Review
Ann McMahon
From the simple question, "What If….?" agile minds devise solutions to a range of biological and physical problems, but they also create works of art. Artists and scientists are driven by similar urges to gather information, experiment, to synthesize and discover new ways of looking at things. Valency presents the work of six artists that are responding to the sciences. As invoked by the name, Valency is about reciprocity. Described as the ability of atomic elements to contribute or share electrons, Valency indicates the capacity or competency of atoms to combine to form new chemical structures during reactive processes. Each artist in Valency seeks an audience reaction to their work and in so doing, aims to foster new understanding.
It is tempting to think of the objectivity that is at the core of scientific methodology as opposite to the subjective responses that inform and are intrinsic to the appreciation of art. But it is a path to dividing these disciplines, which both privilege creativity and innovation. Valency sets out to explore reciprocity, to find perhaps not necessarily a balance but complimentary positions for art and science. The aim is to promote a holistic approach and to find new ways of expressing the intriguing and wonderful world that scientific study reveals. Art offers a way to celebrate and elaborate through the responses of artists. Objectivity should be tempered with a regard for human nature and an appreciation for the broader social context in which activities occur and upon which they impact. Art explores this side of the equation and each participant in Valency is interested in areas of science that evoke strong personal responses.
The works are a conduit linking subject, artist and viewer. Scientific subjects inform the works, the artists distil the material and visual language of the works so they communicate something of the artist's observations, questions and feelings to the viewer. In turn the viewer is invited to respond, to think and to consider or accommodate alternative views. Each of the six artists in Valency has chosen a different branch of science to investigate. Ken Yonetani for instance looks at environmental science, beginning with natural history and collections of insects. He consulted and worked with Kim Pullen of the Australian insect collection during his Master of Arts research at the School of Art (SOA) at the Australian National University (ANU).
They selected six of Australia's most endangered butterflies and these became the focus of Yonetani's work. He made 2000 low fired fumie tiles over a period of 8 months and images of the endangered butterflies appear in exquisitely detailed surface relief on each tile. An installation, on the floor of the CSIRO Discovery Centre was Yonetani's Master's degree exhibition in 2004. The choice of installation, allows Yonetani to make reference to tests conducted in seventeenth century in Japan. A similar floor installation of fumi tiles, imprinted with the image of Christ, was used as a test of faith. Unwilling to step on the tiles, breaking them, Christians were revealed. Art audiences are usually not allowed to even touch the artwork, but Yonetani invited them to destroy the works. He instigated audience participation in an interactive public art performance. It was, in effect, a test of human nature. Yonetani's hypothesis is that human beings have conflicting desires to preserve and to destroy.
This conflict is also played out in the environment with conservationists, resource managers, commercial interests and consumers creating and trying to solve increasingly complex dilemmas. In Valency, a video of Yonetani's 2004 exhibition dramatically shows the audience response to his staged dilemma. Visitors were obliged to enter and walk around the show, stepping on the tiles, which were almost entirely destroyed in less than an hour. Some audience members seemed to delight in the act of destruction and can be seen stomping and jumping on unbroken tiles. The delicate images of the butterflies were fragmented and crushed. Butterflies have long often been used as a symbol for mortality and the ephemeral and beautiful qualities of life. The endangered status of the depicted species added special poignancy to the work. The performance poetically dramatized Yonetani's hypothesis.
At the end of the event, lingering audience members are to be seen rescuing the few unbroken tiles, moving them reverently to positions of safety. And so the other side of Yonetani's premise is also sensitively depicted. Avi Amesbury is also intrigued by human nature and in her work Acts of Australia, considers the field of political science with an investigation of reconciliation. A ceramic artist, Amesbury uses clay as a reference to the land, juxtaposing it, in this work, to paper. Translucency in her constructed boxes is created through the use of drafting film, a paper material that is surprisingly rigid and yet appears fragile. The box surfaces are printed with texts, acts of parliament relating to land tenure and title.
The boxes express the notion that the words contain, define and convey concepts of land ownership. These concepts and the power to make and enforce laws stand between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The two are yet to be politically reconciled and Amesbury's work reflects on the situation. She works with text on paper and ceramics to explore the divergent perspectives the two cultures. While paper documents a history reaching back some 3,000 years, the ceramic suggests connections to the earth invoking some 40,000 years of Indigenous history. Her ceramic vessels are cast in porcelain. The surfaces are marked with impressions made using stamps and they are coloured with slips, earthen pigments that recall the hues of the landscape.
The fragmented patterns suggest surfaces that are of intense interest in archaeology. Reminiscent of exposed and weathered middens containing bones, shells and other evidence of ancient human habitation and activity, the surfaces of the vessels recall ages of history that are otherwise undocumented. Western culture's practice of historical writing and documentation does not recognize the oral history and story traditions of Indigenous people. Amesbury wrestles to find common ground where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians see eye to eye. In the spirit of Valency Amesbury looks into the possibility of sharing politically charged elements so as to create mutual bonds. She says, "It is not enough for Indigenous people to learn to write; non-Indigenous people must learn to listen."
The twentieth century was the era of specialization and a focus on the differences between disciplines has perhaps created separation or maybe just divergence in the use of professional language. People might consider art and science to be poles apart, but profound similarities in process, aims, motivations and a concern with contemporary challenges link the two disciplines. From a historical perspective, art practices have been used to record scientific observation. Science, furthermore, has been patronized by the rich and powerful, those who also provided employment for artists. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both disciplines were democratized through the rise of public education. Research and the accumulation of knowledge became an end in itself, not restricted to just the wealthy classes. Dualist philosophies, however, placed science in the rational, objective, classically derived camp, while art became associated with the subjective approach of the romantics.
An interest in fundamental principles has led Anna Gianakis to develop a refined and mathematically informed aesthetic, which conveys a classical sensibility. Displaying characteristic precision, her porcelain works in Valency reference three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Her first installation reflects the exquisite order of a crystalline structure with consistent co-relations of positive and negative space. The potential for movement is explored in a second arrangement, while the third represents the chaotic spacing and random relationships between the energetic molecules of a gas. Gianakis uses repeated forms, small vessels, in her groupings. This formal device lends unity and suggests the broader applications of the term, pattern.
A fascination with scientific instrumentation and empirical thought typifies the glass work of Jacqueline Gropp. A formal essentialism and conceptual clarity is reflected in her use of materials. Using commonly used scientific apparatus made in transparent glass, including: the beaker, thistle flask, Y-piece and pipette, Gropp suggests the field of scientific investigation. The apparent simplicity of the piece belies or perhaps accommodates Gropp's enormous capacity for poignantly conveying complex and layered meanings. These are carried as references drawn from the disciplines of art, science and cosmology as poetic and symbolic metaphors. By incorporating liquids and effects such as capillary action Gropp also suggests biological forms and the human body in particular. This perception is reinforced by her arrangement, which uses symmetry, containment and forms that reference internal organs.
Although the science of phrenology has been discredited, more than ever, people are judged by their appearance. By selecting this arcane branch of inquiry Luke Luffan suggests that scientific theory not only evolves in response to new discoveries, but that society is inclined to seek knowledge justifying the prevailing social paradigm. Just as Phrenology was used to identify racial and social types in accordance with theories of social Darwinism, today geneticists are classifying DNA sequences so that new forms of selection and exclusion can be exercised. Luffan's nose index focuses on the facial feature that is most often altered with cosmetic surgery. The work has a humorous side, but is not without serious intent. Beauty is today a valid and sought after form of social capital and Luffan challenges the viewer to interrogate their own responses to physical appearance.
Should one choose the lives of laboratory mice over the life of a child? Bronwen Sandland explores the complex ethics and the emotional dilemmas that such a choice imposes. Her work reflects a personal journey in which she reviewed the implications of her moral stance. Sandland's research took her to the John Curtin School of Medical Research where "mouse models" for human genetic disorders are being created. Sandland compares the relationship of parent to child with that of the scientist to the carefully nurtured mouse subject. The mice in the research study each have a name and a file with a detailed medical and developmental history. Sandland has created name tags for them, like those that mark the door of a child's room. But the plaques rest on the floor against the gallery wall, the informal arrangement suggesting wreaths placed in tribute at a memorial.
Sandland has also made sketches in paint of the mice. They are captured in motion, doing the inquisitive and active things that mice -and children- do: running, sniffing, tasting, looking, feeling and playing. The images of mice seem to recall children's book illustrations, which capture the personality of the mouse characters. The paintings have been made on pharmaceutical boxes, a reference to human suffering. Between the cute images of mice and references to children and illness there is an emotional space filled with a tension that ethical debate and rational argument cannot dissipate. In her curatorial essay Craft ACT Executive Director Barb McConchie writes:
There are elements of our world that science is hard pressed to explain. Wonder, elation, heartbreak, hate and violence are concepts that we understand and that behavioural sciences work to explain and anticipate. As Humans we share commonalities but the experience of these things is unique.
Art is a forum for expressing and exploring those things, which so often are very difficult to say. Images touch people, communicating without words; each individual understanding them in relation to their own experience. Valency communicates to the audience on a number of levels. It expresses fascination with scientific thought and discovery; it uses sophisticated visual language that solicits critical engagement and response; and it celebrates the role of imagination and creativity in our lives. It seems fitting that Valency was at the CSIRO Discovery centre, a place where science and art come together in an information rich designed environment. We are living in a new era where creative industries connect art and aesthetics with science and technology in complementary and illuminating ways. The key to the future is imagination; artists and scientists must continue to ask, "What if...?"
August 2005
Ann McMahon
Contributing Editor for Craft
Artlook Magazine
See also: Profile
