mattering mindscapes: exploring what matters with textiles and primoidial clay.

mattering mindscapes: exploring what matters with textiles and primordial clay.

pattie beerens

(cover) – image 1 mattering moonahs by tom radke; (inside cover) – image 2 am I listening? by rory daniel; image 3 am I listening? by rory daniel; (left to right) - image 4 am I listening?; image 5 mattering moonahs, morning ritual, by tom radke; image 6 happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas.

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mattering mindscapes: exploring what matters with textiles and primordial clay.

name: pattie beerens student number: 3727616 course: Master of Fine Art (by coursework) completion date: November 2020 academic advisor: Associate Professor Dominic Redfern

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author’s declaration This document contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other institution. I affirm to the best of my knowledge, this document contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text. I certify that I have made all reasonable efforts to secure copyright permissions for third-party content included in this thesis and have not knowingly added copyright content to my work without the owner’s permission.

(right) – image 7 am I listening? by rory daniel.

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acknowledgements This project was enriched by the goodwill and generosity of many people.

Thank you to the MFA team of supervisors - especially to Mikala Dwyer for her encouragement when I was hiding in my studio; to Yu Fang for her pivotal insights; to Laresa Kosloff for a positive experience of converting my thoughts into a narrative and, most especially, to Dominic Redfern for guiding my research and thinking over the two years and onto completion.

A big thanks to my friends and family (including Gibbs) for sharing the places with me as I have explored rethinking the human in the world of materials.

I acknowledge the significant creative contributions of many artists without whom my projects would not have endured as they have: rory daniel, thomas feng, tom radtke, tomasz madajczak, josh barmakov, victoria jost, elnaz nourizadeh, anne mccallum, anne mellino, geoff brown, sarah lynch, liz watt, justas pipinis, jon tubby, sandy dunn, robyn eastgate, debbie hill, loren bates and juno.

Finally, I wish to thank the many people I didn’t know who generously engaged in the projects – the passers-by, the retailers, the locals, the curators and the new friends.

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image 8 playing with clay exposed by the tide on Anglesea Beach 2020.

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my story I write this document as a narrative in the first person about my MFA journey.

I share how my practice, which started as private conversations with materials, transformed into public performances of changing my thinking. Rather than engaging conceptually with the words of theorists, I took on practicing and experimenting with material thinking as an ethics within my art practice.

Respecting the traditions of academic writing, the narrative is linear. Nevertheless, I use photos to reference the numerous stories, perspectives and diversions witnessed by the materials in this project.

In the words of writer, artist and philosopher Manuel de Landa, my aim via the photos is to let the materials “have their say� (De Landa 1997).

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(left to right) – image 9 mattering moonahs, children creating a fairy house, by tom radke; image 10 am I listening? by rory daniel; image 11 am I listening?; image 12 secret garden, ceramic struts.

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table of contents research précis summary brief description objectives rationale key research question methodology 1. primordial clay project 1 - post mortem (2019) 2. safe spaces project 2 - secret garden (2019) 3. coming out project 3 – pollyanna (2019) 4. contested places project 4-1 the underpass – stories so far (2020) project 4-2 the office – what’s mattering? (2020) project 4-3 the vitrine – am I listening? (2020) project 4-4 the woodland – mattering moonahs (2020) project 4-5 Ireland and the woodland - no space (2020) bibliography appendices

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(left to right) – image 13 stories so far, through a lens; image 14 am I listening?, peering into the vitrine at night; image 15 stories so far, deinstallation, by rory daniel; image 16 am I listening? promenade view, by thomas feng.

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research prĂŠcis

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(left to right) – image 17 am I listening? promenade view, by rory daniel; image 18 stories so far, video projection by josh barmakov, image by thomas feng; image 19 am I listening?, detail, by thomas feng.

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summary My project utilises performance, installation and crafting mediums to explore material relations. By tracing my thinking with textiles and sloppy clay, I make physical the mental and material processes of inhabiting place.

The presence of the artist, and the strange, whimsical, ephemeral installation emerge as an ensemble of mattering materials in dialogue with the cultural context.

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“Language matters. Discourse matters.

Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not matter anymore is matter…

I offer an elaboration of performativity – materialist, naturalist, and post humanist elaboration – that allows matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing ‘inra-activity’. Its vitally important that we understand how matter matters.”

(Barad 2003, 801–3)

image 20 mattering moonahs, children’s art, by tom radke.

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brief description My project explores relations with materials as an ethos of living.1 I draw on an intimate sense of relatedness with clay as I use performance, installation and crafting to inhabit place.

Created in-situ, ephemeral interwoven webs of organic materials emerge and expand. Like a garden, the installations are nurtured as they grow and cut down and recycled at the end of each season.

My intention is to make physical the mental and material processes of inhabiting place. I trace my thinking with sloppy clay, plant materials, strings of fabric and cuttings from past artworks. I engage with the environment around me, and like an imaginary trace of dancers in a studio, or the neural processes of a brain, the sprawling lines adapt, form and weave into networks of interconnectedness. The fading colours of the clays, dyed with plants and spices, become entangled within a fluxing language, inscribed in space.

The site is transformed into a scape of visible and invisible fluxing relations and connections. It becomes a messy, whimsical, hand crafted entanglement of organic lines. The performative crafting with unrecognisable materials that splatter and drip, prompts engagement with passers-by.

For material feminist thinkers, material thinking translates into an ethical principle - Jane Bennett, Donna Jeanne Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad (Cielemęcka and Daigle 2019) 1

By occupying public places infused with culture, the installation forms a dialogue with the rhythms and values of the place. In an office the organic mattering2 evolved as a kind of collision. In a gallery it emerged from on top of the wall as though in defiance of the traditions of exhibition practice. In an underpass it formed into a rhizomal web of invisible relations between humans and non-humans. Enclosed in a vitrine, it evolved into a safe private space within a commercial landscape. In a woodland the foraged materials had provenance - the human presence was at odds.

I recognise a new depth in my long-term connection with artists Linda Sormin and Monika Gryzmala. Linda Sormin creates site responsive installations with messy clay forms in unusual spaces.

Monika Grzymala exerts herself physically as she draws lines in space with tape and, in my favourite work, with unfired clay (Untitled (Skeleton of a Drawing) 2010, MOMA).

By relating to the murmurings of the world as I work with materials, I engage in an inquiry with the world to which the materials and I belong. I develop daily routines of inhabiting the place. The place, the artist, the materials and the passers-by are an ensemble, woven together with context, in a durational performance. The creative transformations that evolve from these performances become transitory expressions of the mattering ensemble.

Mattering in relation to materials, matter and the world, refers to always being in an ongoing process of transition from one state to another, however slowly.

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(left to right) – image 21 no space by tom radke; image 22 mattering moonahs, children’s fairy house, by tom radke.

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objectives 1. Craft with primordial clay to evidence processes of working with materials.

5. Recycle artworks to explore relations as ongoing post conclusion of an exhibition.

1. Create durational site-specific installations to explore material relations as unstable, fluxing, mattering, entangling and ongoing.

6. Create performances of inhabiting using material thinking to explore place as networks of human and nonhuman relations.

2. Engage in foraging for materials related to the place as a means of relating and responding to the place.

3. Use scores3 as a guided improvisation technique to make physical my processes of thinking and relating.

7. Create installations in places infused with cultural and other values to explore the dialogue that arises from interventions with the place.

8. Create on-site and virtual collaborations and relations with artists, locals, visitors, friends, photographers to explore the artwork as an ensemble of relations.

4. Experiment with different approaches to relating with materials (listening, caring, kin) based on ideas suggested by theorists to experiment with how material thinking may become form.

I create scores for each project – they may be intuitively formed based on site specific intentions, constraints, and rituals or intentionally formed drawing on the use of scores in contemporary dance.

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(left to right)– image 23 mattering moonahs, detail, by tom radke; image 24 stories so far, deinstallation, by rory daniel.

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rationale “(inhabiting)… a process of working with materials and not just doing to them, and of bringing form into being ..to prioritise process over product … (attentive) of environmental engagement … situates the weaver in amongst a world of materials” (Ingold 2011, 10).4 My project explores an ethos of inhabiting place that decentres and repositions the human in an ecosystem of materials. I use performance, installation and crafting to practice, and make physical, the mental and material processes of inhabiting place. I am more a craftsperson than a theorist and draw on anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concept of inhabiting and working with materials in amongst a world of materials. I refer to the ongoing fluxing, flowing, mixing, mutating and movement of materials as mattering (Ingold 2010; Barad 2012, 78). I wonder what the world might look like if we could conceptualise ourselves – the human – as completely entangled in a world of mattering materials.

My project has turned my deeply personal practice of creating safe spaces inside out. It has been a journey of coming-out. I have been making safe spaces for as long as I can remember. They

were private and hidden and there was a common process to their making. I foraged, arranged, made things, and daily rituals developed. They were spaces for making sense of the world without judgement. My ability to think and have dialog through crafting was intuitive. I befriended the materials, and for a short time, my safe spaces became vibrant with all forms of living. My ceramics studios were functioning in the same way and, early in my project, I transformed my studio on campus into a safe space. I continue with this practice in my project – of creating safe spaces – but now I am creating them in public – in contested places.

Like ceramicist Linda Sormin, I experience installing into new places like “making (my) way in a new country” (Sormin 2012). I learn the rules of the culture and create relations with the people I meet. Sormin uses clay and hand pinched lines to explore and respond to unfamiliar places (Sormin 2018). “Moving between different countries and interacting with different cultural groups influence(s) how she (makes) her ceramics” (Eric 2019). Sormin’s reflection resonates: “(the) sense of needing to belong is so central to the human experience. I want that to be alive in the work” (Eric 2019).

Tim Ingold initially called this dwelling but reflected that inhabiting was a better word (Ingold 2011, 12).

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(left to right) – image 25 my father with his ‘click on’ invention 2018; image 26 pollyanna, installation process, by anne mccallum 20

I weave with textiles and clay, in full view of passers-by. I create scores for each project – I refer to them as intentions, constraints and rituals. It maybe what I wear; how I walk and bring things each day; the way I clean at the end of each performance or how I leave my apron hanging awaiting the next day. It may be an intention formed in dialogue with thinkers such as relating and caring as kin from Donna Haraway or relating with material histories from Tim Ingold (Haraway 2016; Ingold 2011, 32).

The scores create situations in which I am attentive to the unfolding of the world around me. They help me be present and “comfortable with not knowing what comes next.” Like contemporary sculptor Arlene Shechet, I am dancing with a partner (Shechet, Porter, and Shechet 2015)5. I don’t feel alone, and my fears are muted. I engage mindfully in an iterative process of trying to adapt my western anthropocentric thinking.

In addition to my scores, a process of foraging emerges. I might collect local clays or gather flowers and spices for colour. I engage with the locals and passers-by and collaborate with site related authorities, photographers and artists. People are gifting me things and creating their own connections with the work. I am forging relationships with the human and non-human world.

Olivia Millard overviews scores in dance based on research and practice.

She explains how scores were a tool that helped her abandon the traditions of her craft. (Millard 2016) 5

I shared a language of lines with my father - a socialist, migrant, inventor. He was inventing a construction toy made of lines and connections when he died. His system was engineered, and he used materials to create forms. In contrast, I engage my hands and working with sloppy materials I see what emerges. I take lines of clay for walks in my mind (Ingold 2011, 47). The lines emerge as conversations in the world. The lines sag, drip, connect, tangle, stretch and harden into a trace. They are ephemeral and like the mattering of mind and materials they have no finished form.

I recognise patterns of nesting as retreating and dwelling, and webbing as exploring and more exposed. Different lines have different tones: taut for controlling, slack for free, alone for exploring off the path. For Monika Gryzmala, the lines express her emotions about the space. She believes that viewers read these emotions because she weaves with her hands (Des Moines Art Center 2017). It was Gryzmala’s early work with clay that most resonated with me: in space, up a ladder, high over a doorway, away from the viewer (MOMA 2011) .

I weave with primordial clay.6 I sense clay connecting me to the world – to the creek near my childhood home, to my home on stolen land and to my nature-girl spirit. Like Ana Mendiata, I connect with “the universe” when I am covered in clay (Mendieta, Rio, and Perreault 1987, 10).

Primordial clay in relation to the clays I use in my project (including the clays I purchase) refers to their pre-human existence as part of the earth.

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The installations can appear strange and messy. I become vulnerable as my works expose my conscious and unconscious values. What matters (what we care about) and what is visible mattering in the artworks is modulated by our subjectivity. Architect Juhani Pallasmaa in The Thinking Hand describes how we “construct projections and metaphors of our own mindscapes.”

Sociologist Maarten Jacobs describes how viewers create their own mindscapes based on their own experiences, perceptions and relations (Jacobs 2006). Some viewers respond and share their personal mindscapes with me as I am crafting.

I witness a co-emergence of relations between places, contexts, viewers and artists. By engaging, connecting, talking, helping, watching, smiling, touching, making, sharing, relating and feeling the viewers become part of the work and the ensemble of mattering materials becomes the locus of the art (Bolt 2007).

“Ecofeminists have perhaps been most insistent on some version of the world as active subject, not as resource to be mapped and appropriated…Acknowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes some room for some unsettling possibilities, including a sense of the world’s independent sense of humour” (Haraway 1991, 199).

The story of my methodology describes my project in dialogue with feminist thinkers Donna Haraway, Susan Barad and Jane Bennett. I share how I explored a “moral compass” to redress my exploitative relation to the natural world and how “a responsibility …to contest and rework what matters” is imbedded in each artwork (Cielemęcka and Daigle 2019, 68; Barad 2003, 827). Alone in the woodland, in conversation with the environment, wearing a mask, I reflected on Haraway’s muse as I imagined the world having a laugh. Now, as I finalise this project, I continue to wonder how we might inhabit and share the world if we could see ourselves as within an ecosystem of mattering materials.

(left to right) – image 27 stories so far, found rollers and paint tins, string, textiles, various unfired clays; image 28 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 29 am I listening? by thomas feng.

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(left to right) – image 30 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 31 mattering moonahs, deinstallation, by tom radke; image 32 am I listening?, deinstallation.

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key research question How can thinking by crafting reposition and decentre the human in our patterns of thinking?

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(left to right) – image 33 am I listening? by thomas feng; image 34 am I listening?, view from inside the vitrine, by thomas feng; image 35 mattering moonahs, deinstallation, by tom radke.

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methodology

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(left to right) – image 36 potting in India 2018; image 37 brick making in Uganda 2019; image 38 Olduvai Gorge Africa 2019.

“We are made of contracted water, earth, light and air – not only prior to the recognition or representation of these, but prior to their being sensed. Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations.”

(Deleuze, Difference and Repetition) 28

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primordial clay I started with an aim of discovering what was important about my relations with clay. In an article written in semester one for The Journal of Australian Ceramics, I reflected, “I seem to be on a journey to discover hidden histories” (Beerens 2019).

For years I worked with clay from a quarry in Somerville – alone in a studio at the rear of a museum. The clay was groggy and heavy - it had a history in the landscape, in industry, and with the WWII Jewish refugee sculptor whose studio I used. I witnessed the clay, through my hands, expressing my innermost thoughts and fears.

Upon reading Manuel de Landa, I realised I had been on a journey of remapping my history through the lens of clay (De Landa 1997): as human in Oldervai Gorge, as female in Minoan figurines, as a person inhabiting stolen land, as a nature-girl foraging for clay, as a person infected by a culture that separates humans from nature.

Drawing on the description of the methodology by Clark Moustakas, my project started as a heuristic investigation into these relations. “I begin with my own self-awareness and explicate that awareness with reference to a question or a problem” (Moustakas 1990, 3).

Clare Twomey says clay is “something that calls to you”(Brooklyn Clay 2020) March writes “it is a creative, physical/mental act that happens, not in the head, but in the unfolding of the world” Schechner explores how she creates a 7

I discovered my sense of being in relation with clay was not uncommon.7 Other artists were also exploring clay for its subjective rather than objective qualities: Jo Dahn’s book New Directions in Ceramics explores these new directions in ceramics; Alexandra Engelfriet’s performances with clay, Walter McConnell’s installations evidencing clay mattering, Clare Twomey’s meetings with clay (Dahn 2015).

I started this project by foraging for clay: on the beach, from the Metro Tunnel and from a nearby building site. Each clay had a story before I collected it, and by mushing, sieving and forming it with my hands, I explored the subjective qualities of the clays (Ingold 2011, 30–32).

I discovered that by playing with clay as a material, rather than for its potential as a ceramic object, I was working with the clay rather than doing to it, and I was dwelling and inhabiting with materials more than building in the manner described by Tim Ingold (Ingold 2011, 10).

relationship with the world through haptic crafting with clay. Shechet describes how she dances with clay. (March 2017, 142; Schechner 2019; Shechet, Porter, and Shechet 2015; Petrie and Livingstone 2017) 29

(left to right) – image 39 playing with clay found in Aireys Inlet 2020; image 40 experimenting with unfired clay 2019; image 41 collecting clay from local building excavation 2019; image 42 processing clay from Aireys Inlet by tom radke.

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“385 million years ago …thick sediments accumulate without disruption. 385 years ago … the Melbourne zone experiences a period of major deformation” (Monash University 2017)

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(left to right) – image 43 post morten, Minoan figurine, by rory daniel; image 44 post morten, installation process, by rory daniel; image 45 post morten, installation process, by rory daniel.

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project 1 post mortem (2019) installation, wire, plaster, clay, string, tacks, var. dimensions 4.5m x 2.0m x 0.7m The aim of this project was to explore my will to form. As a ceramicist I was using clay from the earth to construct sculptures and wondered about the integrity of my practice given my deep respect for the earth and my concerns regarding how we inhabit it.

Created in-situ in the entry of building 39, this artwork was an exploration of how I related to materials as I connected struts made from unfired clay, plaster and wire into forms that sat out from the wall. I documented my thoughts in a notebook and my actions were recorded by a photographer who remained silent. I arranged the space before I began and, to distract me from my fears, I displayed symbols important to me - from nature and Minoan history.

Upon conclusion of the day, the artwork comprised sculptural wall sketches in space attached to the wall. It was temporary, raw and sketch like. The structures were irregular but rigid. The joints were discrete entanglements of directions. The sloppy strings of wet clay were disruptive and messy. It was as though they were scribbles in space.

Without reference to my intentions or the activity of the day before, viewers saw spiders, tree roots and traces of an overgrown ruin.

The raw clay was suggestive of nostalgia. The work read from left to right and back again – like language. It was seen as unusual in a gallery setting. At the time, I was unable to communicate my intentions.

I came to see the installation as the remains of a day and titled it post mortem.

I researched contemporary exhibitions on similar themes – From Will to Form at Tarra Warra and Converging in Time by Open Spatial Workshop (Cormack 2018; Monash University 2017).

The exhibition catalogue titled On Line: Drawing in the Twentieth Century offered a survey on the subject of line (Butler and Zegher 2010). I looked closely at Monika Gryzmala’s MOMA installation Untitled (Skeleton of a Drawing) 2010 for how it was constructed organically from pre-formed struts. I was interested in how it sat between free form and geometric construction – how the human element in the forming was material.

As I near the end of my program, I see my values in the trace of the making: adaptable and open. My notes on the other hand disclose how many actions were directed at countering my fears.

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(left to right) – image 46 post morten, installation process, by rory daniel; image 47 post morten, installation process, by rory daniel; image 48 post morten, installed, by rory daniel.

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(left to right) – image 49 secret garden, installation process; image 50 secret garden, installation process.

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safe spaces The next few artworks were unsuccessful. Using objects rather than lines to explore connections and relations, they were messy, confusing and indecipherable.

project 2 secret garden (2019) studio installation, various materials, var. dimensions Feeling vulnerable, I hid and started making in my studio at art school. My intention was to engage with making intuitively – to see if I could disconnect from the influences of education and living in a culturally infused world. While I intellectually recognised the impossibility, and maybe the futility of the exercise, my aim was to clarify for myself - my values.

Rituals formed. I made clay pieces at home to assemble in the studio. Each week I rearranged the clay pieces to make room for more making and thinking. This continued for a semester. It was a private place – access was by invitation only.

I videoed myself as I connected struts to the walls using stop motion. The role of the human (me) was not hidden. The interconnectedness of the forms, the architecture, the materials, my body and my thinking were visible. There was something about seeing the structures creep and grow that interested me – how the different pieces became connected without hierarchy or judgement into changing organic scapes.

I found thinking with rigid lines limiting. Their rigidity caused me to approach them with a question – how will I use you? I wanted to explore thinking in conversation – in relation. This directed my material research - how to create lines in space that emerge as a conversation within the world.

I was intrigued by Eva Hesse’s engagement with materials and lines in space. I saw caring and the start of a conversation in her work No Title. Hesse dipped knotted rope into latex that then hardened into a weblike structure and wrote “…hung irregularly … really letting go as it will. Allowing it to determine more of the way it completes itself” (Whitney Museum of American Art). I saw how Hesse substituted “fragile substances and irregular, organic forms for (the) rigid geometries and industrial materials of Minimalism”.

A shared language of lines is what drew me to contemporary artists Julie Mehretu, Monika Gryzmala and Linda Sormin.

Gryzmala explains “The lines are the emotional space between the objects”(MOMA 2011). Julie Mehretu, an abstract painter, relates her marks to language and the need for neologism. She says of Mural, “I think … these (markings) bring up something that means something more – subconsciously or poetically within us” (MOMA 2009; SFMOMA 2017). Nives Zorzut, a local

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artist, said to me “working with lines is like making as a process of thinking.” In my studio, I experienced lines in conversation.

Visually I saw connections with The Falling Garden at the Venice Biennale 2003 by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger. It was floating, light, interconnected, no hierarchy, organic, rhizomal and playful. Conceptually I engaged more with Jason Rhoades Perfect World for how his installation was ongoing as a process, weblike, referenced gardens and ecosystems, and nonhierarchical - other than for the artist who was elevated on the top floor.

It wasn’t until near the end of my program that I realised the connection between this work and my personal practice of creating safe spaces.

(left to right) – image 51 secret garden, detail; image 52 secret garden, installed by rory daniel.

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(left to right) – image 53 secret garden, installed by rory daniel; image 54 secret garden, detail by rory daniel; image 55 secret garden, detail; image 56 secret garden, detail by rory daniel.

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(left to right) – image 57 pollyanna, installed; image 58 pollyanna, installation process, by anne mccallum.

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coming out Mid semester I was scheduled to present in the Gossard. I needed to ‘come out’ of my safe space.

project 3 pollyanna (2019) installation, textiles, clay, wire, var. dimensions My intention was to explore the Gossard with an experimental process of connecting and forming with unfired clay struts.

Using commercial clay, I could relate to it as stateless, and open to exploring new places. Coloured with commercial food dyes it revealed itself mattering. Like contrast dyes used in medicine, the colours were visible in their traveling, bleeding and joining. The alchemy was observable for days.

The feedback was kind. pollyanna was characterised as creaturelike – delicate and happy and activating the space. Dominic Redfern considered its structure to be rhizomal and described how the work was “growing out” and “nesting in” the corner. Its position on top of, and over the wall, was viewed as suggestive of a defiance of gallery traditions.

I was encouraged to continue. Wet struts were added, the moisture softened the hardened struts, it drooped. The skeletal geometric framework morphed into a network of interconnected rigid and scribbly lines.

Upon deinstallation, the work came apart in clumps – the wire joints became flexible and mobile. The clumps could lie flat, as though squashed, or stand up as though a new species. Gathered together – a landscape. Collapsed in a box – lifeless bones. In water – back into sloppy earth. I have since made deinstallation part of each work. I play with the forms that evolve and incorporate them (and their histories and relations) into new works.

I can see now (a year later) that the title - pollyanna – a girl who played the glad game with her father as a method of coping with difficulties – was perfect. I was creeping and crawling into the space. In outline - afraid of being seen. On top of the wall – more a response to fear than a statement of defiance.

This was a pivot point in my journey when I brought my research together with my studio practice.

I recognised an interest in exploring relations with nature – with the nonhuman world. From this time, I grounded my project in Posthumanism and material feminism (Bennett 2010; Haraway 2016)8. I would engage in making to expose the interconnectedness of materials in mattering scapes. The word mattering became important to me for its three meanings: as ongoing fluxing, flowing, mixing and mutating, as a reference to

There are other rationales for exploring relations with nature: environmentalism (Bennett 2010, 110), humanistic interest in a richer life (Guattari 2005) harmonious web (Lent 2017, 442).

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what’s important and as a synonym for the word material (Barad 2003).

I explored interconnectedness as an ethical principle. My aim become to reposition the human in its ecosystem – in a world of mattering materials. I would be on the inside rather than on the “outside of the assemblage directing proceedings”. I would be one actor “engaged in complex conversation with other players” (Bolt 2007).

I would not regard nature (including the materials I use in my practice) as a resource for my use (Braidotti 2013; Bolt 2007; Haraway 1991). I would experiment with relating to materials as kin (Haraway 2016). I would use active language to reinforce the concept of matter and materials (the things the world is made of) as active - not passive, inanimate or other (Ingold 2010).

I was using intuitive crafting to explore and materialise my thinking. Paul March, in his study of playing with clay, refers to this as engaging “purposefully in unintentional activity”(March 2017, 144). Influenced significantly

by Jeremy Lent’s history of how our thinking became anthropocentrically pattered, I decided to engage in unthinking my patterned thinking through crafting (Lent 2017, 81). Andrzej Piotrowski writes poetically and persuasively about how material forming can help

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people think in new ways and alter their worldviews. He casts architecture as a product of the knowing hand – “the hand that grasps the physicality of materiality and thought and turns it into a concrete image” (Pallasmaa 2009, 016).

Like clay, thinking had become a material in my practice, and I decided to engage in material experiments to unthink my thinking. Thinking as a material is recognised by archaeologists Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew in Material Engagement Theory (MET) (Lambros Malafouris and Renfrew 2013). Malafouris and March use clay to explore MET because, like me, they discovered how ideas of agency break down in the process of playing with clay (Knappett and Malafouris 2010; March 2017). While Ingold disagrees with this approach because the polarity of mind and matter remains, my experience was to the contrary (Ingold 2011, 21). Engaging with thinking as a material, within a world of mattering materials, brings thinking into the entanglements around me.

I progressed with these questions – How does thinking occupy space? Can making change thinking? What does Posthumanist cognitive architecture look like?

image 59 pollyanna, installed.

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(left to right) – image 60 pollyanna, deinstalling; image 61 pollyanna, deinstalling; image 62 pollyanna, deinstalling; image 63 pollyanna, deinstalling; image 64 pollyanna, deinstalling; image 65 pollyanna, struts prior to installation, by anne mccallum.

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(left to right) – image 66 stories so far, window title “mattering”; image 67 stories so far, Instagram story by thomas feng.

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contested places project 4-1 the underpass stories so far @ dirty dozen (2020) Exhibition across 12 windows and a glass capsule in an underpass.9 The title, a homage to Doreen Massey, celebrated the subjectivity of place and how relations come from the stories people create (Featherstone, Bond, and Painter 2013).

My intention was to explore the aliveness of the underpass by installing onsite, in view of passers-by, in public. My aim was to work with physical materials and subjective stories to make mattering visible.

The context was complex: a pedestrian access to Flinders Street trains; a heritage architecture; a bohemian place visited by tourists; an art space and a place on the verge of Metro Tunnel re-development. By focusing on the subjective qualities of place, this exhibition was a sensitive response to lobbying focused on the 1940s architecture (Jacks 2017).

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I created daily rituals – each day began with a chat at the coffee shop, I turned on the record player, lit incense from one of the retailers, set up the workspace and checked how the clay and colours were changing in the windows. I connected with how Linda Sormin described “Installing in a Museum (as) like making one’s way in a new country. As a visitor, I learn the rules of the culture: when the building opens and closes etc “ (Sormin 2012).

I had spent the Summer months creating forms of mattering clay and other materials to use as starting points for each window.

My intention was that I would use them like plant cuttings to spawn new growth in each window. What occurred however was quite different. Rather than starting each window with my stories and with forms made in another place, the provocation for each window became something given or found in the arcade: a braid of hair from the hairdresser, milk bottles from the coffee shop, used computer parts from the repair man, paint tins from the storeroom and old flooring from the print shop.

Exhibition details in Appendix

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(left to right) – image 68 stories so far, rory daniel spraying unfired clay he collected and installed; image 69 stories so far, window installation, by rory daniel; image 70 stories so far, busker ‘dave’ wearing clay jacket by thomas feng.

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I relinquished control in a number of ways. I had friends become part of the work by interacting and installing in-situ. I invited retailers, travellers, buskers, helpers, photographers and tourists to add their stories. A busker became a living sculpture, an RMIT student (Joshua Barmakov) created a video of his vision of the mattering, a passer-by wrote a story and posted it on Instagram, stories were written on and in the windows. Elnaz Nourizadeh wrote a message with the keys from an old computer keypad. Hubby created a hand sanitizer for the opening on the eve of the city closing down. Victoria Jost wrote a reflection about her sense of the exhibition occupying the arcade without colonising it. “taking up the place by re-writing, re-considering, re-imaging what once happened, taking up space re-building through history, memory, stories, objects, treasures, fantasies, amulets‌ taking up space as the opposite of colonisation, of the conqueror, but re-constructing through a trade, exchange, deal or even by engaging in new friendship, how? by being in place, and space, by appropriating the dusty cave as a personal and blooming space for conversation to occur, for stories to interconnect and for old belongings to mutate.â€?

Victoria Jost, 10 March 2020

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(left to right) – image 71 stories so far, tour group visitors by thomas feng; image 72 stories so far, victoria jost enjoying an Argentinian mate break; image 73 stories so far, by rory daniel; image 74 stories so far, by thomas feng.

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The exhibition was an ecology of relations connected by stories and collected artefacts. The relations were visible and invisible, between humans and non-humans and, by creating a daily feed of stories on Instagram, they expanded virtually. It was open for three months, however, after three weeks the city closed down to fend off a pandemic. I witnessed the exhibition morph into a posthuman landscape of murmurings that continue today as I reuse the materials and people share their stories.

In August, Thomas Feng shared his memories in a blog: “The exhibition was larger than the artworks and was built on the organic relationships developed over the time. From the hole-in-wall café who provided empty cartridges, to the busker who played every day for decades after leaving his IT job, to the … meditation business owner who used COVID-19 as an opportunity to adapt, the exhibition exemplified the creative brilliance of this community”(“Stories So Far - Thomas Feng Photographer and Storyteller” 2020) Nevertheless, for visitors unfamiliar with the place the stories and relations were less visible. This was challenging feedback. It was suggested I take more control of the contributions of others in the forming of the work. I progressed with this as a question.

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DAY 3 Enter NEW (sound up) LIFE start button control pause shift option? enter return 7 home end ELNAZ

(left to right) – image 75 stories so far, key board parts, note by elnaz nourizadeh; image 76 stories so far; image 77 stories so far, computer service centre retail shop front; image 78 stories so far, josh barmakov sharing his video of the installation, photo by thomas feng; image 79 stories so far, josh barmakov with bryan who donated the computer parts, photo by thomas feng; image 80 stories so far, Instagram story by josh barmakov.

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video link: What’s Mattering Video Work April 2020

https://vimeo.com/412584125

image 81 whats mattering? by rory daniel.

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project 4-2 the office what’s mattering? (2020) video of performance, duration 3min what’s mattering? was created in-situ in a professional office – a former workplace - from textiles and sloppy clay, coloured with experimental dyes, seaweed and plant materials.

Isolated at home due to COVID I was reminded of how I would use crafting to create safe spaces. I read about Sonabai Rajawar, isolated in a mud hut. She used moist clay from around the well to transform her home into a place of colour, imagination, wonder and individual expression.10 The concept of inhabiting and worldbuilding through crafting was the provocation for this installation.

My aim was to re-experience crafting as living - alone in the office.

To explore installation and performance as mediums for a durational dialogue of becoming. With site visits prohibited, I employed video to document the performance of making as the artwork.

Sonabai Rajawar was a self-taught Indian sculptor, she intuitively pressed the clay around bunched up straw to create sculptures for the walls and decorative jaalis or lattices for outside. She dried them in the sun and painted with colours from spices, seeds and leaves.(Huyler 2008; Huyler et al. 2009) 10

Materially I experimented with recycling artworks, and with material alchemy, as I made clay dyes from flowers, fruit, spices and bark.

Rituals of making evolved. I foraged for broken gum tree branches, flower petals and bark. I travelled to Ballarat to collect flower petals from my mother and to Yea for clay dug up by a friend. As though I was working in the office, I visited each day to work with materials.

Alone in a familiar place, I was able to focus on my intention without distraction and fear.

“There is a kinetic exchange between the artist and the material. The material responds to the artist’s hands in unpredictable ways. It oozes and slops its way into its form. The artist then responds to the material, as if in conversation, allowing the clay to infer its form… as a collaboration of sorts.”11 Viewers connected the making with active thinking. They saw “the mind mapping space”; “an undoing of thoughts”; “interconnections between human and man-made”. The title grounded the work in

11

Rory Daniel, videographer, April 2020.

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vibrant materials. I saw my thinking in the material forms.

I saw myself working in the office – listening, organising, reasoning, connecting, drafting, adapting etc.

The mattering, organic, messy materials and forms, attached by strings to the shelves and the desks, were at odds with the clean geometric lines and the commercial finishes of the professional office. Mikala Dwyer saw a collision in the space – “it grows into a space that it doesn’t seem to belong (to).”

I continued to investigate the concept of control – in this work by cutting strings so wet materials had freedom to slump and collapse. I reflected on John Cage’s depiction of sound - “a sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation,… it has no time for any consideration— it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics”(Carroll 1994, 93).

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(left to right) – image 82 whats mattering? by rory daniel; image 83 whats mattering? by rory daniel; image 84 whats mattering? by rory daniel; image 85 whats mattering? by rory daniel.

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(left) – image 86 whats mattering? by rory daniel. (right) – image 87 whats mattering? by rory daniel.

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(left to right) – image 88 am I listening? by rory daniel; image 89 am I listening? by rory daniel; image 90 am I listening? by rory daniel.

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project 4.3 the vitrine am I listening? @ assembly point (2020)

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installation, various materials, dimensions 7m x 2m x 1m This work was part of a group exhibition titled Am I Hearing an Echo?

My intention for am I listening? was to actively inhabit the vitrine in public. By listening and interacting with the materials and the surrounds as I crafted, my aim was to experience and materialise as architecture, a co-emergence of material thinking and relating.

The pandemic was reason to slow down and to create this artwork that was ongoing for 64 days. In recognition of living with constraints, I rationed the materials I would use each day. A few days in, Elnaz said as she passed by “it is more meditative than exciting”.

The quiet streetscape and the contained glass box made it easier to focus on the mattering I was part of. The context was less complex than the underpass: most places were closed; passers-

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by were locals escaping for a walk, and the coffee shop was takeaway only. Other than via a wave or a nod, I needed to come out of the vitrine to engage with passers-by.

Site specific rituals evolved, and my foraging continued. Friends and relatives collected ingredients for the dyes. I was caught taking leaves from the back of a gardener’s truck – amused he said, he usually catches people putting things in. By week three I had learned the rules of the place.

Inhabiting as a process became material and discernible in this work. The trace of my thinking was observable from left (the trace) to right (the present) – towards the door. I was amazed when a former (non-art) colleague could read my thinking ‘out loud’ from left to right Once again, a dialogue emerged between the work and the place.

At first, the installation presented like a commercial window display, and the artist a window dresser (Audas 2020). Weeks passed and the white space became cluttered with traces of living, a cave emerged, and the vitrine presented as private, where maybe it would be rude to look in.

Exhibition details in Appendix

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(left to right) – image 91 am I listening?, night view; image 92 am I listening? by rory daniel; image 93 am I listening? by rory daniel.

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The vitrine operated like a glass aquarium of sorts - like a container I was caught in to be observed. I investigated the box as a device.13 Louise Bourgeois’s Cells, resonated in how they performed as private within the exterior world of the exhibition space (Guggenheim 2016). It was interesting how the window performed as an ontological wall – as though the habitat in the window “belonged to another order of reality” (Morton 2010, 288).

I shared Shiota Chiharu’s experience of windows dividing the inside from the outside and how sometimes she “can’t distinguish whether I am inside or outside” (James Hsu et al. 2019, 228).

Motivated by a Critical Frameworks lecture on care, I reviewed my work through this lens. I recognised care as embedded in my practice - the time I spend, my routines, interactions, rationing, collecting and making. I wondered if my works being messy worked against perceptions of care. Reminded of the passage between Bateson and his daughter about the difference between tidy and messy – I realised what looks like care is subjective (Bateson 2000). Edna Walling, my favourite gardener, celebrates the messy of unintended ecologies and (based on the Milford Lane Project) Mark Dion sees exploring ideas as messy (Ramljak et al.

2018, 92). I decided to make expressions of care more intentional.

From the outset my artworks were described as strange. I couldn’t ignore a passer-by saying: “Do you realise there is a person in

there? You know how you have to go back to look again because you don’t believe what you saw? There is actually a lady inside that window.” I stood back and saw an oldish woman, playing mindfully with sloppy clay, on site each day, making something messy and unfamiliar, making something that won’t last. I recognised my playful efforts to challenge the contemporary rhythms of the place.

I smiled as I imagined Robert Rauschenberg carrying a stuffed ram home (Monogram, 1959) and Marcel Duchamp threading a ‘mile of string’ through a Manhattan mansion. I was reassured by Chris Sharp’s Theory of the Minor in which he characterised a mode of artmaking that was personal, idiosyncratic, with undercurrents of transgression and resistance (Sharp 2017). Laresa Kosloff reflected that - “Perhaps the object wants to escape the frame of culture but can’t.”

I connected with how Carsten Holler inserts slides into otherwise serious institutions as a playful way of suspending social order (Tate 2015). Sormin talks about the longing and loss experienced when places change – when things turn upside down (Brooklyn Clay 2020). I explored this by announcing a Planned Happening on 20 June – 9am – 11am. “…unhinged, disengaged, dislodged, from its secure interconnected web of supports, the forms will reform and adapt – to a world upside down.” Unaware of the event the local caretaker wrote to the curator concerned that maybe vandals had gotten into the vitrine.

Boxes - Joseph Cornell; Aquariums - Damien Hurst; Glass dioramas Patrick Jacobs; Museum vitrines - Mark Dion.

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(left to right) – image 94 am I listening?; image 95 happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas. image 96 happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas; image 97 am I listening? by rory daniel.

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(left to right) – image 98 mattering moonahs, collecting clay, by tom radke; image 99 mattering moonahs, collecting clay, by tom radke.

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project 4-4 the woodland mattering moonahs (2020)

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performance and installation, textiles, local clays and strings, var. dim. mattering moonahs was a 3 week collaborative performance of materials in the Moonah Woodland, Anglesea. My intention was to explore material thinking as an ethos of living with the landscape.

Using the words of Bennett, I endeavoured to create an ontological field.

“Picture an ontological field without any unequivocal demarcations between human, animal, vegetable or mineral ... so an effective speaking human body is not radically different from the effective, signalling nonhumans with which it coexists…” (Bennett 2010, 117).

branches of protected Moonah trees. I applied to the Great Ocean Road Coastal Committee for permission to create the work. The ranger and I visited and selected a site with no known Indigenous significance.

I foraged locally for clays geologically formed hundreds of thousands of years ago. I tested the ephemerality of the materials – in rain, hail and wind. A passer-by said: “if you don’t look you don’t see them. They seem to belong.”

Passers-by engaged actively as I crafted. I recall a discussion with a boy on a walk to talk to a rock and with a mother (Sarah) who shared how she was trying to “decolonise how she mothered”.

She shared how she was moved when an indigenous friend said, “if only we could stop and unpack our assumptions.”

Would the tension seen in the other projects be visible in landscape?

The spiders moved in with their webs. I have a history with spiders that plays into my work. When I was asked as a child what I collected, I would say spiders. I can see now, how they were my armour, in what I regarded as an unsafe world.

The Wathaurong People inhabited the land for tens of thousands of years before white settlers arrived. Middens remain visible nearby. The path through the woodland passes under the twisting

The work was promoted as part of the virtual Surf Coast Arts Trail (“Mattering Moonahs: Work by Pattie Beerens” 2020). It was a collaboration with the local postman, formerly in Defence science

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Exhibition details in Appendix

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– Tom Radtke – who photographed the work. The sign, the permissions and the use of materials with provenance, were significant in gaining the local’s acceptance of my making within the Moonah Woodland.

Experience of the installation was shared on the community Facebook page. “A chilly morning walk led to a surprising discovery at Point Roadknight” (Facebook 2019). Local children made their own fairy nests. The installation embodied a busy aliveness of relations and relatedness.

The manner in which the clay forms were separate and interconnected, and moved in a rhythm with the wind, remined me of Tomas Saraceno’s “On the Disappearance of Clouds” (2019) at the 58th Venice Biennale.

I presented video documentation of the art installation in a 12-minute video to a group critique. Viewers saw “(t)he blurring of nature, animal and human,” and commented: “The whole process seemed so tranquil and meditative which put me in a very relaxed state.” I discovered that the mix of stills with long stretches of video footage was “a bit challenging”.

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Viewers offered feedback on the landscape as a new context for my making: “fit(s) seamlessly,” “respect for place,” “… connectedness – care.” On whether my work exhibits the same tension in landscape, Steven Rendall commented: “There were tensions in your previous works - especially where the organic/ natural forms and processes seem to thrive in … particular urban interior spaces …. I was particularly drawn to these tensions … Here those tensions seem to have evaporated.” For me, the human (me) in the protected landscape created a different tension - the human was out of place.

Concern was expressed on the MFA discussion board for “whose Country is it, queries about the land and who’s land it is, including the political nature of the place you are in would be (a) beautiful expansion on this body of work.” This led to a discussion on the problematic association of Traditional Owners with landscape and how this is based on a misconception of the Traditional Owners as primitive hunters and gatherers disproven by Bruce Pascoe (Pascoe 2012).

My sense was that conceptually the works to this point in the project had been too safe and conservative reflecting my own fears. They were nest like - a retreat. This is what I go on to explore in no space.

(left to right) – image 100 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 101 mattering moonahs, deinstallation, by tom radke.

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(left to right) - image 102 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 103 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 104 mattering moonahs, deinstallation, by tom radke; image 105 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 106 mattering moonahs by tom radke; image 107 mattering moonahs, passers-by, by tom radke.

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No space Contested place, exposed.

No words.

Trapped, filled with fear.

Away but near, isolated, a room, the garden, a space.

Private, secret, hidden, mine.

Relief, safe.... for a time.

Safe space, attendant.

Foraging, borrowing, cleaning.

Arranging… nesting.

Occupied, made of growing and crafting.

Exploring, collecting, learning, thinking, caring, Mattering… webbing.

Mindful, unseen.

Relating, friending, making, protecting.

Living … ecology…for now.

image 108 pattie beerens, mattering happening Cork, traces of performances by tomasz and lucija madajczak at CCD ‘Sustainability’ Showcase Exhibition August 2020, threads of clay, dimensions variable.

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project 4-5 Ireland and the woodland no space (the video) (2020)

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video performance, 7 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLRkZOPgcA An opportunity arose during mattering moonahs to engage in a collaboration with Tomasz Madajczak - on an installation he had planned for Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space. This was our second collaboration; Tomasz having already performed one of my works for an exhibition in Ballydehob.

For one week, he installed in a gallery in Ireland and I installed in the woodland. We communicated via email and zoom each day.

Our intention was to explore a dialogue about place through our works. The starting prompt was the proposed title, no space, which had a history with Tomasz.

I responded with a poem with the same title (left).

We discussed the concept of scores which led to a sharing of words each day: words of intention and words of experience.

15

I reflected on my supervisor’s suggestion that I was already informally working with scores and researched how scores are used in contemporary dance (Millard 2016). Dancer and choreographer Merc Cunningham used scores rather than stories, feelings and music to allow for an alertness to what’s happening.

He was drawn to the unknown and more interested in effects than intentions. He explains, “(t)he dancers are not pretending to be other than themselves” (Roy 2008). This was the basis for trialling words as prompts for this project.

The title, no space, reminded me of spaces where there was no room for freedom of expression. I found words associated with freedom based on my early days as a figure skater, alone on the rink early in the morning - stretching, bending, jumping, squeezing, spinning, flowing, floating, smiling. I was embarrassed by the words as they called for a physical rather than a mental enactment of freedom. Nevertheless, I persisted.

My experience was genuinely liberating and freeing. I became more expansive in my crafting and I disengaged further from my fears and habits. I was within the work. The trees became part of the work and, most interestingly, while this work was significantly larger it was less visible than the smaller pieces dotted in the landscape. I continued to weave with sloppy lines of clay for a week and

Collaboration details in Appendix

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observed how the forming evolved and disappeared as it became more connected. My performance was more attentive than meditative which I recognised as another pivot point in my journey.

Tomasz, and I engaged in two Facebook interviews initiated by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space.

I created a video of the collaboration. In contrast with my first work post mortem when I hid my making, my thinking and my intention, the viewers of no space (the video) saw “… a gentle embodiment, a thinking through doing, it is tactile, active, simultaneously reflective and social.”

Viewers saw an “autobiographical story telling” “…your relationship to the land.” Yu Fang experienced a tension similar to when Andy Goldsworthy’s sculpture made from sticks collapsed (Rivers and Tides- Andy Goldsworthy 2012).

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Tomasz deinstalled his work in the final Facebook broadcast. In the woodland, it was a social event. How we form attachments seems to be at the core of the human condition. Elizabeth Grosz shares how “…at best what we can do is carve out a location, a territory … which is a primordial impulse of architecture” (Radio National 2005). I wonder if viewers see deinstallation as threatening the safe place we have created?

Finally, it is timely to acknowledge my hidden journey with fear by my side. Whilst I would prefer to regard fear a normal part of artmaking and living, I see now how it has been a competing conductor of my processes of making – and nesting.

The notes of my wandering mind from my first project - post mortem – reveal the start of my journey. “I’m scared, feel exposed, want to hide. There is a corner near the hydrant I can hide in – nice.”

(left to right) – image 109 no space @ Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space by tomasz madajczak; image 110 no space @ Moonah Woodland by tom radke.

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(left to right) – image 111 no space @ Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space by tomasz madajczak; image 112 no space @ Moonah Woodland by tom radke; image 113 no space, Facebook live stream invitation by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre; image 114 no space @ Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space screenshot from Facebook live performance by tomasz madajczak; image 115 no space @ Uillinn: West Cork Arts Space by tomasz madajczak.

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www.beerens.net.au

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“Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos meaning dwelling or habitat. But rather than the question of where, the emphasis must be placed on the question of how, on habit. Habit is not to be regarded as a mere passive knee-jerk response to a stimulus, but as a creative power. It is more than obvious that we cannot be said to have habits. Rather it is habits that have us.

Moreover, it is habits that we are.�

Andrej Radman, architect, discussion on material ethics, quoting philosophers Lorenzo Magnani and Brian Massumi (Radman 2020.; Magnani 2009; Massumi 2015)

image 116 studio practice by tom radtke.

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image 117 sarah lynch, happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas.

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———. 2011. “MoMA | Last Chance to See Monika Grzymala and the Exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.”

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Monash University, ed. 2017. Open Spatial Workshop: Converging in Time. Caulfield East, Victoria: Monash University Museum of Art. Morton, Timothy. 2010. “Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger, and the Beautiful Soul.” https://www.academia.edu/934516/Thinking_Ecology_The_Mesh_the_Strange_Stranger_and_the_Beautiful_Soul.

Moustakas, Clark E. 1990. Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2009. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Arthitecture. AD Primers. Chichester, U.K: Wiley.

Pascoe, Bruce. 2012. The Little Red Yellow Black Book: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia. Third edition. Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press.

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Appendices 1. Article Australian Journal of Ceramics (July 2019) 2. Invitation stories so far (March 2020) 3. Invitation am I listening? (May 2020) 4. Notice mattering moonahs (July 2020) 5. Notice no space (August 2020)

(left to right) – image 118 happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas; image 119 happening event @ am I listening? by justas pipinas; image 120 am I listening? by thomas feng.

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PATTIE BEERENS I am at my desk and reflecting: “Why clay and why sculpture?”

It all began during the summer of 2008 when my younger daughter and I enjoyed a few weeks in the former studio of ceramic sculptor Karl Duldig (1902–1986). The Glen Iris studio was engraved with the patina of the former artist and we were surrounded by tranquil gardens and Duldig’s sculptures. The clay was soft and groggy, it didn’t come in blocks or in bags and it was decades old. It was the clay used by Duldig, sourced from a Sommerville pottery that made terracotta pipes and quarry tiles. For four years I would go to the studio on a Sunday to meditate and connect with the clay. I spent weeks on a piece, and it was regularly suggested, supportively, that my sculpture would collapse. At times it did, but I persisted. I reflect that it was sort of like my own Eat Pray Love, but through clay.

One day I was offered a block of clay in a bag and I called it quits. My sculptures collected dust and become monuments to a past love until a good friend asked me why I wasn’t doing what I loved. She had perfect timing. I opened my eyes to the breadth of ceramics expression and embarked on a process of trying to learn everything I could in my ‘spare time’. Last year I retired from a secure career to progress what I refer to as my next career.

Pattie Beerens, Camouflage, 2019, handbuilt porcelain, chrome glaze 1220ºC, h.40cm, w.37cm, d.31cm; photo: artist

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FOCUS: SCULPTURE

Along the way, I discovered why other ceramic artists connect with clay. After a few weeks with Victor Greenaway – the ‘master of my mentors’ – in Orvieto, Italy, he plucked an Etruscan bucchero vessel from the shelf and gave it to me to hold. It was so fine and so delicate, and I was mesmerised by the dimensions of time between now and then.

Still captivated, last year I focused my ceramics studies at Federation University on the ceramics of the Minoan civilisation in Crete. Unlike the Etruscans, the Minoans articulated a strong connection with the female and with nature through their ceramics.

I am continuing this year with a Master of Fine Art at RMIT. So far it has been intense and challenging: to look beyond ceramics as a medium and to get feedback on my ceramics practice through the lens of contemporary art.

I work from studios in Melbourne and Anglesea on the Great Ocean Road. For those who think that the cost of setting up a studio is prohibitive, both of my kilns are electric, old, second-hand and cost under $1000 each. One has an electronic controller but the other one has a kiln sitter and uses mini cones so I’m gentle with them and limit firing temperatures to 1220C. I now buy my clay in buckets and bags and tend to use Lumina Porcelain in my structural sculptures. I make the ‘struts’ first by dipping absorbent organic and non-organic materials into casting porcelain and then I hang them and let gravity do the work. These are then cut or broken and connected with porcelain paper clay slip to create the forms. I can add texture or strength to the struts by adding more layers of clay. As the structures are fragile to move and build on as they get bigger, I have experimented with bisque firing in stages which has been working. Once the sculpture is completed in form, I then fully fire the piece to 1220ºC. If I don’t like some of the cracks and breaks – which are inevitable – I have discovered I can add more clay and refire to 1220ºC. Once I am happy with the form I glaze and fire to 1100ºC.

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Pattie Beerens Matrix, 2019, handbuilt porcelain, terracotta barium glazes, 1220ºC h.45cm, w.45cm, d.43cm; photo: artist

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Pattie Beerens, Ultima Thule, 2019, handbuilt porcelain, barium glaze, 1220ºC, h.30cm w.40cm, d.30cm Photo: artist Below: Pattie Beerens Camouflage, 2019 handbuilt porcelain chrome glaze, 1220ºC h.40cm, w.37cm d.31cm; photo: artist

I have been experimenting with struts for a few years now and it is meditative in the same way that the terracotta clay was at the outset. I don’t follow any geometric rules as I construct, but look for lightness and space in the forms.

The decision-making process to determine the connection points reminds me of how I make decisions in the real world and how branches grow from trees – responding to the wind, the sun and the balance of the form.

A drawback in my process is that some materials are toxic, so I keep the kiln room well ventilated and the doors open during the first firing. I also prefer to use organic materials like sponge from the beach, grasses, papers and natural fabrics.

Because my sculptures don’t have a top or a bottom, glazing can be precarious. I don’t scrimp on calcined alumina on the shelf and continue to invent wire structures to lift the piece up from the shelf. The best suggestion given to me was to make beds of wire spikes from nichrome wire and fire bricks on which to rest the sculpture.

I tend to pursue an idea or inspiration in my practice and the sculptures here were inspired by my trip to Tonga last year. I was on an island with no power and I had a dream one stormy night about our vulnerability to ‘mother earth’. When I awoke, I thought I could feel the earth breathing, and in the morning I discovered we had experienced an earthquake. In response, these sculptures explore ‘breathing’ in the context of social, natural and geological structures. I couldn’t believe how they came alive and took on other meanings when I photographed them in the landscape and their scale was transformed.

This year I have been sourcing clay from building sites, including the Metro Tunnel site in Melbourne, and using it to create sculptures inspired by casts of Melbourne’s industrial landscape.

I seem to be on a journey to discover hidden histories – like my own – that get absorbed as I look forward. www.instagram.com/pattiebeerens

Above: Pattie Beerens, Anglesea studio, 2019; photo: Bodil Bergstrom

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Appendix 3

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M a t t e r in g M o o n a h s 2 0 2 0 A n a rtw o rk b y P a ttie B e e re n s p h o to g ra p h e d b y T o m R a d tk e

What’s going on?

This is an ephemeral (temporary) artwork. It will be ongoing from 27 July to 16 August 2020.

Permission has been granted by Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (GORCC) www.gorcc.com.au The artist, Pattie Beerens, is a Master of Fine Arts student and this project will be documented as part of her final semester of studies.

Can you explore the artwork?

Visitors are very welcome to explore the artwork. If you could please limit how far you travel from the path that would be most appreciated.

We don’t want to disturb the undergrowth and there are branches and strings that you could trip on.

What happens if it rains?

We adapt and so will the work.

How can I follow?

Pattie will be posting regularly on Instagram @pattiebeerens.

When will the artist be here?

Subject to weather, the artist will be here most mornings for one hour. If you would like to hear about the work, please contact Pattie on 0419810044.

Event details can be found in the Surf Coast Arts Trail portal www.surfcoastartstrail.com.au T he artist re spe c tfully ac kno w le dge s the W athauro ng pe o ple , the T raditio nal O w ne rs and P ro te c to rs o f this plac e .

Collecting clay for Aireys Inlet quarry for Mattering Moonahs and photo taken by Tom Radtke.

PATTIE BEERENS is a visual artist with studios in Point Roadnight and Melbourne, Australia.

Beerens works with textile materials and primordial clay to create immersive mattering environments of living, sensing and relating as part of nature.

Drawing on an intimate sense of the aliveness of clay, she explores material thinking as an ethos toward a more sustainable relationship with the environment.

Rather than celebrating nature in a purist fantasy or despairing over the damaged times in which we live, Beerens’ works with an alchemy of materials to create enchanted ephemeral scapes and communities.

TOM RADTKE is an Anglesea photographer with a technical and forensic photographic background from a career in Defence science. Tom’s current work is driven by a deep affinity for local landscapes, making this project an exciting and fitting one for him to document.

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Appendix 5

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No space

Contested place, exposed.

No words.

Trapped, filled with fear.

Mindful, unseen.

Relating, friending, making, protecting.

Living … ecology…for now.

Away but near, isolated, a room, the garden, a space.

Safe space, attendant.

Private, secret, hidden, mine.

Foraging, borrowing, cleaning.

Relief, safe.... for a time.

Arranging… nesting.

Occupied, made of growing and crafting.

Exploring, collecting, learning, thinking, caring, Mattering… webbing.

Tomasz Madajczak will meet with Pattie Beerens by zoom in the studio for a period of a week. Pattie is an Australian artist, ceramist, maker who explores the diversity of suspended installations which are supplemented with pieces of fabric dipped in clay. Eventually the shapes become suspended sculptures created in relation to their environment and circumstances. Tomasz is going to work on a collaborative response in one of the studios in Uillinn West Cork Art Centre.

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(inside back cover) – image 121 am I listening? by thomas feng; image 122 am i listeing by thomas feng; (back cover) – image 123 mattering moonahs by tom radke; 100

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