Light Geist Exhibition Catalogue 2017

My favourite ancient theory on how things work has to be the extraordinary notion of ‘extramission’: the idea that human vision is made possible by rays of light shooting out of the eyeball. Devised by the ancient Greek atomist Empedocles, the theory of extramission was founded on the belief that everything, including light, was composed of the four elements and the human eye contained its own invisible fire. This notion of the elemental properties of light persisted for several centuries and was most poetically articulated by the Roman philosopher Lucretius in 55 BCE: “The light and heat of the sun; these are composed of minute atoms which, when they are shoved off, lose no time in shooting right across the interspace of air in the direction imparted by the shove.” (On the nature of the Universe) I am drawn to this description of light in relation to the work in Light Geist as it brings a physical, almost material sensation to the properties of light as it is “shoved” across interspace. Each of the three artworks in this exhibition captures and throws light to transform the gallery. Projected light in Light Geist does not rest lightly on a flat surface. Rather, it enlivens architectural space, animates three dimensional forms, and even makes the ground beneath us seethe. The light in Light Geist is powerfully generative and creates energised landscapes; a fiery desert, rising spectral mist and a frenetic network of glowing dataflow and synaptic energy.

Drawn from the blazing landscapes that Martu artist Ngamaru Bidu paints, Walyja Ngurra bathes viewers in intense chromatic light. This new work is a collaboration between Perth-based media artist Sohan Ariel Hayes, and Ngamaru Bidu, a painter, ranger, and senior member of her remote community, Parnngurr, in the Western Desert. During the development of this work Sohan travelled to visit Bidu, where she explained the use of waru (fire) by the Martu and the patchwork patterns the burning creates across different country; the tali (sand dunes), linyji (clay pans) and parulyukurru (spinifex country). Fire is a central theme in Bidu’s paintings and for the Martu it is both a tool for hunting and a way of keeping country healthy by promoting biodiversity. Bidu paints fire on a macro scale and from an aerial perspective, from which the burning forms patterns made up of thousands of vibrating points and pulsing lines and circles. This visual translation of waru is interwoven with information about plant species, the multiple stages of regeneration, Bidu’s narrative of walking through this country with her family, and their deep ancestral connection to these places. When Hayes began talking with Bidu about animating her paintings he realised that the Martu artists already see their paintings as animate; charged with the country they paint. Hayes combined high resolution images of Bidu’s fire paintings, the information she shared with him, and his own skills in digital animation to create a landscape in flux, energised and moving like the surface of the sun. The landscape of light created by Walyja Ngurra radiates with elemental power and unseen forces – it is ancient, ever evolving and filled with knowledge.

Ella Barclay has long been fascinated with the interplay between the physical world and the immateriality of ideas, data, spectres and echoes.

She is particularly focused on how humans store and transfer information,

from the advent of written text in Mesopotamia to the development of giant underground storage server farms. The apparitional figures in Barclay’s light-based works relate to the ethereal nature of data and thought, as it changes form and shifts from one human to another. In her new work This Comes to You From the Past, tanks of water hang from the ceiling in the darkened gallery. Mist swirls across the surface, gently rising and revealing human forms swimming across the glowing surface.

Luminous echoes of the figures appear on the ground below the tanks. The human forms seem to be in limbo, caught in a holding pattern between worlds and in an eternal cycle of formation and dissipation. These works suggest the eerie presence of a consciousness within the watery capsule; a life-force without physical form, trapped in a state of threshold.

Many of her tank artworks protrude with twisted wires and electronic cables. Melding electrical components and organic fluid, the tank has the look of a crazed science experiment, an amniotic pool for a kind of Cronenbergian digital birthing. Barclay’s beguiling tank works feel both digital and supernatural, and perhaps point to something of the human soul that is caught up in the electronic transfer of data and light.

A geist in the machine.

In the same spirit, Sam Price explores the relationship between human consciousness and the digital world with an intricate new installation. Hive Mind consists of over 400 CNC (Computer Numerical Control) cut hexagonal foam shapes which are assembled into two cerebral hemispheres that cover the gallery wall. Based on scans of the artist’s brain, Hive Mind creates an abstracted map of the frequency, intensity and location of synaptic activity in the mind. Animated by a complex synchronised data projection, the hive mind flickers with points of light and creates the illusion of the cerebral form physically undulating and pulsing with neural energy. For Price, Hive Mind has been a surprisingly intimate work, as the scans provided visible evidence of the way his mind responds to the stimulation of continual use of screens, data interfaces and digital technology. As our minds extend outwards via online networks they connect with other minds and access nearly limitless information. Hive Mind reflects upon that which encroaches back inwards in this process, and what impact this continual connectivity has on the synaptic impulses that drive our consciousness.

Light Geist focuses on the spatial and immersive capacity of video projection by presenting three major artistic commissions by four leading Australian artists. Each work has a strong local or state-based element: Barclay filmed her apparitional swimmers in the Fremantle Leisure Centre, using volunteers from the area; Price worked with local engineering firm Foam Shapers to devise and cut the hexagonal foam shapes in his installation; Hayes travelled to the Western Desert to work with Bidu and develop the animation of her paintings. The exhibition challenges conventions of video projection as a flat cinematic tool and probes at deeper potential interplay between surface and projected image. The three works in Light Geist use light to create striking and sensorial experiences.

They are preoccupied with unseen forces, ancestral power and ideas relating to how spiritual energies and ideas of self are translated within the digital realm. Light brings these complex and delicate realms into the visible spectrum while allowing them to remain unsolid and distinctly geist-like.

Erin Coates, Curator

Ngamaru Bidu, Old Waru burning close to rockholes (detail), 2015, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 122cm (top right) Ngamaru Bidu hunting near Parnngurr, Western Desert (middle right) Ngamaru Bidu and Sohan Ariel Hayes, Walyja Ngurra, 2016, 4 channel video projection with 4.1 soundscape. Photography by Eva Fernandez (top left and bottom)

Ella Barclay, This Comes to You From the Past (detail), 2016. Photograph by Sofia Antonas (top left) Ella Barclay, This Comes to You From the Past (detail), 2016. Photograph by Rebecca Mansell (top right) Ella Barclay, This Comes to You From the Past, 2016, two-channel looped video with sound projected onto acrylic tanks, water, aluminium, electronics. Photograph by Eva Fernandez (middle right) Ella Barclay, production stills while filming This Comes to You From the Past, at Fremantle Leisure Centre, 2016. Photograph by Erin Coates (bottom left and right)

Sam Price, Hive Mind, 2016, EPS foam, video projection, sound installation, 6 minute loop. Photography by Eva Fernandez (top and detail bottom left) Sam Price, scan of cortical activity in the brain using Electroencephalography (EEG) measurements from 1hz - 10hz, with these results interpreted through a hexagonal grid (middle left) Hexagonal foam pieces cut by Foam Shapers for Sam Price’s installation Hive Mind, 2016, photography by Sofia Antonas (bottom right)

Ella Barclay (NSW)

Sohan Ariel Hayes (WA)

Erin Coates

Ella Barclay is a Sydney-based artist working across a range of media including installation, video and sculpture. She has exhibited in Australia and abroad and held the recent solo show I Had To Do It at UTS Gallery, Sydney.

Other exhibitions include: Almost Party, Instant 42, Taipei (2016), That Which Cannot Be, Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2016), Subject to Ruin, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney (2014). In 2016 Barclay undertook the Australia Council’s London Artist Residency at Acme Studios and a residency at Casula Powerhouse, Western Sydney. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney. Light Geist is Barclay’s first exhibition in WA. www.ellabarclay.com

Sohan Ariel Hayes is a Perth-based media artist with a strong interest in integrating traditional ecological knowledge and stories into everyday life. For the past six years his art practise has focused on working closely with indigenous artists and thinkers to create artworks that have had a strong local impact and garnered national and international attention. In 2016 Hayes helped to create HOME for the opening event of Perth International Arts Festival (PIAF). He has been engaged again for PIAF 2017 to transform the entrance of King’s with Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak. In 2012 Hayes collaborated with senior Martu painter Yunkurra Billy Atkins to create the acclaimed animation Cannibal Story, which toured nationally with We don’t need a map and Experimenta, and was screened in numerous international film festivals, including Tampere Film Festival, Finland (2014), Edinburgh Film Festival (2013), Origins: Festival of First Nations, London (2013).

Erin Coates is a Perth-based curator, artist and creative producer. Coates’ curatorial projects include We don’t need a map: a Martu experience of the Western Desert, first shown at Fremantle Arts Centre then toured nationally. She was the producer for Cannibal Story, an animated artwork screened in major film festivals across the world, in ISEA Sydney in 2013 and in Experimenta Media Biennale 2014. She has curated a number of exhibitions and screen projects in disused urban sites, including Transmission (2009), REDSHIFT (2011), and most recently Rumblestrip, which took place for one-night in an abandoned parking lot in East Perth www.rumblestrip2016.com. Other curated exhibitions include The Knife’s Edge: video recently seen in Beijing, Fremantle Arts Centre (2011), The Cars That Ate Perth, Spectrum Project Space, Perth (2013), and Suspension, Perth Cultural Centre and Pare Place QUT, Brisbane (2013). Coates holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and is the Exhibitions and Special Projects Coordinator for Fremantle Arts Centre. www.erincoates.net

Ngamaru Bidu (WA) Ngamaru Bidu is a Martu painter, ranger and senior member of her community, Parnngurr, in the Western Desert. Born at Matalirri (Well 22) on the Canning Stock Route, Bidu’s mother came from Wikiri and her father from Pitu. As children, her and her siblings walked around, following water and tucker. Bidu was eventually caught and taken to Jialong Mission by whitefellas. She met her husband at Strelley and later moved to Warralong, Punmu and finally Parnngurr. Bidu has been painting for Martumili Artists for over 10 years and has been in major exhibitions, including: Martu Art From the Western Desert, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2014), Australia, Royal Academy of the Arts, London, England (2013), We don’t need a map: a Martu experience of the Western Desert, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth (2012).

Bidu’s paintings are held in the National Museum of Australia.

Sam Price (WA) Sam Price is a Perth-based multi-disciplinary artist working with projection, moving image, digital animation and sound. He has collaborated with performers and multimedia artists on several large-scale projects, including creating the visuals for Ta-Ku’s Vivid Live at the Sydney Opera House (2016) and at The Museum of Modern Arts PS1 Art Space New York (2015). Other projects include: Stellations – performance installation, The Bakery, (2015), Somewhere Our City – interactive installation, Perth International Arts Festival (2014). Price has worked as a sound artist on productions for Perth Theatre Company and has received seven WA Music Award nominations for his work as a musician and music producer. Light Geist will be Price’s first non-performance based work in a gallery exhibition. www.naik.com.au

Works Ella Barclay This Comes to You From the Past, 2016 two-channel looped video with sound projected onto acrylic tanks, water, aluminium, electronics 220 x 90 x 20cm each 20 minute loop Ngamaru Bidu and Sohan Ariel Hayes Walyja Ngurra, 2016 4 channel video projection with 4.1 soundscape 21 minute loop Sam Price Hive Mind, 2016 EPS foam, video projection, sound installation 6 minute loop

Cover: Ella Barclay, This Comes to You From the Past (detail), 2016, two-channel looped video with sound projected onto acrylic tanks, water, aluminium, electronics, 220 x 90 x 20cm. Photo by Sofia Antonas