SPIRITS, PERMEATING ECOLOGY, POISONOUS

 Photography, Mixed Media | Brian Rope

SPIRITS | B-Dam Pictures (NSW)

PERMEATING ECOLOGY | REMI SICILIANO

POISONOUS | ELLIS HUTCH

Photo Access | 26 May – 25 Jun

 

Over five years, B-Dam Pictures (artists Anthony Sillavan and Stephanie Sheppard) used a motion-sensor camera to obtain a series of what effectively are self-portraits of Australian wildlife. They suggest Spirits is the native animals themselves revealing their habits, pleasures and dangers - about their tenuous life existence and, by extension, our own fragility.

 

B-Dam Pictures - Self Portrait 6

The sense of motion is more obvious in some images than others. Which is best – a greater or lesser sense of motion? Contemplating that, I realised it was not always obvious what had triggered the camera.

Is that a shadow of a bird in flight that triggered the camera? Another shot has the feeling of being a pinhole camera image, even though I know it was not. And in a third shot, at first glance I thought the featured animal was a log.

One shot of a dam has an animal’s tail disappearing out of the frame. Another shows the same dam with no clear evidence of an animal at all. There is much to see and contemplate in this fine set of images.

Remi Siciliano practices “Ecological Image-Making”, her methodology for embracing and celebrating all the different organisms, materials and forces at play within her work. Collaborative interactions entangle divisions between artist, organism, material, subject, object and landscape. She dissolves these categories as we know them.

In Permeating Ecology, Siciliano has intentionally relinquished technical control in her image making; instead playfully collaborating with other organisms and natural processes to produce her photographs.

Fungal networks have grown through 35mm negatives documenting landscapes, while moisture softened and encouraged the film emulsion to peel. The images reveal meeting points of growth and decomposition.

Remi Siciliano - Plexus, 2021

Although very different to B-Dam Pictures works - large rather than small, and abstract rather than documentary - these artworks also are great.

 

Remi Siciliano - Image 2

I recently read of the “strange allure” of fungi and how it has always captured the imagination. An ecologist has described fungi as the "third forgotten kingdom" behind flora and fauna and said there is much to be discovered about their vital role in our ecosystems.

By using the playful techniques described above, Siciliano has created “strangely alluring” images. Fungi growing through negatives is the starting point for artworks revealing things we would otherwise have never seen – except, possibly, in our imaginations.

Ellis Hutch combines photography, drawing, animation, sound and projection. This resultant exhibition, Poisonous, investigates the microscopic world of our waterways. Hutch navigates the complexities of the ‘health’ of those waterways.

She questions how people establish social relationships and transform their environments to create inhabitable spaces. Recently, she has been paying close attention to the place she lives and works, unceded Ngunnawal (also spelt Ngunawal) and Ngambri country, investigating the effects of ‘invasive’ humans and other species on the Molonglo River. Here, she has done that by combining large-scale drawing and video projection.

The charcoal drawings by Hutch are, indeed, large and quite arresting - not simply because of their scale. Some might even say “awe and wonder” to describe their reactions when first entering the gallery space through a dark curtain. With a video projecting moving digital images on to the drawings, the works become an installation. 

We see glimpses of the molecular structure of minerals and microbes that are both toxic poisons and useful contributors to the ecosystem. This is art, successfully revealing a realm invisible to our eyes – a place critical to our survival.

 

Ellis Hutch - Blackmtnpeninsulaboatramp

Each artist is curious about the processes that drive the varied eco-systems of our planet. Each has employed a distinctive method to investigate the natural world’s intricacies.

This review was published on page 10 of Panorama in the Canberra Times of 16/6/22 and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.