Sick Rose
Testing Grounds
Sick Rose is a 44-channel moving image installation for Testing Grounds, Melbourne, that sees an army of bull ants swarm the ground floor amongst bovine hearts and rose petals. Inspired by William Blake’s The Sick Rose—described as one of the most enigmatic poems in the English language—this exhibition screens a suite of video artworks that consider thorny perceptions of lifecycles, ecosystems, adaptation, death and dying through the guise of insects.
February 2024
Documentation: Chloe Elizabeth
Sediment
Benalla Art Gallery
Sediment features aeolian harp-sculptures created from antique surveyors’ tripods sourced from a local agricultural college played by the wind within a retired quarry and activated by Australian pythons. The resonance from the harps remains raw, with the sound unaltered, capturing the essence of the elements and connecting with country in regional Victoria.
The tripods are relics from a bygone era, once used to measure and map the landscape. This cross-elemental performance activates natural forces, while reflecting on place and cartographic memory. The energy generated by the wind vibrates the harp strings, giving presence of the site’s dynamic natural qualities and acoustics, seeing the landscape itself as a collaborator.
Snakes personify how the artist views the Australian landscape, with the dual interpretation of being simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Sediment explores how sound may be translated to an animal. A python hears via vibrations through its skin, enabling a truly embodied sonic experience.
Sediment conjures deeper and universal relationships between visual language and myth making to reveal how serpents are transformed within aesthetic-cultural fields and to examine the postmodern animal as performer.
Performers
Basil the Albino Python (Morelia Spilota Varigate)
Banjo the Carpet Python (Morelia Spilota Variegate)
Lara the Olive Python (Liasis Olivaceus)
DP: Gene Alberts
Colourist: Nicholas Andrews
Herpetologist: Michael Alexander
Created at CoVA’s Art + Ecology Residency, Dookie Agricultural College, Regional Victoria. Supported by Creative Victoria Arts Fund.
Benalla Art Gallery Projection Façade
September 2023
Artist as Animal, single channel projection, Benalla Art Gallery
Created during a residency at Dookie Agricultural College in regional Victoria, Artist as Animal sees the artist engage in an endurance allergen performance across pollenated, waterlogged canola fields while wearing high heels and carrying an 8kg cattle gut strung harp. The presence and celebration of the changing role of women in Australia during the first and second world wars can be seen peppered throughout the college’s archives. Black and white photos of a class held at the farm of women in weighted skirts and muddied high heels offered altered perceptions of farm work experiences. This performance embodies a re-enactment of human and nonhuman labour, while echoing the absurdity of culture being forced upon nature and country.
DP: Gene Alberts. Supported by the Centre of Visual Art’s Art + Ecology Residency, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Benalla Art Gallery Projection Façade
August 2023
An Athlete Wresting With a Python
Dual channel projection installation, Denying Eye
Art at the Bank with Mars Gallery
In this dual channel moving image projection two children mimic the 1877 Frederic Leighton marble sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, housed at the Art Gallery of NSW, by gently grappling with a live carpet python. This act transforms Leighton’s depiction of man dominating nature into a softer, haunting, feminist view of interspecies interaction, embodying a contemporary reinterpretation. The original sculpture employs "figura serpentinata," a style depicting figures in dynamic, twisting poses that require viewers to move around it, symbolising the idea of shifting perspectives.
Performers
Theo & Arlo
Carpet Python, Aurora
Curator
Sarah Fern
Denying Eye, the old Union Bank with Mars Gallery, Windsor, Melbourne.
August, 2023
Serpentinata
Allergen living statue performance
Denying Eye, Art at the Bank with Mars Gallery
Serpentinata is a reimagining of the 1877 Frederic Leighton marble sculpture An Athlete Wresting With a Python housed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The depiction of man conquering nature is translated into a softer, feminist performance with a python formed from fresh flowers and an endurance athlete who periodically sneezes over two hours.
Performance by Michelle McCowage
Makeup by Maxine Chen
Dual exhibition with Alex Walker
Curated by Sarah Fern
Documentation by Ming Liew
The Old Union Bank
Windsor, Melbourne
August, 2023