Photography, Photomedia, Mixed Media | Brian Rope
Tina Fiveash |
The Sweet Forever
Deirdre Pearce |
A line of best fit
ANU School of
Art & Design Gallery | Until 8 April 2021, Tue-Fri 10.30AM–3.00PM
These two exhibitions are each part of Higher Degree by
Research programs being undertaken by the artists.
Tina Fiveash engages in multiple forms of contemporary photomedia including still and moving-image photography, anaglyptic (3D) and lenticular photography.
In The Sweet Forever, Fiveash has explored how
photography might inform a re-imagining of death. Promotional material for this
exhibition reveals that her personal investigation of death and dying through
photography is paralleled with a text-based investigation of wider
understandings of death in our society through the personal letters of a
diverse range of people in her community.
What is death? What happens when we die? Fiveash invited fifty Australians to write a letter responding to those two questions. Digitised forms of their letters are on a website. The exhibition includes a large print, being a grid of portraits of contributors, with a QR code link to the website. Taken together, both Fiveash’s creative visual practice and her work with people’s letters, form a contribution to the field of death studies. Quotes from some letters included in the exhibition notes are very moving.
Equally moving is a series of large images printed with pigment inks on cotton rag. I saw powerful stories about love in each image. Twin Spirit, 2013 was the winner of the People's Choice Award in the 2013 Olive Cotton Award for photographic portraiture.
Tina Fiveash, 'Twin Spirit, 2013', Pigment ink on cotton rag, Courtesy the artist
There are two fine triptychs. One reveals a
wonderful story about the Hereafter; another gives us delicious blue views of
water and sky.
Tina Fiveash, Wide Blue Yonder II, 2014-16. Pigment ink on cotton rag mounted on gataboard, Courtesy the artist
Fiveash told me that discoveries have emerged
through scientific and technological innovation in resuscitation, blurring
boundaries between life and death. Through creative practice she has explored
how photography in the wake of digital transformation might inform a contemporary
re-imagining of death and dying. Her constructed images using words from songs and
poetry on ‘billboards’ against carefully chosen backgrounds are both beautiful
and thought-provoking. One quotes a well-known gospel song There's a land
beyond the river, the lyrics of which include the words ‘the sweet
forever’ – the title of the exhibition.
Tina Fiveash, 'See you on the other side, 2014', Pigment ink on cotton rag, Courtesy the artist
Dierdre Pearce works with drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In A line of best fit there are three excellent mixed media works.
Pearce is interested in how people interact with the various space types we inhabit, and how we map the boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. She enjoys exploring how technologies influence her experiences and sense of self, focusing on developing visual metaphors for the relationship between the physical self and its growing digital presence.
Her research starting point was the growth of global human-machine networks and the significance humans place on participation in them. This practice-led project investigates how negative space might be used as an analogy for non-machine interactions, which are data-silent yet influence global networks in which humans and machines operate.
Experiments took place through a series of site-responsive installations assembled from everyday materials. Different approaches to describing personal experience were tested, including unusual forms of data visualisation and development of digital and physical ‘windows’ through which audiences could engage with the work.
One work here re-imagines Pearce’s study during the pandemic. It contains a wonderfully vibrant and diverse collection of found and acquired objects that visitors could wander amongst for a long time - irrigation pipe, cable ties, shopping dockets and photographic documentation.
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'A line of best fit' (installation view) 2020, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photograph Brenton McGeachie |
Another work includes yarn, polyester, video documentation and found objects.
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'I am here, I am here, I am here’, 2020, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photograph Dierdre Pearce |
The third is a video; both it and the yarns feature ‘dots’ – we see them on screen as when locating a place via maps, and in very colourful woven forms of varying sizes determined by how long Pearce spent at particular locations.
This review was published in the Canberra Times on 5/4/21 here. It is published also on the author's own blog here.
