Semester 2 MFA: Before "lock down" Today i walk the trail along the Yarra river looking across to RSY tennis club. Memories of place and freedom to do, not be told what we can and can't do.

Rebecca Solnit in her book “Savage Dreams” examines maps, place, borders, boundaries and, culture, she talks about two locations in the American West, Yosemite (i visited Yosemite many years ago it was cold snowing and bleak, I hated it my wife was inspired). I bring this up now as like Solnit discusses histories of site colonialism and capitalism the resistance of man today to acknowledge the land we occupy. Wurundjeri country, the Victorian Government has restricted peoples access and now face masks are mandatory outside the home, what would our forebears make of this? Solnit’s book deals with power structures and domesticated peoples, there is tension on the custodians of the land and the colonialism that exists today. My images look at a landscape inhabited and a clay animal being given back as a motif. In these challenging times, I believe we should all look for a feeling of gratitude that we exist to protect one another nurture, and respect the land we share.

In my hands, COVID 19 Shutdown. Image 800 X 570 CM Mark Edwards,Prismacolor pencil

This image is how i feel we are being insulated from the outside world. The hands symbolises nurturing and a fragility of protection. The gun with its curved barrel is a statement from the victorian Government, if you go beyond the home we will come after you, there is no protection beyond the home.

Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Funerary Box for a Lime Green Python), 1954

A sculpture standing torso height, painted fragenrently white, this image reminds me of a scene set in 1970’s may be in a bedroom, yet i feel a presence of between the inexpensive object and a cultural Tahitian like reference. i bring this up today as lock down makes me remember the past, when freedom was not questioned it was just everyday life. So those memories are ever so present but on the same page a disconnect. I am thinking what i make today in time becomes one of these “oh do you remember when we were in lock down”

A way of looking through the image, the transferring of a bodily space beyond the surface. Sculptural possibilities looking through to another world.

Like Lucio Fontana Spatial Concept, series 1958-1968, my work attempts to redefine the experience of an active viewer, as you walk through in and out from the floor looking up from above looking down, how these 15 sheets of moulded paper temporal presence moves to a space beyond.

The fragility and temporal presence of a house. My own imaginary safe haven living beyond the external barriers and confines to another world far removed.

Like Louise Bourgeois in her traumatized an angry girl, what Artforum 1982 say “child abuse” that never escaped her demons in fact grew more loudly as she advanced in years. She demonstrates symbolically in her Cell Series a fractured traumatic life, lonely I sense and an absence of being able to talk about her past, My work narrates an escaping far above the home the earth here i am looking down safely positioned untouchable far beyond.

Louise Bourgeois: Cell (The Last Climb), 2008, A fascinating and at times scary lady, a troubled interior woman, trauma, psychological insecurities.

The Cell Series is an intriguing look into how Bourgeois saw her world and how to create and may be release the demons that possessed her. What i see is a connection with the inner world a world of mystic and spiritual otherness, a place that resembles feelings emotions and abuse. Bourgeois in this series of Cell’s uses her art to express the inner most dark traumatised and abusive behavior she endured.

Dorothea Tanning: soft sculpture 1969, evokes memory , body, performance and play, a happy sculpture, a cuddly body

Tanning’s soft sculpture adds humor and play to a world today that is so convoluted with politics, borders and COVID virus uncertainty. As the world has shut down over the past two months, i see here an

un-entanglement of acceptance of race color and a loving unbridled acceptance on life.

Louise Bourgeois: Untitled 1996, cloth, bone, rubber, steel, undergarments. Here i see memories, fragility, torment, trauma, self expression.

Bourgeois, in this sculpture challenges the dialect of what is fragility, using animal bones as clothes hangers, draws you into another world, a world of exclusion, and taument of an historical memory of what could be perceived as here i am but you touch me and while revenge you !. There is this sense of eeriness a kind of dark side as if something unforgiving lurks behind the image, it is a bit like a play and these are the props. I still feel a sense of fragility, trauma and physiological of a submissive childhood.

Michael Heizer: Megalith #5 1998. I see a body entrapped, confined to this minimalist space. Size creates a boldness and a presence beyond what itis contained within.

Michale Heizer, as discussed at Dia Beacon, the architectural scale of megalithic monuments of ancient cultures-a comparison that is explicitly addressed in his Negative Megalithe #5 (1998), a natural menhir-like stone inscribed in a rectangular niche. “I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended” Heizer. To me parallels are drawn to between the human body and the malability fo this entrapped stone.

Freda Kahlo: Self portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn 1940. How do we see the world as humans, as non-humans, as performers in nature or nature ?

Kahlo’s self portrait is a sombre spiritual representation of living as part of nature, it grapples with self the interior hidden shroud of a woman deep rooted in her ancestral past. Identity living within a cosmos of plant, animal and human life. Perez says “explore the nature of self as not (social) circumscribed identities alongside identity as nature and cosmic being. Beyond asking what is self, the work asks what is life, what are the forms, what constitutes lasting being” ?

Pérez, Laura E.. 2019. Eros Ideologies : Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial. Durham: Duke University Press. Accessed June 1, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Kiki Smith: Ribs 1987, Thoughts that immediately play in to my mind, temporality, spiritual, vulnerability. This image through its rawness of a body evokes human sadness.

Today i continue to work on my mind map and this image allows me to feel all the above emotions, an inner self, a sacred spirituality and a feeling of its ok to take security in the vulnerable feelings, not sharing just possessing ones own senses as acceptance to ones self.

Ana Mendieta: Sweating Blood 1973. There is an emotional stillness in this photograph, yet i wonder of the power, blood seeping from her forehead, is there a rage beyond the surface?

“I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body. Having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (Nature). My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the Universe. It is a return to the maternal source.” Ana Mendieta. Ana’s narrative her emotional and sensual material content and her solitude of expression are traits my work is investigating and endeavouring to experience.

Ana Mendieta: 1948-1985 Cuban American. Performance, experimental, body, earth, spiritual and cosmic life force some words to describe Ana's powerful narative.,

I see a powerful relationship with the way Mendieta uses her body with the earth to perform Shamanic like spiritual events in her silueta series of works. Mendieta uses ephemeral and temporality in earth’s weathering and decay of the images she creates ,at the same time she illustrates a connection of earth to body. What does it say, are we nature ? Tim Inglod draws a parallel in his lecture Anthroplogy Beyond humanity , where he talks about animals nonhumans and humans occupying the earth and associated structure of sharing the.earth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqMCytCAqUQ

Entangled: Threads and Making, exhibition covering over 40 female artists emphasising materiality. So enriching to see an exhibition of women artist that continue to influence my practice.

This article by Imogen Racz, discusses women artist through their use of materials being classified as craft makers and therefor in the critique of the art establishment not taken as serious artist. Racz demitifies this objectionable position and puts female artist right up where they should be, and that is serious creative, expression driven artist. The show has Karla Black’s What to Ask of Others (2011) a sculpture of powdery pink hung high on a wall, immersing viewers to engage their bodies in relation to the scaleand space.

Marc Quinn, Self 1991, a self portrait of his head using his blood. The balance between life and death. Quinn discusses this work as an ephemeral quality of mortality, and using the body in "self" t

Article: https://old.upm.ro/gidni/GIDNI-01/Lit/Lit%2001%2036.pdf. What i find missing from this article is that imagerary only plays one aspect of our make up. More relevant is our internal organs our brain the thinking process, the senses, the emotions, the feelings, the spirituality, the touch. Quinn’s image is very emotive but fails to address whats beyond. He does however address this in his portrait of John Sulston. Where Quinn discusses our unique identity visible in our DNA. http://marcquinn.com/artworks/dna

I am posting this as i continue to look at ways to present my body, figuratively or absent.

‘I Work Purely Out of Desire’: Karla Black Conjures Ethereal Beauty at David Zwirner. The materiality and attention to detail in its presentation, Black leaves nothing to chance.

The ephemeral qualities Black brings to her exhibition continue to strike accord with my practice. In this interview she makes it abundantly clear that she is in total control even when works are purchased, she requires collectors to send her photographs of the installations, you could say she is a perfectionist ,and she states that her estate will have strict controls over her work. Paying for her art doesn’t give you power over it, she said. “You can’t just do what you want.” I am totally supportive of as an artist we maintain the integrity and the authority to dictate how our work is to be shown. Last year as a student control for our end of year exhibition was taken from me and the result was a disaster.

Bruno Latour, a discourse the ontological, humans in a shared enviroment. Non humans occupy the planet, have as much right to evolve, create new environments.

This clay image a hybrid, portrayed in an enviroment is going to be returned to the place i retrieved a lifeless animals to study. My point is that giving back creates a politics of social engagement. As part of my project into the body, my actions, creating and returning are sensory, spiritual are embodiment to the natural world. Latour talks about the unknown world and the collective out there is part of ongoing knowledge and investigations are never exhaustive. My intentions look to further experience and explore this unknowingness.

Janine Antoni, Slumber 1993, the artist sleeping , shown at the Reina Sof'ia Hatoum's Corps estranger was also installed close enough that Antoni could hear noises as Hatoum's work was activated.

How might-the traces of presence be abridged ? Buskirk in The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art , discusses these artist work in how we as bystanders contextualise the bodily presence from the inside. I see a connection with the sensory and mind mapping of our bodies, the touch, the materiality of our inner organs, our skin, our eyes, our breath. These markers signify the vagaries of this complex juxtaposition. My experimentation through the use of moulding paper, my imprint life size and fabric as a vail endeavour to explore these concepts.

Mona Hatoum: The Negotiating Table, Dec. 3rd,2011: Re-performance of Negotiating Table, 1983. A powerful statement with multiple content.

Gannit Ankori, Palestinian Art, writes ‘The artist explicitly linked this work with the massacres of September 1982 perpetrated by Lebanese Christian Phalange forces’ I see this performance as having multiple content, to me i relate this back to my own project that deals with the body as a transparent displaced un-seem being. A sensory spiritual absence. Hatoum encourages us to look much deeper than the massacre, the politics throws up an argumentative discussion.

Ankori, Gannit. Palestinian Art, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=1561465.