Waratah Lahy Found 3 (blue cottage with agapanthus) 2004 oil on bottle cap 2.4cm diam courtesy the artist
Found objects are potent because of the many ways we can make meaning of them, and can take meaning from them. Discourses from earlier uses can be manipulated in playful and provocative ways to frame new meanings and new existences for the objects. Or, commonplace objects—fabrics, buttons, kitchen ware—can be isolated from their surroundings, their cultural baggage, and given new significance.
This exhibition at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery did all of these things. It was assembled by a small team of curators from a project generated by two students from the University of Newcastle. Despite the collaboration involved, there was clearly a strong, unifying vision informing the flow of the work across the space, and the selection of the works that were included.
Each of the eleven artists whose work appeared in this exhibition contributed a different set of insights to a story of transformation. The approach taken allowed this story to unfold as a visual journey across the gallery space. While a central theme was transformation of found objects, the new layers of meaning produced by these works was in turn raw, playful, reverent, whimsical and illuminating.
Peter Atkins' 20 mixed media panels in ‘Spanish Journal' form a travelogue of his excursion as artist-in residence during 1998. The work, comprising idiosyncratically chosen remnants of everyday life, assumes a curious formality as these objects lift from their plain, square frames to provoke strong jolts of recognition. Found velvet fabric, simple but colourful buttons, fruit wrappers from Barcelona, children's drawings—these objects remain essentially unaltered. Yet, assembled within the frame, their essential nature as beautiful, textured objects can emerge. Atkins' aim for this work was not to change the nature of these objects, or to transform them. Instead their power lies in the everydayness of each item as it is seen, separated from a background context, its meaning enriched as part of Atkins' personal journey. A silent invitation is, in turn, offered to viewers to frame their own more familiar, personal narratives about journeys, holidays and scraps of ordinary life.
For Atkins' other work in the exhibition, ‘Remnant Threads' (2006) the theme of transformation is central as he quite literally created something entirely new out of ‘old cloth'. The resulting vibrant panels of striped colour, made from the discarded yarns and cottons left from completed tapestries, were created while Atkins was artist-in-residence at the Victorian Tapestry Workshops. They clearly demonstrate the generative process of art, as raw material can transform from one application to another.
In a similar way, Gillian Beneke's series of French dolls was stitched from remnant fabric scrounged from refuse bins in the garment district of Paris. These dolls are flamboyantly weird with odd arms, button eyes and dangling legs, made more interesting by not being smooth, perfect or symmetrical. The act of rescue is joyously explored in these pieces. They are playful and comforting in their suggestion of folklore and quirkily happy endings.
Playful transformation was also evocatively considered by Waratah Lahy in three sets of small works on aluminium which she had appropriated from old beer cans. These works in oil over scraped metal recall holidays in caravans and beach shacks for anyone lucky enough to have had an Australian childhood shaped by this particular combination of experience. The images in these works play with the icons of home and holiday and they rejoice in a version of Australian memory, from a particular time in the development of coastal settlements. The partially revealed labels and the rusted bottle tops work to subvert the meanings of the beautifully detailed images of people, dogs, cars and holiday shacks that are painted on them. But in doing so, they also celebrate simple pleasures, and their scale and detail demonstrate how easy it is to overlook the small and the familiar features of ordinary objects.
Donna Marcus, in two installations of aluminium kitchen ware, managed to both evoke the 1950s Australian kitchen, and suggest something playfully futuristic in her assembly of frying pan lids and colanders. These tight assemblages created a physical centre for the exhibition space and cast strong, interesting shadows on surrounding walls. Viewers I observed stopped to marvel and exclaim at the memories these familiar objects produced. It was clear that, in engaging with this work, time and place could be evoked in a powerful and personal way.
Conversely, Melissa Hirsch's ‘Bangalow Flowers' (2003) called on this power to evoke a strong response to natural objects and our imaginative engagement with the litter of the bush. Using recycled natural fibres that she had gathered from the bush near her home in Byron Bay, she created new three-dimensional flower forms that lifted exuberantly from the wall. Her art, she says, is ‘in nature, about nature and with nature'. For other artists in the exhibition the reversal of meaning for what is natural, and what is man-made, also had powerful effect.
Lorraine Connelly-Northey uses man-made and discarded objects found in the bush to form harsh, rusted shapes that jag at the imagination. It was easy to feel the rawness of the rusted wire. Yet, using traditional Aboriginal techniques, Connelly-Northey shapes this discarded fencing wire into a possum skin cloak, a string bag and other objects that, if made from natural materials, would seem familiar and functional. Her insight into the reshaping of one culture by another was not lost on most viewers. The effect of this work was oddly delicate, raw and confronting.
Chris Mulhearn's ‘Prayer' (2000) also plays intriguingly with this theme. Large weathered-timber planks appeared to peel away from the galley wall. Their texture of worn, scorched wood hinted at past uses. The hull of a fishing vessel washed ashore? Beams from a barn lost in a fire? The work frames a gentle puzzle but also draws attention to the beauty of old wood that is ennobled by the value of tasks it has performed and the weathered survival that it represents.
Among the most compelling works in this exhibition was Mandy Gunn's ‘Scroll' (2002). Its long, lemon-coloured presence was positioned to loop across the gallery space in a manner that suggested both the unfolding of an ancient scroll and a long, flowing journey. Gunn has literally woven this piece from words (in this case Yellow Pages Directories) to express her anthropological interest in textiles. The compression of yellow pages creates a sense of text—words that are mass produced—and Gunn has combined this text with an ancient and delicate interplay of warp and weft. On close inspection many words are partially visible, yet the long, flowing presence of the whole work hints at much bigger themes of universal journeys and paths to be followed.
There was a playful, yet reverent presence created by Ken O'Regan's ‘Something lost, something found' (2006). This installation was commissioned specifically for this exhibition and offered viewers an opportunity to interact with the exhibition's theme. Set quietly, a little apart from the sweep of other work, its assemblages of brightly coloured plastic bottles and other plastic detritus of a consumer culture were given a formal arrangement and were backlit to resemble stained glass. An interesting, reverential mood was established and this invited viewers to take a moment to comment (using pencils and notepaper provided) on ‘something lost' or ‘something found'. Viewers were asked to place their comments in the open drawers which formed part of the installation. At the end of the exhibition the gallery staff noted the range of personal revelations that were expressed in the comments placed in these drawers. Clearly, for some viewers, this had been a confessional experience.
The reverence established by this installation combined beautifully with the delicate mood of two framed works on paper by Hossein Valamanesh. These exquisite works were arresting in their still presence on the wall. ‘Whirl' (2005) used fine placement of pandorea seeds, and the bleached effect of a pale palette, to create an impression of the whirling movement of nature. The achievement of creating movement from a still presence was astonishing. A similar paradox was established with Valamanesh's other work ‘Untitled 1' (2005). But, in this instance, the circular placement of fine cornus branches in the centre of the frame suggested order and ancient symbolism. However, the fine sharp cornus thorns turned outwards in what could be viewed as a warning that more was lurking in the quiet symmetry if this image.
The humble industrial pipe is used by Hany Armanious in ‘Untitled' (1996-2003) to consider how new meanings take shape. Lengths of PVC pipe are intriguingly sliced through to form slender, delicate shapes which, if followed with the eye, could boggle the mind with the intricacy of their oblique planes. While the impression left by the work is of an elegant simplicity, it is also intellectually complicated and compelling. And the shadows cast by these elliptical objects serve to extend an impression that they are perhaps waiting for their next possibilities.
Giving solemn resolution to the themes of transformation, and journeys taken, throughout this exhibition, were three works by Rosalie Gascoigne. Found materials of linoleum, wood and road signs offered their new meanings about bleached domesticity and travel detoured. Positioned as they were at the beginning of this exhibition's journey (or at the end of it for viewers who chose the take an opposite route) Gascoigne's ‘Shark' (1998), ‘Compound' (1994) and ‘Sheep weather alert 5' (1992-3) provided a frame-of-mind for reading the objects used by the other artists. This tone signalled that found objects are significant; that their details can be deeply affecting. Human experience thus revealed demanded that new attention be given to the discarded and commonplace traces we leave behind and the everyday times and places that give meaning to our humanity.
