Biden as the 46th President of the United States and the horrifically slim margins we witnessed as Australian bystanders. Just like the words inscribed on the original note, Catching Stars contains the message Novus Ordo Seclorum, which translates to “a new order of the ages”, a sentiment that Di Mauro states is “as relevant today as it was in 1776”.

Amy Carkeek’s photograph All You Need Is a Telephone and an Open Mind explores the human tendency to turn to the spiritual world in times of uncertainty. With our declining faith in Western democracy, the artifice and theatricality provided by psychics and fortune tellers is akin to the deceptive nature of our current political environment. Carkeek points out our willingness to lean into the ‘smoke and mirrors’ and to partake in these illusions in order to hold onto hope—whatever that may look like.

Thomas Oliver’s photograph An Uneasy Sense of Optimism About the Future chooses to adopt a tentatively positive approach to the incoming year. The image depicts the artist lurching forward into the sun, contrasted by his apprehensive shadow cast on the wall. Oliver’s work indicates the past’s ability to linger in our psyche while also making an impact on our feelings and prospects as we move into a new year.

Utilising his signature smiley face, James Hornsby taps into the symbol’s 90’s origins of youth and
rebellion. Perfect Acid, an already existing digital inkjet print, became a cathartic and stabilising canvas for Hornsby during isolation. Faced with feelings of dread, he defaced the work with a can of black spray-paint, recontextualising the surface to become an inferno of chaotic energy. The face has been repeated over and over (happy, sad, happy, happy, sad...) as if attempting to convince the canvas of its own positivity. Hornsby’s work as well as his subsequent series of wearables included within the exhibition make the bold but cautious statement that “everything is going to be just fine... right?”

Matthew Newkirk’s Catalyst series emerged from the lack of control the artist felt when contemplating the current state of the world. Rather than focusing on the past, or what cannot be changed, Newkirk decided to control his outlook. He began to see these events as catalysts for change. It can be so easy to slip into a state of helplessness when faced with such an overwhelming array of disruptions. Newkirk reminds us that despite this, we still have the choice to engage with these disruptions as a temporary reality containing the possibility for revolutionary results.

Sebastian Moody continues his previous preoccupation with emotional as well as optical perspective when concerning text. His work Global Happiness Spiritually Unfit presents the two phrases arching over one another, toying with the possibility of interlinking. Throughout this year, we have been plagued with reoccurring phrases that have burnt into our very being: pandemic, quarantine, isolation, protest, social distance. The words that bounce around Moody’s work highlight time’s ability to recontextualise our material world. In any previous year, it would be read in an entirely different light. For now, the weight of our current reality sets the tone for Moody’s work, while the possibility for this work to be later exhibited and recontextualised demonstrates the malleability of text. The work therefore not only references what is inherently now but also promises that there will be a new ‘now’ to come.

With one foot placed firmly in the past while the other dips its toe tentatively into the future, DEPART asks its artists as well as its audience to consider our learnings from this year in order to move forward. Artists included within the exhibition provide meaningful points of departure and indicate the vital need for art’s reactive capacity as we sit on the cusp of a new year and ultimately a new world.