Chapter 4

5 - 29 April 2023

Workspace 3496 + Gallery, 2/38 Indi Ave, Red Cliffs Vic 3496

Chapter 1 through to Chapter 4 are a series of installations and documentation as a homage and/or parley to the passing of my father. Chapter 4 is the bridge between the installation and the gallery. It is a continuation and response to Chapter 1, installed in 2020. 

Chapter 1 is a site-specific work located on half an acre of planted gum trees and native vegetation in Mildura, Victoria.  

The installation consisted of 12 white linen flags that were hung between these trees with blue nylon string. A sheet of copper was also suspended. The work was placed in situ on the first anniversary of the passing of my father. The flags hung for 12 months while the environment around it shaped the fabric.   My plan was to document the work each time I returned home to Mildura. However, the Pandemic changed that, and instead I was lucky enough to quarantine in Mildura. I documented the work, watching it evolve. The beauty of hearing the fabric and copper blowing in the wind, being able to immerse myself within the work, and to document the installation throughout its many different changing surroundings throughout the year made it even more special.   

The site of the installation was chosen because the native gum trees were planted by my father and I when I was a child, and I have watched them grow since. 

Chapter 1 is a homage and a parley. The white flags act as a conversation that had once occurred, a memory being relived and a means to reflect. The environment that is the Mallee has a special way of shaping a person, just like it shapes the place itself. I wanted to capture this feeling of belonging and moulding of one’s life by the environment that we have: the human hand of loved ones or the weather’s constant impact. By exposing the White Linen to the elements, it too changed and was formed. It became a sound scape, a wind vane and building supplies for the local birds. 

On the second anniversary, Chapter 1 was taken down and replaced by Chapter 2. This time the number of flags was reduced to three. Chapter 2 also was left in situ for 12 months and removed on the third anniversary. 

Chapter 4 falls on the fourth anniversary and is the bridge between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and where the installation has taken me in the many conversations I have had. 

Chapter 4 is an investigation of the relational space that is between an installation and its documentation, and between the words and conversations we use to process the norm and paradoxical continuity of life as we know it. 

In this body of work, the question was how to convey the essence of the previous chapters. Do I recreate? Do I document? How do I convey the sense of time, place and memory? When I started this body of work, I was in uncharted territory. The normal had returned but it wasn’t the normal that I knew. The new norm made me an explorer of many things, and this is how I started to address my senses through collecting and capturing memories, objects, and plant matter, tagging and labelling insignificant objects and attaching something to them.  

Chapter 3 has been constructed from elements of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, objects from this period that reflect this way of exploring and collecting. A single trestle table still stands as the last time an object was placed upon it (by my father). Like a display of strange objects that have one connection, the moment captured and shaped through a conversation. This work draws on the site sample of other works, not in its plant matter but the domestic object.  

The site sample works (works on paper) document the first two chapters through images of the installation, montages, cyanotype of plant matter from the site and mark making using charcoal from past clearings on the very land the installation was on. These works encompass a visual overview of past chapters capturing textures, colours, sense of space and fragility.  

In Chapter 4, the four new linen works are also a sense of capturing or exploring, each is its own conversation of how life and the norm has changed the person I am and how this environment has shaped me.  

I see these four works as the bridge between painting and sculpture, like a form of ‘Expanded Painting’. They are not just a painting on a wall but an object, you can see through them, smell the vegetation from the site through the natural made dyes and understand that they are not just paintings but an extension of the installation. These works are present within the space and present within the conversations I am having with the viewer.  

At the core of the work in Chapter 4 is a willingness to open a dialogue, a parley, and to invite the viewer into not only the gallery space, but their own private and public moments. These parleys give the viewer a choice, an invitation to look closer. You can walk into the gallery and view the work, or you can become part of the works through your own questions and conversations.