Homebound @ CCAS (2021)

HOMEBOUND

Canberra Contemporary Art Space Board and Staff respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the Canberra and the ACT region, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples on whose unceded lands our galleries are located; their Ancestors, Elders past and present; and recognise their ongoing connections to Culture and Country. We also respectfully acknowledge all traditional custodians throughout Australia whose art we have exhibited over the past 38 years, and upon whose unceded lands the Board and Staff travel.

Front cover: JOEL ARTHUR Forest 2020,

Oil and acrylic on polyester, 150 x 180cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie

HOMEBOUND JOEL ARTHUR EMMA BEER RORY GILLEN AIDAN HARTSHORN ROSALIND LEMOH NATALIE MATHER ROBBIE KARMEL CURATED BY DAVID BROKER

HOMEBOUND

Homebound is a story of resilience and survival. The romantic stereotype of the impoverished, introverted artist, working solo in their garret rang strangely true in 2020 but this was no matter of choice. As COVID-19 exposed the developing cracks in every culture and society, preying upon the vulnerable, artists with their already fragile career paths suddenly found themselves in a particularly precarious position. Unlike other industries, the arts and practitioners who have received little to zero support from Government were literally, left to their own devices. It is these devices that Homebound focuses on.

With programs torn asunder by lockdowns, closures and plummeting incomes, art galleries have been required to rethink the way they program and the ways they are able to work with artists and audiences. International and interstate programs have become almost impossible as travel restrictions and sudden border closures continue to plague a globalised cultural sector. As we enter into 2021 the crisis is far from over, it is not even possible to consider an exhibition that has not somehow been impacted by the crisis.

In a year that almost wasn’t, Homebound is a homonym: to be confined to the home while also being a journey home, where artists have found space to look back and develop new directions in unexpected circumstances.

Previous page: NATALIE MATHER cardiopharmacy 2020,

Oil, acrylic, spray paint and enamel, 175 x 345cm, triptych Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Like a number of artists in 2020 Natalie Mather did not always have access to her studio at the Stables, Victorian College of the Arts, and spent much of the year drawing from her kitchen table. It was her three-panel painting cardiopharmacy (2020), however, that seemed most appropriate for Homebound in that it describes a state that could be applied to the year in its entirety. If Futurism reflected the post war energy and dynamism of the 1920s and 30s, Mather’s immersive paintings are evocative of the complex global malaise resulting from myriad national responses to pandemic: from lockdown, to herd immunity and in some cases, complete denial. Elements of Vorticism, Cubism, Geometric Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, along with powerful architectural and design referents populate her vibrant canvases. As seductive as they are jarring, each series explores the idea of ‘heterotopia’, a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. COVID-19 generated such a heterotopic world including all of these things.

The emergence of the unfamiliar within familiar worlds exposed dystopic cracks in societies causing populations to come to terms with difference, to adapt to new ‘norms’ that would facilitate the maintenance of health and survival.

Like a mirror, Mather’s painting is a heterotopia, a real object that ‘reflects’ and relates to the world around it while also creating an abstract world of pure form within. In crisis we respond by building new worlds - our home for instance, becomes our work place while our work places are temporarily abandoned. The formerly neglected ‘heterotopias of deviation’, such as hospitals, asylums, prisons, rest homes and cemeteries, ‘places of otherness’, suddenly moved to the forefront of every news bulletin while our homes became places of incarceration.

Robbie Karmel’s practice during the pandemic was confined to a bedroom at his parents’ house while he fitted out his studio, an ambitious undertaking that struggled to develop in the circumstances that defined this period. His largely monochromatic Untitled (2020-21) drawings on paper are a visual diary of the year and address the compacted difficulties of being an artist surviving in a space that seemed even less appreciated in times when minds focus on immediate environments and creating spaces for survival. A drawing each day captures the on-going struggle and increasing depression that results from feelings of isolation and futility; producing work in the context of a society gripped by fear and dislocation. Every drawing reflects the mood of the day and while there are many moments of humour there is also consistent anxiety.

Karmel’s Crisis Table (2020) upon which more works are stacked sits apart from the overall abjection of his installation by way of its fine, French polished wood grain tabletop sourced from within the studio. Related to the drawings by contrast, Karmel has invested a significant amount of time and energy into an object that might never be adequately functional as either furniture or artwork, and importantly, acquires unrealistic value. It is a table that ultimately questions its own existence while also questioning its maker’s involvement in the arts. The shiny finish ironically reflects the angst evident in drawings that convey the artist’s ambivalence for activity in a locked down environment. With a persistent emphasis on challenge Karmel’s Headbox drawings (2019-2021) invite his audience to make drawings in a demanding situation where they are blinded by the opaque headwear. While many participants engage with the fun of producing these works with faculties disabled there are darker implications when seen in the critical context of Karmel’s overall practice.

ROBBIE KARMEL Headbox drawings (Homebound installation) 2019 - 2021,

Oil stick, graphite, charcoal on 220 gsm paper, cardboard, pine, nails,

118 x 27 x 31cm; paper 50 x 76cm ` Photo by Brenton McGeachie

ROBBIE KARMEL Untitled drawings (detail) 2020 - 2021,

Graphite and coloured pencil on 110gsm and 220gsm cartridge paper, 42 x 60cm

Crisis Table 2020 - 2021,

Spotted gum, Victorian ash, Blackbutt, blonde shellac, 77 x 170 x 75cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie

JACQUELINE BRADLEY Peach Crowns 2020,

Bronze, linen, peaches, 124 x 115 x 108cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

JACQUELINE BRADLEY Unsolicited Proposals Unit (installation photo) 2020, Mixed media, dimensions variable, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

ROBBIE KARMEL Untitled drawings (detail) 2020 - 2021,

Graphite and coloured pencil on 110gsm and 220gsm cartridge paper, 42 x 60cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Rosalind Lemoh describes her contribution as originating from a ‘stream of consciousness’ comprising private moments in public spaces as she took solace in outdoor exercise; walking and cycling throughout Canberra over the year. Her texts printed in black type on Perspex in HI-VIS colours are the concentrated ‘quotes’ that reveal patterns of thought during a time of continual disruption caused by bushfires, dense smoke, pandemic and political upheaval that raged throughout the world following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 and consequent Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations. Issues pertaining to the BLM movement are magnified by the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on peoples of colour throughout the world. The concrete cycle helmet, central to each of her works, is an object of changing significances, associated initially with safety and protection only to end as symbol of control, worn as part of riot gear by branches of state charged with subduing the protestors. Lemoh’s titles on Perspex, like thought bubbles wedged into the helmets, nonneutralvoice, Colour Me, black and Rise. Fall. Climb convey a sense of burgeoning disquiet as thoughts turn to her Sierra Leonian heritage and position amongst the African diaspora in Australia and throughout the world. Thus she questions the effectiveness of her own voice in the context of such turbulent times.

Using bare industrial building materials such as concrete, besser block ‘plinths’ and Perspex, emphasising structure over decorative design, Lemoh’s presentation is brutalist and speaks to the monolithic icons of Brutalism next door to the gallery: The High Court of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia. In the tradition of brutal architecture her works are materially uncompromising, contained within the space of the gallery while incorporating spaces through which the audience can see what lies outside. From certain angles the High Court of Australia, Australia’s symbol of justice, becomes a background for Lemoh’s towers of contemplation while from other sides, the work directs the audience back to where it all began, a path populated by cyclists, scooters, joggers and walkers each bearing their own inner monologues.

Left: ROSALIND LEMOH Rise. Fall. Climb. (detail) 2020,

Cast concrete bike helmet, Perspex, vinyl, 50 x 60 x 30cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie Following pages: ROSALIND LEMOH all-you-me (detail) 2020,

Cast concrete bike helmet, Perspex, vinyl, 50 x 60 x 30cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie Colour Me (detail) 2020,

Cast concrete bike helmet, Perspex, vinyl, 50 x 60 x 30cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie

ROSALIND LEMOH Homebound installation 2021, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

RORY GILLEN Transduction 1 2020,

Aluminium dye sublimation print, amplifier, surface transducers, copper, acrylic, 51 x 76cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Transcription II and III 2020,

Aluminium dye sublimation print, 30 x 30cm each, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

AIDAN HARTSHORN Growth 2021, Wambuwany (kangaroo) fur, found objects, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

During the first wave of COVID-19 Rory Gillen considered his ongoing practice as a photo media artist and how he could translate the image making process, from a physical object to a photographic object, and the distortions that can occur within this transformation. High gloss prints of a found circuit board are the focal point from which he created the works Transcription I-V (2020) and stem from his desire to understand or translate the function of this ‘hieroglyphic object’ while drawing attention to the humanity and creativity embedded in unnatural objects such as the technologies we employ on a daily basis and yet know so little about, both in terms of their aesthetics and machinery. Gillen compares his process to transcribing a conversation onto the physical dimensions of a page, and how translations and distortions can occur when mapping time to space. This time to space map also occurs during the scanning process used to capture all the images in this body of work.

Transduction, another process of conversion, is the transfer of energy from one form to another, whether human senses are able to experience that energy or not. Commonplace transductions are essential to the functioning of networks and their (human) perceived silence often belies incredible amounts of abstracted computational labour. Transduction 1 (2021) emits sounds collected by recording the electromagnetic fields created by a flatbed scanner as it captures an image, drawing attention to the unheard information that saturates our environments – an image of a sound and sound of an image.

Like an island between the two main gallery spaces, Aidan Hartshorn’s Growth (2021) signals new directions for his practice that consider furniture (and materials) as vehicles for discussion around conflicting identities imposed upon First Nations peoples by a persistent colonial hangover. His installation is an impression of a colonial parlour created with minimal means: two dilapidated chairs, Wambuwany (kangaroo) fur and a worn carpet. Importantly, Hartshorn’s materials one might store in a garage, find or borrow, and the components are reminiscent of a minimal stage set where evocative objects ask the audience to fill the gaps. Bridging two sections of the exhibition Hartshorn’s installation almost conspiratorially draws on the formal architecture of the gallery space to highlight and evaluate unresolved tensions between cultures and ancestries. Although removed and representing different contemporary movements nearby works seem to complete the image providing ‘décor’ for the parlour. Nestled amongst the pillars and gallery walls the ‘room’ seems cosy, familiar, however, upon closer inspection, it is alienating; a home that is far from home.

Wambuwany fur creeps like a parasitic tumour from the torn, cracked surfaces of chairs made from native timbers, representing the struggle of First Nations people across Australia, who continue to endure collective trauma resulting from a ‘colonial past’ is far from passed.

With Walgalu and Wiradjuri heritage Hartshorn discloses feelings of constraint that arise from conflicting European and Aboriginal ancestries. He confesses to an appreciation for colonial aesthetics while expressing a love of and connection to the organic nature of Indigenous customs and cultures. Revealing a personal battle with clashing identities Hartshorn asks audiences to examine their place in an ever-shifting cultural ecosystem. The tensions created between each element of Growth reminds us of the anxiety, displacement, and struggle for survival experienced during 2020 has been a constant for Indigenous Australians since the arrival of the First Fleet and consequent invasion of their lands.

AIDAN HARTSHORN Growth 2021, Wambuwany (kangaroo) fur, found objects, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

JOEL ARTHUR Homeground installation 2021, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

JOEL ARTHUR Golden Fleecing 2021,

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 145cm x 165cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

JOEL ARTHUR As tiers go by 2021,

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 150cm x 180cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

EMMA BEER everlasting 2020,

Acrylic on cotton canvas, 120 x 100cm Photo by Brenton McGeachie

An interesting conversation develops between Hartshorn’s work and that of Joel Arthur containing a colonial narrative of a very different kind. In the context of Homebound Arthur’s three paintings contain elements that reflect Australian history and the role of painting/art in attempting to come to terms with strange lands, harsh conditions and prevalent danger through deference to what settlers considered to be ‘superior’ European influences. Golden Fleecing (2021), for example, samples South Australian painter Hans Heysen’s Droving into the light (1921) a work that encapsulates a distinctively European impression: painted in Handorf on the lands of the Peramangk peoples. As Heysen dissolves into and is overshadowed by a towering classical ruin (the Pathenon), Arthur acknowledges the importance of neoclassicism in developing, perhaps controlling, a national identity that maintains cultural connections with Victorian/ Edwardian. Seen from afar as a wild colonial frontier of convicts, bushrangers, outlaws and ‘natives’, Australia’s cultural inferiority complex persists to the present day.

Bringing the tropes of several genres together including landscape, still life and various manifestations of Abstraction Arthur alludes to the dubious formal hierarchies created by conservative European Academies that Australian painters slavishly imitated in the struggle to gain critical favour and credibility. Allegorical figuration, for example, carried greater cultural validity than landscapes or still-lifes. He uses his formidable skills to highlight painting’s cliches, adeptly integrating and dramatising sections of each piece. With still-lifes dominating the foreground Arthur flirts with kitsch as lustrous rolls of fabric unfurl across the three canvases as a backdrop for silverware, flowers, glass bottles and baskets of fruit.

Drawing a fine line between imitation and mockery the still-lifes emerge from milieux of precisely observed landscape and geometric abstraction. Arthur’s cross genre tropes eloquently situated in relation to ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ forms within each painting reflect the twilight of an ancient medium that today struggles to compete with the internet for audience attention. In a year when artists had generous time for introspection, Arthur expresses a certain discomfort with his medium. Looking across a decade of painting he brings together an impressive repertoire of expertise to review his medium and practice and is clearly having fun with both.

Also upbeat, Emma Beer’s contribution belies a year that threw up unprecedented challenges for arts communities.

Over a decade she has continued to experiment with transparent and solid forms arranged on her canvases where nothing seems to entirely cover or block out the surfaces that lie beneath them. Her unique style of painting might be considered as ‘outsider’ or geometric abstraction without the restrictive precision of geometry. Beer’s paintings, with areas of paint variously registered, are liberated by bold colour and floating layers that never seem completely attached to the canvas. Individual works are imbued with a mood defined by concisely descriptive titles that reference past and present, often with a trace of self-deprecating humour. Everlasting (2020) is an example of the way that Beer has been working, with its almost 1950s colour scheme dominated by black, yellow and white, with a hint of green and beige overlapping, undermining and underlining transparent brushstrokes close to the surface.

Famous for her titles that lift the works from the canvas and walls and insinuate the presence of the artist into each piece, everlasting sits apart from …… , getting to know thy self from the kitchen table, or not, 1-30, (2020) informing the audience that nothing is everlasting, particularly in a year like 2020. From her kitchen Beer worked with blank pages torn from a sketchbook, painting overlapping geometrical forms, lines and textures drenched with colour. These paintings on paper, reminiscent of previous works, address a different time and place of production and are therefore a significant departure brought about by necessity. Presented in grid form thirty distinctively individual works become one whole that could be reminiscent of the patchwork quilt with its implications of work done in the home. There are enormous leaps from kitchen table to gallery floor to gallery walls where the vibrant colours and patterns activated the work and the space of the gallery.

EMMA BEER Homebound installation 2021, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

EMMA BEER ..... , getting to know thy self from the kitchen table, or not, 1-30 2020, Gouache on paper, sizes variable Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Homebound attempts to activate a zone of positivity in the long aftermath of a twilit twelve months. It is an exhibition of artists from or connected to the Canberra region that over the past year have produced work largely in isolation from arts infrastructure and support systems, such as galleries, museums and universities; dislocated from audiences or forced to communicate through digital media. Homebound takes a group of artists and asks what actually happened during this bizarre period in which many artists could do nothing except make art with limited access to studios and by whatever means available. Contemplating the ‘new normal’ and what it means to the maintenance of cultural activities, we also consider the changing relationship between artist and gallery where, by necessity, the focus moves to the local arena in an attempt to launch a recovery by bringing artists back into the fold and rebuilding fractured communities.

This global pandemic, with all its challenges and restrictions, has placed galleries and artists in a position where they are not always able to do what they want, but rather what is possible.

David Broker, April 2021

HOMEBOUND JOEL ARTHUR EMMA BEER RORY GILLEN AIDAN HARTSHORN ROSALIND LEMOH NATALIE MATHER ROBBIE KARMEL CURATED BY DAVID BROKER 12 TH MARCH - 2 ND MAY 2021

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE 44 QUEEN ELIZABETH TERRACE, PARKES, CANBERRA ACT 2602 TUESDAY - SUNDAY, 11am - 5pm

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