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Final Process

 ngayirr (sacred) 2015-17

Assessment 2 research: Nicole Foreshew

Indigenous artist Nicole Foreshew explores the relationship between the body and the earth in works that consider concepts of time, materiality, growth and renewal. She focuses on notions of culture and family, referencing the deep connections that have developed and remain between people and land over generations. She also explores the ‘interventions’ or impacts of humans on the environment, through social, cultural and economic actions, such as burial, cutting, mining and farming. 

In ngayirr (sacred) (2015–17) Foreshew brings together an ‘awareness of place together with cultural knowledge of earth, mineral and plant materials’. ngayirr (sacred) comprises of nine tree limbs found by the artist on Country that have been ceremoniously transformed.  The head or tip of each limb is covered in a crystalline skin that range in colour from pale pink to deep russet.  Installed learning against the gallery wall, the individual branches evoke bodily forms.  Foreshew intentionally buried the limbs underground in a site of personal significance. Over time a crystalline skin grows across the limb, the result of a chemical reaction deep with the earth. Referencing spiritual and cultural practices of the artist’s homeland, ngayirr (sacred) traces ‘personal connections to kin and the material knowledge required to retrieve and revive the body’.

https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/2017.36/

For no reason other than artist angst with communicating ideas

I opened the poster to the interpretation of the class, wanting to see if it could communicate clearly without text. I myself did not have the most articulate of concepts prepared, despite having carefully thought about it throughout my entire process. I wanted to learn how to better communicate my ideas and artistic intentions because I struggle a lot to understand the audience view, understanding, interpretation and communication of works.

The one way I didn’t want the work to go was evolution. Having understood and been exposed to the philosophical side of ecology as the exploration of a interconnected system through which we can understand the world, evolution seemed like a very basic idea of human ecology. I wanted to celebrate, lament and explore humanity as it stands today, and it’s future potential. In conceptualising so much I felt it was so beneath the work, and it was almost winding to hear comments about it. I think the “hairy” nature of my brush strokes were too fluid and flat, (despite being concentrated on the palm and finger tips which have no follicles and can’t produce hair even on primates) and didn’t express the intricate and somewhat jagged shapes formed by the millions of intricate connections of neurological pathways and neurones, or the vines and roots I wanted to use to reinforce the inexplicable tie between humanity’s choices and the state of it’s world.

But the evolutionary and visceral nature of the work was how most of the class interpreted it. Even with prompting or what I thought were leading questions about the hand’s symbolism, orientation and relation to the string, I internally despaired as the class, though still in awe and contemplation, fixated on the basic ecological concept of evolution, hair, and didn’t seem to contemplate or think much of the huge importance and depth of interpretation the Human Hand can have for us. I was pleasantly surprised, struck and also unnerved by a comment on the finger’s position from a catholic that it was allegedly the way Christ held his hands when he died. I only worked out how to explain the work after receiving feedback, sharing with my table, even though it was half baked and I stumbled a lot, and having them completely change their view of the work and become more in awe was bizarre, but rewarding.

Fake wonderland

When taking about REBELLION, I first thought about Ai Weiwei, an artist from my country who loves to revolt Chinese government and the Communist party. Rebellious topics that related to sex and politics and death have always been a stimulant to many artists like Ai Weiwei, Sarah Lucas, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono. I think rebellion can be hopeful and powerful (Yoko) but it can also be depressed, desperate and devastating (Nitsch).

What I wanna do is using a ‘dildo’ to break the current situation of a fake Utopia wonderland which is just delusion created by society.

Interview with Adam Hale aka The Daily Splice

https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/08/02/coco-capitan-gucci-interview/

Coco Capitan + Gucci