Anne Ryden

Where Does Art Begin?

Anne Ryden

On the mirror-polished floor, reflections of visitors stretch towards one another; crossing, mixing, touching. Sometimes their edges are softened by the brush of a shadow of someone else moving past; sometimes they stand alone, but always contemplating the art in front of them.

Curling down one wall, sheets of paper cascade with ink flowing according to a random natural order; on another, sheets of steel punched through with holes of all different sizes unfurl as if by gravity. The holes, their edges, and the blackened steel play for attention with the shadows and light they cast onto the wall behind them. They are apart from their reflections on the polished floor where they mix with the mirrored spectators whose shapes, unaware, become one with the art.

On the other side of the country, the negatives of these steel sheets sit flat on the wall of the artist’s studio. Residue of many-sized black dots will be found there – prints that came into being as the ribbons of steel were painted black. Though unseen, they are not separate from the shadows and reflections created and seen here.

The difference between hearing and listening, Solnit says, is that ‘to hear is to let the sound wander all the way through the labyrinth of your ear; to listen is to travel the other way to meet it’.1 Looking and seeing may be similarly related: if to look is to let your eye take

in what’s in front of you; then to see is to release yourself to meet the image in the space between.

Seated in excitement in the rows of a small lecture theatre are students, colleagues, writers, artists, talking passionately about something, everything and nothing. Unaware of how they know to do so, they hush. A woman with black hair, flowing movements and a strong gaze stands in the semi-darkness next to a large screen where images of her art are projected. She begins to speak. As she tells of lead in custard, a dish she once concocted in pursuit of her art, she takes a few steps to her left and is suddenly fully visible in the light that reflects off the screen. The projected image cuts across her face and marks her skin. ‘One thing grows into the next,’ she says.

The space she’s been given in which to speak is away from her studio, so she tells of her history, philosophy and how she works as an artist. Otherwise, she would be the sound of her practice, and her practice the image of her. In that way, she exceeds her work as her work transforms her.

On the gallery floor, the viewer sees and understands this while ideas sprint for meaning and spin us in their middle, reaching for ever bigger questions. Where does art end? Where do we begin?

Author’s note It is unclear to me what came first in terms of inspiration, the art or the artist. I had only seen online images of Lindy Lee’s art when I heard her speak; hearing her speak about the philosophy of her practice gave me a different way of seeing. I wandered the exhibition mulling over Lee’s commitment to always be faithful to the process. I was caught by the multiple shadows and reflections made by the works, Full Negative (2012) and The Other Side, Transcendent (2012), as Lee’s meditative question, ‘what is it in this moment that exists?’ resonated in my mind. In the video that accompanies the exhibition, Lee shows how the painting of the artwork creates more art in the form of new imprints on her studio walls. And I liked how writers responding to her art layer in further reflections.

Anne Ryden is a translator, editor and writer. She teaches in the professional writing program at Curtin University.

1 Solnit, R. (2013). The faraway nearby. Viking. p193.

Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop, 2022, installation view, John Curtin Gallery, (left to right) Full negative, 2012, black mild steel, fire, The Other Side, Transcendent, 2012, stainless steel, fire, all courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore. Photographer: Sue-Lyn Aldrian-Moyle.