ION-In Our Nature, Exhibition at Lost Eden Creative, Dwellingup
ION-In Our Nature is the current exhibition (17 January — 23 February 2020) showing at Lost Eden Creative in Dwellingup, and features the work of eleven Western Australian artists: Melanie Dare, Jo Darvall, Tony Davis, Peter Kovacsy, Ron Nyisztor, Gregory Pryor, Stephanie Reisch, Monique Tippett, Peter Usher, Geoffrey Wake and Tony Windberg.
One of the distinguishing claims of those who identify themselves as artists is that many of them believe that they have always been artists — from birth. The drive to make art is in their nature.
Without a doubt, there is also a great deal of ritual, mystery and mythology surrounding artists and the practice of art that is supported by the idea that artistic ability is a rare gift, bestowed upon few — the canonical geniuses. But my research suggests that those that state that they have always been artists, for as long as they can remember, are not necessarily laying claim to the status of genius. Rather, I found that this idea was fundamentally important in several ways to those who had embarked upon a career as a professional artist.
Firstly, the concept of fulfilling one’s natural inclinations was vital in terms of justifying a decision to take a different, difficult and risky professional path — rather than one of the well-trodden career paths to security and success. The concept was also important for coming to terms with felt difference, and reframing this as a resource and driver— establishing the necessity of creative practice. And lastly, it was also a way of acknowledging that the yields of creative practice are variable and unpredictable, and that they are achieved not only through industry and application, but also through sensibility which can be refined, but is also partly innate.
In the work in this exhibition there is strong evidence of well-honed sensibility, as well as industry and application. It is diverse, but brought together by its makers’ concerns for materiality. Sensibility is at work within the artists’ skilled work to transform materials. But, most importantly, it is at work in the artists’ selections of materials and of subjects. Like a fossicker, the artist turns over the same workings and lives in the same world as the rest of us, but recognises and presents to us the things of value that have been overlooked.
At the entrance to the gallery, and in its windows, the viewer encounters Peter Kovacsy’s four sculptural glass works, cast in coloured, lead crystal. The titles of each reference the atmospheric light conditions in the local environment: elephant rocks, karri forests and the broad sky over the flat Western Australian landscape. For these works, the artist has produced variations on an elegant form that suggests the line of the horizon, with a simple aperture to allow natural light to occupy and illuminate the form. The light is then embodied in the cast crystal, the colour and form reflecting those special moments when light touches landscape.
Also occupying the front of the gallery is a sculpture by Tony Davis, Mantle No 2. This has been created from a found jarrah log which has been subtly and sensitively transformed so that it stands in the space with the presence of a draped feminine figure. As it stands in the space there are echoes of the fragmented classical statuary that has pride of place in museums of western art, and also the dress-maker’s or shop-front mannequin. But the timber, which is burnt and weathered, and wearing its age, is the protagonist in this work. It asks who needs whom in the relationship between people and trees.
To the right of the gallery entrance, Stephanie Reisch’s large oil painting Festivities & Wildfire also references the life and cycles of the Australian bush. The abstract work is painted in the greys, blush pinks and bruised blues that we see in much of our native flora. The artist has created the image from lapping, sinuous, vertical forms that rise rhythmically from the base of the painting and dissipate into the smoky colour fields forming the background in the upper parts of the work. This is undoubtedly a work for the Australian summer of 2019/20, but I think it is optimistic. I see in it a celebration of the unique forms of pendulous eucalypts and understory wildflowers, even while it suggests rising tongues of flame and plumes of smoke.
Entering the rear gallery, one’s eye is met by Peter Usher’s large abstract work Seed. This polychrome wall sculpture references, in a higher key, the subtle sculptural and tonal explorations of light and form by Howard Taylor. In Usher’s work, a sense of imminence and vitality is delivered through the graduated interplay of primary colours and formal elements, creating a sense of compression and containment, as well as exhibiting a will to expansive movement. The piece seeks to embody a moment in sensation that is the prelude to germination and bursting forth.
Near Usher’s work, Monique Tippett’s piece Shadowlines draws on a very similar artistic language from hard edge, colour-field abstraction, to create a work that is very much of its place. The piece is constructed from local timbers, articulated through cutting and colouring to create a pattern in which the marks and their shadows reverberate with the verticality, irregularity and density of the forest understory. Resonant with other works in the exhibition, this piece also references the ways in which light occupies the landscape. In this case two interpenetrating chevrons, one delineated in gold leaf and the other as a dark form, suggest the co-mingling of shadow and sunlight in the bush. The piece has a contemplative presence like an altarpiece, in which reverence for and the experience of wood is foregrounded, both beautiful and poignant.
Contemplation of a different kind is elicited by works by Ron Nyisztor, featuring imagery of the Thylacene, or Tasmanian Tiger. Message in a Bottle appears at first glance to be monochrome canvas in gold, but on closer inspection reveals what seems to be a subtle image of a Thylacene joey in a specimen jar. The diptych, Echo of a Howl, in silvered monochrome, appears to reproduce photographic imagery of living Thylacenes taken before their extinction. These deceptively simple and understated works operate together like a shrine or reliquary to the loss of a unique creature that once inhabited our landscape. These fragments encourage reflection about other indigenous ecological and cultural losses, and perhaps also speak subtly about the passage of local history into national mythology.
In a similar vein, Tony Windberg’s works in the rear gallery also talk about the impacts of colonisation. Two Terra Nullius works feature landscape imagery of Cape Leeuwin executed on peg-board. In one instance the artist appears to have created the image by a process of engraving the melamine surface of the peg-board, and in the other he appears to have created the image through taking an abrasive to the smooth melamine surface to create a tonal image. In another work, Foveal, the artist has engraved a satellite dish with what appears to be an image or map of the stars in the night-sky. In all of these works, the artists has achieved a wonderful feeling of age and patina through the careful use of rust-effect paint and sepia tones. As a result the viewer feels a sense of history that is at odds with the modern and man-made materials in and on which the works have been presented. In each case, the message appears to be about the impermanence and imposition of human apprehension of the world, and the imperviousness of the landscape and firmament that was, and is, and will be, long after we are gone.
In these reflections I have focussed on some of the things that I took away from the show. But any omission on my part to discuss other works is down to the fact that on the occasion of my visit to Lost Eden, I did not have as much time as I would have liked to properly engage with all of the work in the exhibition.
Having travelled two hours along the South Western Highway to the exhibition, from our family holiday spot near Busselton, I arrived at Lost Eden reflecting upon the evident wealth of Western Australia. From the natural beauty of the south west’s coastlines and forests, to the road-trains hauling logs, diverse agricultural properties and infrastructure, and the side-roads leading to unseen mining operations.
I think Lost Eden Creative is in itself a venture of note in this regard. By and large, Lost Eden Creative is an independent initiative of Monique and Peter Tippett. It is a welcome addition to the Gallery Scene in the South West, where shows such as ION can be curated, and work has breathing space to be seen in meaningful dialogue with other works on display. As well as the gallery, it includes a generous and well-appointed living quarters that is intended to support residencies and visiting creatives. It has been conceived as a way of providing opportunities to show quality contemporary art that regional artists find difficult to access, and also as a means of creating connections and exchanges with artists from metropolitan Perth and beyond. As an artist, Monique Tippett has taken her natural inclination to make art, and with considerable energy and investment has set about creating the ideal conditions for that to happen where she lives, and is seeking to take a like-minded community on the journey.
Aside from the quality of the outcomes that I have seen to date, Lost Eden Creative is notable for its considered and strategic approach to making contemporary art happen in place like Dwellingup, and for artists who are geographically disadvantaged. In the current climate, I think those in Perth would all do well to watch this space and to hope for its success as a model for other similar ventures. Better than that, I highly recommend the current exhibition, ION-In Our Nature, and encourage all to visit it while it remains on show until 23 February.
