23 June - 2 September 2023 @ artisan Machinery Street Gallery, Bowen Hills QLD

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Three Growing Forms, and an Adamant Creeper uses a surrealist drawing by Ithell Colquhoun and a long-dormant plant cutting as inspiration for new work. Colquhoun’s drawing uses the process of automatism, where chance marks create a starting point to access the subconscious, untethered from a rational outcome. Embracing Colquhoun’s esoteric views of the natural world and divine feminine energy, the exhibition explores materiality in strangely familiar processes and forms.

 

Found objects coalesce with works made during my residency at artisan’s Melbourne Street studio. Stains, fragments, and fractures in broken terracotta pots inform the surfaces and structures of new ceramic pieces, temporarily bound together with unravelled strands of salvaged polyester rope. Clay has been rolled flat to resemble paper, cut into shapes to form an exquisite corpse, then suspended in a second intuitive interpretation guided by sunlight in the Machinery Street Gallery space. Resisting permanence, the objects retain the potential to be untied, unstacked, and reimagined. The porous ceramic surfaces are open to the accumulation of marks, made intentionally and by chance.

 

The adamant creeper, Cissus quadrangularis, arrives on the eve of the winter solstice, dormant yet full of potency. Used in classical Ayurvedic medicines to heal broken bones, this remarkable plant is also used as a tonic, anti-inflammatory and analgesic. In this space, the adamant creeper is surrounded by protective charms, life affirming symbols, and aspirational growth rings. For the duration of the exhibition and my concurrent residency, I will continue to engage with the space, to care for the adamant creeper and respond to the season’s increasing daylight.