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Victorian College of the Arts

 

40 Years of VCA

Artist: Adel Macer

Respondent : Leanne Hermosilla-Silva

The exhibition by Macer includes an arrangement of small black geometric objects on the floor of the space, a larger similar but more complex form protruding from the wall, a photograph of a constructed spatial relationship between two of the objects and two quilts, one hanging from the wall and one on the ground.

The first thing I notice entering the space is a black quilt. It lies across the floor and - at least initially for me - it dominates the room. As much as I notice it as an object, a presence, I also absolutely recognise that it is a quilt. The forty plus year history of the art quilt has led to a myriad of dialogues surrounding quilts in art spaces, and this quilt, made by a female artist, implicitly enters into the historical art discourses of the domestic, gendered art and space, functionality and the decorative, and of course potential border and/or hierarchies between art and craft. And yet Macers' quilt seems somewhat impervious to such dialogue. It is a mesmerizing object. It lies there quietly, both absorbing and reflecting the carefully positioned light that hits it, and it strikes me that if it had a voice what it might say would be something like.

 "Yes, yes, I am aware of my history, but I prefer to maintain elements of mystery".

The next part of the exhibition to capture my attention is the small cluster of black geometric forms on the floor. Or are the on the floor? Some appear to be levitating. I logically know this cannot be the case but the only way to solve this puzzle is to get right down with my head to the ground and peer underneath. What looks like tiny little pins are holding the object just off the ground.

There are obvious formal similarities between these small sculptures and the quilt: they are both black and they are both formed from a series geometric parts (namely triangles) leading to obvious discussions of fractions and the whole.

There are also elements of contrast: the hard, rigidity of the small objects vs the soft malleability of the quilt, the difference in scales, and the historical context of the quilt as being largely domestic, feminine and craft-based, and the geometric abstract sculptural forms historically being associated with the formal, masculine, "high art" of modernism.

The rest of the exhibition expounds upon these relationships. The photograph on the wall is an enlarged image of a spatial relationship between two of the smaller sculptural objects, but one is visibly three-dimensional whereas one is only visible as the outline of a black triangle. The whole and its components.

Like the floor of the space, there is also both a quilt and a hard geometric form installed on the wall. I enjoy this playfulness around notions of presentation. While I think they do continue the relationships formed in the other work, I'm not sure that their presence adds anything new to the exhibition. It feels a little like the same thing is being said twice, but that's not really a problem for me. In fact I quite often enjoy it. If I'm honest about what it is that makes me most uneasy about the wall work it is the presence of the second quilt. It is not anything about the quilt itself. It is a fantastic object. The use of colour is both slick and quirky. But having another quilt in the exhibition does something to the black quilt. Just by being there it renders the black quilt more of a quilt, pushing it further into a dialogue of quilts in art spaces.  Ultimately for me it steals away a little of the black quilts' otherness - its seductive enigma.

That being said, overall it is a compelling show. It seems almost like Macer is challenging anything that can be said about a thing by placing objects into a context in which they are both aware of and impartial to their own history. She creates and undoes relationships with historical discourses simultaneously. Each component appears to suggest "I am more than my history because I am here, like this, now."

*NB The second quilt had been removed at the time this response was presented to the artist.

Respondent : Thorsten Richter

Late of last week I came to be involved in dialogue with my partner and her friend at our house in which I was asked about my movements in this current week. I shared, among other things, about my need to write a short presentation about one Adele Macer’s work for a seminar, and was subsequently asked about the type of work that Macer does. “Well”, I said,“ her work last year featured horses” and continued by stating that I expected this presentation to feature a quilt. There was momentary silence before my partner asked, “How does she know?” with the sort of emphasis that left me feeling as though I was the only one who doesn’t. My persistent requests at being given insight into what exactly Macer and the gaggle of girls at my house knew were left unanswered; and I was left to fend for myself as I frogmarched into the gallery in order to contend with work that encapsulated the allure of a Masonic handshake witnessed by a bereft outsider.

As it turns out, Macer’s work has indeed come to consist of not one but two quilts, several sculptural pieces and a photograph featuring one of said sculptures. My feeling is that Macers’s work is not devoid of content but that her propellant is private rather than political, her work heavily dependent upon logic and calculation but not to the extent of controlling the experience of the viewer; in fact, the absence of a statement appeared to place the full subjective responsibility on the viewer. The seeming overriding determinant of the work is style as content with the key to the door guarding the content being handed to the visitor upon entering the space that hosts the work. There are black geometric shapes presented and represented in geometric abstraction / repetition across all the individual pieces, in a manner that alludes to a reconfiguration of Malevich’s Suprematism, and I’d expect, also influenced by conceptual art borne of abstraction beyond the 1960’s.

In the works presented, Macer either alludes to meaning of her own personal experience or consciously sets out to generate such in the viewer, which as I have indicated I believe the case to be. The idea of meaning through experience in terms of geometry isn’t a product limited to the avant-garde of the 20th century but can be traced back to Islamic expression, which throughout the ages contained itself to the geometric as a vehicle, one that avoided spelling out the fundament of its message. The fundamental question in the face of this work was thus, whether considered semantics were at play or whether my experience in the face of Macer’s work was limited to sensation generated within the confines of self.

Knowing of Macer’s interest in the machinations of desire, I couldn’t help but think of the Freudian and Lacanian interpretations - which from the German and French respectively translate as ‘wish’ in lieu of any notions pertaining to Eros – with her objects seeming not unlike carbon on the precipice of turning to diamond, indicative to me of a process of be-coming. Whether by accident or design, the other great integral to desire - melancholy - appears to be served by the continuity of colour through the works; reminiscent of death, authority and so dense as to resemble pitch.

Having said that, and withstanding games in linguistics, desire always pertains to the two great vehicles of sexuality or hunger, and the locale from which it emanates is suggested by some to be firmly rooted in the unconscious, the apparent land of id. In recognition of the merit of Freudian analysis being disputed in contemporary times, I will undertake a societal transgression, take liberty and report from my own apparent personal id in relation to Macer’s black quilt. The continuous thread of triangulated patterns running through the work might well have been a play of shape but made me re-contemplate the idea of the holy trinity in relation to the body politic, as well as ménages à trois.

I have direct experience with quilts. In recent times I have returned home from a two months journey and found that in my absence, my partner and a friend of hers spent a considerable amount of time constructing a quilt of significant complexity. I was informed at every opportunity, while at sea, of the quilts progress; and upon my return was introduced to it as I might have been to a new born that was abandoned on my door step in my absence. Even now with weeks passed, whenever I re-enter the house from being in the world, the quilt makes an appearance to encase me as though prompted back to my corner after a round with a Greco-Roman wrestler.

Maybe, just maybe the definitive secret of quilts and horses has escaped me; but Macer’s work engenders in me a questioning about the nature of subjectivity, particularly the question of where the sense of self might be placed in relation to the abstract, whether in fact an object is dependent on a self for its existence, and to what extent ideologies hold sway over such a relationship.

Artist: Amelia Hirchauer

Respondent : Ry David Bradley

Amelia Hirschauer presents us with with four large format prints, installed directly to the wall in combination with a sculpture and a series of found organic objects including sticks and rocks. A geometric and faceted sculpture piece coated in white sits amongst the gravel. At the other end of the space a working drawing produced in miniature scale is installed delicately with pins so that it protrudes from the wall, and serves as a diminutive counterpoint to the flatness of the prints that it faces.

The prints are not so much prints, as they appear also as paintings that have been produced by digital printing. It is evident that Hirschauer’s background in graphic design informs the technical proficiency of this kind of work, but Hirschauer seems to suggest that interpreting the work from this viewpoint might be largely incidental given that the range of approaches to material in the show are disparate – from the organic to the commercial. With such a range of material aspects to consider, the show suggests that each is bound to the rest not by its material state, but rather by what seeks to depict. It is almost as if the medium or structure of the approach is to Hirschauer much more similar than disparate. Whether in pencil, digital print, or modelled in sculpture – there is a focus on the animal, mouth agape, teeth bared in all but two or three of the works. These darkly lit feral animals in aggressive states are presented against docile, light pastel renderings with an implied innocence. An engagement with the organic or the natural seems to be the strongest concern in all the work, perhaps to the point that it becomes a query intended for the viewer. The screaming rodents bring to mind distortions of the human form, from Francis Bacon to Edvard Munch – but the agony now is not human. It has been supplanted to the animal. There is a tension between what is seen, where some are soft and alluring; in others there is an entirely opposite effect. It’s no longer cute.

It is not uncommon now for an artist to compose ideas on a computer, I know many artists who do it is a precursor to rendering their painting in oil or acrylic - but by having included a small pencil drawing it seems to be suggested that Hirschauer is interested to invert the typical process. Rather than beginning on the computer as a draft or model as is usually done, the tiny pencil drawing seems to be the model for the finished imagery presented in the prints, flipping or inverting the process. This calls into question the idea of publishing. If the computer is the place where things are published, or dispersed into the network of media, and somehow this is traditionally viewed as being abject to nature – it is as Hirschauer appears to suggest also the place where this role can be undone. 

Respondent : Adele Macer

Amelia Hirschauer presents four large images and two sculptural works. The images appear like watercolour on paper, and consist of four different animals. The fist two are deer and a bear - both of which are native to most continents except Australia. In fact, the Australian landscape has nothing like deer or bears. We are transported elsewhere. The two other mystery animals appear like 'animals in general' - not quite assigning themselves to a recognised species. There is a 'bird in general' and a 'mammal in general', one is threatening, and one has been threatened.

I am drawn to the deer image. It appears like an image of love, male and female deer. While often associated with forests, it is interesting to note that many deer are ecotone* species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets (for cover) and prairie and savanna (open space). It is also interesting to note that after mating, the male deer usually never meets the female deer ever again. I have a feeling this moment wont last…

However, the pair of deer appear like a partnered couple, the male is watching out for danger with his upward, alert gaze, and the female with her downward facing, motherly gaze which through the history of religious painting we have come to understand as the ultimate nurturing pose. But this is just before danger - the hunter is lurking close and is tracing their path.

The muted palette of washed out yellows and pinks appear like a sun-drenched memory. Is the sun fading, or is it coming into being? Either coming or going - this moment is in transition. Dream-like and quiet, peaceful impending doom.

I'm watching from afar, not from this world I see before me, but from another. I am a helpless onlooker; like in a dream where I know what is about to happen yet I can do nothing to stop it. Like when my dead friend Daniel visits me in my dreams. I know he will die as that is the way of things, but gee, it is good to see him again. I accept that death is a part of life, but I revel in this sweet, sunny glow for as long as I am allowed.

The temporary flash and transitional nature remind me of the fragility of human existence. An invisible barrier, behind which promises utopia yet delivers limbo and a deception that I will not fall prey to, separates the deer and I. It is the deer that is caught in this in-between place, and I am returned to the world left feeling a sweet bitterness.

If the deer takes me to my dreams, the bear takes me to my nightmares, and rather than just looking on, I am implicated in this one. This animal is about to strike me. My vision is drunk with shock, and there is no escape. All I can see are sharp teeth as the bear blocks out the moonlight. This is not impending doom this is doom. 

Once again I am tricked by the painterly textures that are illusioned by a digital brush. However, I do not mistrust what I see, as I look closer I can see the tiny printed dots that make up the digital printed image. I know this process, yet I am still in awe of the technique - how does Amelia get this to look so much like a watercolour? I am in between worlds - a painted world and a digital world, reality and fantasy, nightmare and dream, day and night, soft and hard, fluffy and sharp… I could continue as there are so many binaries that operate within this work that I can never quite sit with an absolute meaning or reading. But maybe that is the point. Maybe placelessness is inherent in work of digital-print nature. The very fact that Amelia chose to print (make object) what was created by light, pulls together two opposing, but in this case, reliant, mediums to explore the vast distance of an American artist living in Australia.

These works are psychological - they play on my mind and in my mind. They take me somewhere else, but not a physical landscape, but another realm. In my mind, or out of my body, both and neither.

*An ecotone is a transition area between two adjacent but different patches of landscape, such as forest and grassland. It may be narrow or wide, and it may be local (the zone between a field and forest) or regional (the transition between forest and grassland ecosystems). An ecotone may appear on the ground as a gradual blending of the two communities across a broad area, or it may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line.

Respondent : Chang-Ching Yeh

The works of Amelia in this exhibition are mainly paintings and sculptures. They are all somehow related to distorted animals.  The first thing got my attention is the large digital paintings on wall.  According to my experience, digital paintings often gave me an alien feeling, because they look like painting (some can even truly mimic the brush marks of oil painting) but without the sense of an artist’s hand.  When I figured out I’m facing to a digital art, I automatically became to search for the black humor or anti-aesthetic elements which often happens in contemporary digital art.  However, Amelia’s digital painting is more like using digital as media to do oil painting without emphasis digital skills.  After the reading of the brushmarks (which I really enjoy to do) I started to read the figures and the possibilities in the symbols.  It is easy to see that the animals are somehow hybrid or shattered.  And finally I tried to read the two sculptures; one is an animal on tablecloth posing like a specimen, the other is a rock with teeth and fur on nature-like ground.  To make my opinion clear, there will be three parts of my statement to the works: 1, The hybrid creatures 2, The shattered images 3, The sculptures.

From my point of view, a hybrid image has a different meaning in art than in biology, and I will focus to discuss it from an artist’s perspective.  We can find thousands of hybrid creature images in art history.  For example in Bosh’s paintings, the animal’s figures are mixed with different animals or even tools.  But why these kinds of images are heavily used throughout the art history?  The mythology scene was one of the main topics in old masters’ painting.  And then from Romanticism, artists’ focuses moved from represent the reality or historical scene to represent the invisible feelings.  Using hybrid figures to represent the uncanny imaginations or emotions in Symbolism is an obvious example.  In modern art, the Freudian unconscious theory triggered the modern artists to seek inspiration from their dreams. In Surrealists’ paintings, it is even harder to find a figure without being mixed up or distorted.  In the art today, hybrid-creature images are still using in various ways, from the issue of cloning technology to biological mutation.  Amelia’s works looks more like the combination of animals to lifeless items. Looking at the screaming animals, it is hard not to think about they are under some kind of torture.  Maybe it is a protest to the inhuman living experiment?  However the issue in the paintings is serious or not, the sweet colors and animal figures still have a sense of a child’s fantasy world.[1]

In this part, I will focus on the possibilities why artists created shattered images according to Gilles Deleuze’s theory. In his book Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, he talked about why and how artists break their images.  In the movement of modern art, artists wanted to find better ways to express the invisible feeling, the image only belongs to the inward realm, but the old methods to represent the reality was just not qualified, so artists tried to find better ways to capture the invisible strength, the pure pictorial strength.  In Deleuze’s theory, the feeling or the chaos behind the image can only be felt when the cliché on it is wiped out.  These clichés just stick hard in our brain, like when we look at the painting of deer, the image is so clear that we immediately think of those beautiful creatures in our brain, and then the personal experience goes in, we may started to make stories by the image.  And this is why the power of the image stops affecting on us.  The image has its own power that is directly function to the nerve system, but to reveal the strength of image, the figure needs to be shattered.  Then how to break it is?  As my own understanding of the theory, it is through the processes of deliberate manual madness.  But this is another theory which is less related to this discussion, so I will just leave it.  Using the above theory to analysis Amelia’s paintings, it is easy to see that the hybrid birds image has a stronger pictorial strength than the others.  I can still feel the light and softness of feathers, despite that I can’t tell what really inside that hybrid creature. And the uncertainty and the upside-down wings gave me an uneasy feeling last longer than other images.[2]

Artist: Sarah Bunting

Respondent : Joe Bonaccorso

The work exhibited by Sarah Bunting belongs to an area in the visual art which lies primarily on conceptual premises, made present to our senses through an installation. The installation comprises a large number of elements: two chairs, paintings, drawings, posters, a small white board, a dictionary, a calculator, and others. The work is positioned in a corner of approximately five square meters. The objects are displayed in a disorderly and compressed manner. At this stage of my observations, it is relevant to re-state that visual art is, above all, about ways of seeing, which are informed by the materiality of the art work; no matter how conceptually driven, meanings coalesce through visuality. For me, the visual impact of the work conveys an uneasy feeling and a sense of loss. 

The installation depicts a meeting room for the fictional Failure Society. There are some vague indications of what this society is about; protest and revolution comes to mind. For instance, on the white board it is written "the time and date of the" and a drawing of a map with arrows, which indicate a plan of attack. On the board there are also newspaper cut-outs showing military/guerillas as well as the US president. However, the work is multilayered. There are many other things going on at the same time.

The work relies heavily on text, which gives the viewer somewhat concrete clues about the artist's intentions. It seems that one of Sarah Bunting's preoccupations is about authority, which may generate oppression. As long as there is a dominant class, there will always be potential for protest and revolution. The textual component of the work is varied. However, there is a unifying subtext about knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and power, which can be inferred from phrases such as “what is it that you're not telling me", "there are 18694 ways to be right", "201568 is the sum total of your ignorance", etc. The dictionary and the calculator are also signs of knowledge. On the floor there is a drawing/picture of previous manifestation with lots of phrases under the title "Truth is called to account”. Those phrases contain lots of numbers; numbers of pronouncements, numbers opportunities, of theories, of limits, of lessons, of lies, and so on. The largest number accounts for “chances to fail”. Statistics and quantification also seem to relate to knowledge and power.

Curiously, there is a painting on the floor, placed as if it has been discarded. The painting depicts a large figure on the edge of the sea. It may represent Colossus, a symbol of power. It also brings to mind the fact that painting has held a position of dominance as a form of artistic expression; here, however, it has been downgraded and overthrown.

A rather mysterious component of the work is the depiction of cone shaped hoods. It is stated in the work that the hood is a symbol of the feminine and the balaclava of the masculine. It is perhaps intended to comment on the imbalance of power between the genders. A more visually dominant and even more puzzling component is a poster with the ”words” HA HA HA.

One of the striking aspects of the work is that, at first sight, it is seems that the meeting of the Failure Society has already been taken place and is void of people. However, soon the viewer realizes that the space is populated by images; there are two head portraits on painted canvasses (one leaning against the chair and another one on the chair), which suggests faces of members of the society. The faces are depicted in an expressionist way, terrorist-like people. The installation places the viewer as a spectator, an outsider. This is due to the fact that there is no room to walk in and around the installation space. Otherwise, should the viewer be able to enter the meeting room, a feeling of complicity would arise.  

The immediate impact of the work reveals aspects in the tradition of the social realism art movement. However, the issues that the work brings about remain open; there is no specificity of a single narrative. Rather, we are asked to consider the ideas and implications of protest and revolution in a broad sense, without nominal causes. The viewer is invited to participate in a dialogue about the natures of protest and revolution. However, in this dialogue one may find more questions than answers. Are there political messages? Do works of this nature have the power to stimulate or incite an impulse towards revolution? Is the work aiming to model or change the viewer’s perspectives towards protest in general? Why is it important to comment through art on the issues above? The implications are many. The work may also usher a discussion on current events, such as the London riots--protest or pure vandalism? Although Sarah Bunting's work is not simply a pretext in order to debate factual accounts, it is likely that it would promote those types of responses.

Respondent : Danielle McCarthy

Protest has always held a sense of romance for me. However, the reality of actually being involved can fall short of this expectation. In my experience it begins with an electric energy that connects all to the one cause. But in the end there is a feeling of deflation, when the protest is over, you go home and life resumes as before. This is not the image we have of the protests of the 70s. Those protests are perceived as charged events where people are carted off in divvy vans and whipped up into a frenzy for the cause. They were the instruments of social change. Activism has changed, demonstrations are constantly undermined by the media as being driven by minority groups and self interest. Sarah Buntings installation recognizes the multiple dimensions of the traditional organized protest, it's past, it's present and it's future. On the one hand it may be viewed as a  shrine to the past fire of protest, on the other It may be a poignant reminder that all protests come to and end. It can also signify all that takes place between.

Buntings installation suspends us in this betweeness, at one moment in the charged environment of a call to arms whilst at the same time the exhausted moments post protest when all engaged participants pack up and go home. It is not just the limp banners and flags that speak of the protest march but the paraphernalia of protest. From the discarded pad and paper on chairs to the whiteboard with notes, drawings and documents pinned to it, we are reminded of organization. And yet, the layering suggests a kind of chaos, perhaps organized chaos? There are multiple messages at work within the textual elements of this installation. On the left we see the words in bold uppercase text  "HA.HA.HA" and on the Right we see the message 'FAILURE SOCIETY... Meeting Today...On the agenda: in between these words we can read many differing and contradictory messages. There is a strong allusion to piracy in the work, the 'flags' being black and white. Though there are no skull and cross bones in evidence, I am reminded of the jolly Roger. Which if you consider the implications ties political protest together with piracy. This is exacerbated by the density and compression present in the way the work is installed. This appears to me as the source of the energy present in the work. But, one might question what the focus of that energy might be towards. In light of the recent London riots this in it's self becomes an interesting point. These riots have been viewed as anything from opportunistic unlawfulness (piracy) to the revolution of disaffected youth against a capitalist system. The point here is that a fragmented group does not make a revolution. In my view Bunting puts us in the presence of the icons of free speech in a playful manner, the work at a certain point turns upon us and begs the question "what do you stand for?"

Amongst this enquiry the paintings included in this installation introduce another dimension. The larger paintings take on the fecund attributes of feminine organs, these organic forms that could be black polyps or ovaries surrounded by pink gelati flesh. In the same scenes they appear menaced by an angular black phallus or hood. the darkness of the phallus is juxtaposed against the softness of pink and mustard yellows. Being that these paintings are the only colour evident amongst the layered black and white textual works they take on significance and a weight within the balance of the installation. It is this dimension that may become allegorical of contemporary feminisms, one need only look to the recent 'Slut Walk' that had many women wondering if this was a brand of feminism they wanted to endorse. The complexity that is apparent within such ideological organizations may indeed be the factor that works at cross purposes to co-ordinated activism and social change.

The smaller paintings have a power and gravitas of their own, they appear as faces anguished and bloody with blind staring eyes. Their presence and repetition add a menacing dynamic to the work that perches it on the precipice between the playful university demonstration and the mindless power of the riot. The signs of protest the banner and flag are potent symbols of the right to free speech in a democratic society. Upon the backdrop of history and world politics people have sacrificed their lives willingly to gain or protect it this basic human right. In my view, Buntings installation calls into question the both the right to free speech and the manner with which we exercise it.

Artist: Joanne Davenport

Respondent : Simon Abrahams

Attention passengers we will be landing at approximately 1700 hours. As you can see by looking out the windows the weather is grey and overcast. Clearing up though becoming fine and a top of 18 degrees with a possible shower. Also you may have noticed that we are flying over the North Eastern part of the border between NSW and Victoria. If you look down you can see parts of the land are still recovering from the devastating bush fires.

On another note folks we happen to be passing a sky writing message where the writers have been experimenting with new techniques. Apparently the use of blue is so that on the overcast days the message will still be visible from the ground. Enjoy the rest of the flight and thank you for flying SA Airways.

Mate, I don't believe this pilot, coloured smoke??? I'm gonna have to Google it. He's right! Google never lies! It says here they've also been using acrobatic planes. Listen to this, so they can produce cursive writing. Amazing! What next?

Well, that explains the blue streaks in the sky. I can't quite make it out though, I'm pretty sure it's just swirls. That's got to be a sign though. A sign that I'm getting something to eat with a swirl.

Respondent : Laura Skerlj

ad infinitum: again and again, in the same way; forever

There is an eternal incompletion in drawing. It is mythical, honest, imperfect and truthful. /It makes declarations, coming into fruition as a permanent mark on a page. If you try to erase the mark, there will be a trench where it once was. /Drawing unites thought to action. It doesn’t close things. /It has been seen to presuppose something that will come after it, something complete, like a real artwork.

Jo Davenport has created a series of drawings that make reference to her great grandfather’s will. They are blue and white in colour. They are larger than a will should be, less clear, more painterly and ‘elaborated’. Although these works do not have a sense of completion, it is not because they are unfinished, but instead as they exemplify the nature of drawing; a continuum of the inconclusive ancestral mark. Neolithic cave paintings might be where we imagine this (drawing) all began. However, this line continues, in a mode of art making that has surpassed the notion of a ‘preliminary sketch’, gaining rejuvenated popularity and contemporary relevance in the past decade[i].

Drawing can be seen as ‘work in process’. However, this could cement it in a stage that is unsatisfactory for final presentation. It may be more apt to consider drawing as a continuation of an infinitum, both formally and conceptually; as something that does not require completion, and instead hooks into the oldest, universal way of seeing. As mentioned, drawing’s new found popularity implies that being involved in the middle of something, or ‘in process’, is not problematic but instead exciting! That in becoming part of the process (of seeing, making and articulating the human experience) does not make it inferior to something that involves itself with closure, like painting might. Instead drawing engages with what has been defined by its tautologous, or thought-like, nature. A tautology is something that is said twice in two different ways, and this notion is inherent in drawing’s ability to “describe its own making in its becoming”[ii]. In other words, as drawing is such an immediate act, it only comes into itself in the process of its creation. As you draw, or make a mark, you find out what you know.

In Davenport’s case, the original will, belonging to her great grandfather, was a drawing in itself. That drawing, however pragmatic, found out its requests in the process of it being written. In turn, the artist has redrawn the original document. However, through the use of abstraction, colour, distorted scales and a conversation with art, the artist has extended the original dialogue. In this way, the representation of an instructional ‘drawing’ (such as a will, map or letter) could only really be entered back into through drawing as its original mode.

Legally binding, spiritual, expensive and natural, the blue of Davenport’s work speaks symbolically of permanence. This deep, warm blue is has long been associated with the transcendental. It is the colour of endless spaces (oceans, skies before they become too dark, sleep, space…). Its experience is disarming, and seems to make the mind ‘fuzzy’. However, as this colour is not applied like it might be to a surface in painting (where the application of layers of paint often obliterate a background entirely), this blue maintains a relationship with the white of the ground in the way drawing does. Perhaps in drawing the mark has a relationship with what it imprints; the contrasting background assures the line’s presence. In this, Davenport’s blue line, made not from a dry material but instead from paint or ink, seems to signify both this spiritual colour (as a will is a spiritual document of sorts), but also the legal permanence inherent in black or blue. The effect is pledging, as is the content. The abstraction makes in a memory.

Although this body of work speaks about drawing, there is an extension of dialogue away from the original document (the will), and towards a larger conversation about art. The drawings, in their large scale, with their choice of paint as a medium, make reference to painting while maintaining ‘the mark’ as a fundamental strength. Whereas in painting you can conceal and layer, build, over paint and effect, the notion of drawing rests instead on the inability to disturb the truth. If a line is broken, it is one genuine mark intercepted with another, each mark having a similar weight. Even in the smaller framed works, the building up of paint around the textual line only pays homage to the initial drawing, seeking not to annihilate it but instead to create a great wall around it, honouring drawing as the first way of making something seen.

On the floor there are a series of steel trays (sculptures) that have gathered rust. Perhaps they have been left outside for a long period of time, with oxidisation occurring in an organic pattern (or drawing) on their exterior. However, the trays are lined in water, and reflect the largest drawing in their surface. Something about this speaks of painting, as an illusion created by light and reflection, rebounding from a watery body that, in keeping, in also linked to the transcendental.

Holistically, the gallery becomes a place where drawing, sculpture and the effect of painting convene; the spatial expansion of the work becoming engaged with a formal discussion on how drawing relates to other modes of art making.

Jo Davenport uses her intuition about line, colour and composition to re-enact and extend the wishes of her great grandfather. The personal obligation in this work—to make a historical family document live again—is made possible through the artist’s engagement with drawing as a mode that is eternally incomplete, and therefore can extend throughout time. The trays become paddocks, brown like earth, a country divided between loved ones. The reflection imposed on top is the honouring of these wishes. In turn, the reference to mathematical equations such as the Fibonacci sequence (along the bottom of the framed works) acts as the run-on effect of one person’s wishes upon the remaining family.

Although this body of work is centred around the artist’s personal connection to a family document, its specificity is not alienating; it is transferable as any piece of sacred information, inscribed with the honesty and imperfection that drawing demands.

Through the re-creation of a will, and including it in a formal discussion with drawing, Davenport has engaged with the measuring of a lifetime, and its extension, like a line, past that end.