Water emulating water elsewhere.
Water anywhere is a sponge and reproduces what lies overhead. Here it unlocks my separation from a life on the coast. Waves rushing in space emulate the way dreams can recompose the world.
Content © 2024 Michael Sna Represented by
Australian Galleries
Water emulating water elsewhere.
Water anywhere is a sponge and reproduces what lies overhead. Here it unlocks my separation from a life on the coast. Waves rushing in space emulate the way dreams can recompose the world.
The task is to restore the grass to the top of the hill. The kangaroos have no predator, the local folk lore says, and so they multiply to the landscape’s detriment. The bald patches are starting to join.
A dam is a negative mine. They dig a hole not to take something but to put something in. When they dig the hole they scrape off the top soil and leave it in a pile next to the dam for rabbits and wombats to live in.
No one lives there any more and we wanted to make more space around the dam.
What to do with the dirt?
With the aid of earth moving machinery the big pile was made into four piles which were spread indecisively across the block by a tipper truck.
These four piles were like hills in the foreground, made to look so by having the real thing in the distance.
With the aid of a wheel barrow and my body I have spread the middle pile of soil into the bald patches where the grass is receding. They look like hills too, but not in the near distance, but the far distance, being that they are so small and spread out.
Original pile
Indecisive pile
Smallest piles
It’s not so much sorry. It’s, I was asleep and now I’m waking up.
The works scattered over the site here at Wamboin are landscape punctuations, which give the words of the landscape structure and sense.
They are signs. Signifiers. They are the traffic cops of their immediate community.
They are, if we were so inclined, temples, to remind you that you are in paradise, because we tend to forget.
I haven’t been to Bali, but I believe they employ similar punctuations in the landscape for similar reasons.
The works establish a connection to the landscape from which they can never be released.
Each work is a link in a chain. Any links removed cause the land to come adrift again.
The word ‘sorry’ has been debased by personal relationship squabbles. The sorrier always comes across pathetic, weak, unattractive. I seek to remain attractive and resist using the word, but I suppose I am, in a way, sorry.
We have to get it right this time. We think we tried before and failed. Why try again?
There are so many amazing aboriginal voices now, we cannot drown them out with our preconceptions. Filmmaker and chef Warwick Thornton, actor and storyteller Meyne Wyatt, playwright and comedian Nakkiah Lui, Victor Steffensen from Firesticks. These voices, these artists hold our attention with their compelling subject.
This place at Wamboin was recently called Sculpture in The Sky
It’s Sorry Country today.
A neighbour at Wamboin quizzed the table at dinner.
No painter had explained why they use colour. What purpose did it serve?
A satisfactory answer would remove the pleasure of the riddle. At dinner.
Fire with green flame
Painting celebrated liberation from the brush with stained canvasses in the 1970’s. Paint was applied directly to the canvas. Colour was integrated into the material of the canvas. The photo above emulates the stained canvas.
Without the burden of subject, colour went free range. It was allowed to swell or contract. It could spread according to the volume of paint applied. Relations between colours and shapes were improvised, responding and listening to the each other, seeking out unity, harmony, clarity and pleasure.
In the instance above, the viewer is intrigued by the surprise appearance of green, uncharacteristic of fire colour. The viewer slips from the vacant pleasure of colour to anxiety about a toxic substance in the fire.
Red flames
We are pleased therefore in the second image to see employed a red, which competes with the green more compellingly. The green is more alive. It is happier and dancing more freely. It invites a companion too. A minor part, but the yellow in the top right corner makes a welcome site. We have been consumed by the pleasure and forgotten about the toxicity factor.
Green’s loss of composure
One voice in a group can fail to listen and therefore not happily integrate the other voices. Above, green rejoices at the expense of not only the other colours, but also the space of the picture has become claustrophobic. Harmony is out the window.
Happy as a button
The green here is positioned and sized to perfection. It resonates happily in the space, as happy as a button. Even despite the presence of the shadow corners!
How can I bring the richness of ‘fond remembrance’ to the present?
How can I look fondly on now, without the benefit of distance?
Is the present such a tangled web that you can’t see through it?
With the present in the foreground, you can trip over stuff. Vigilance removes the capacity for reflection.
The present then, lays a foundation for future reflection. A prior requirement to live for the present is now run its course. Living in the now is barren from its lack of embedded distance.
Live for the future past.
James Packer gets no credit from my acquaintances. Everything is symbolism with the new casino at Barangaroo.
Evil is always looming in the background with any work of genius. You can’t judge the book by its driver.
When the dust has settled after the age of greed has passed, the casino will emerge. It’s not the second coming after the twin towers demise but the new casino has risen like a ghost from the murky waters of Barangaroo, resplendent.
It has two heroic angles, one from Darling Harbour where it is dead sexy and one from the approach to the city from the bridge, where these photos were taken.
It’s kinda scary if you look at it with eyes wide open, like all good works are a bit scary. It makes its neighbours prosaic, ordinary, uninSPIREing.
Even as we go round the corner of the city into Balmain, we are not afforded the same curves, it puts up a challenge to the bridge and declares, I am The New Edge.
Just when you want to have your say, no, you have to listen.
The landscape is refusing to take a back seat here at Wamboin.
For the sculptures to find their place in the landscape, they need to become assimilated and virtually disappear. The more you try to give the works their voice, the more you want to look away. You only want to look when you want to look for them. How many times do I place a work behind a tree or rock or bush? Every time.
A lifetime of work will not quench the landscape’s thirst.
Pride has no role here.
I had hoped that there would be something to show, but there will always only ever be this articulated nothing, which does not warrant attention.
I shall put an invisible sign at the gate:
PLEASE ENTER. WITNESS HERE THE ACCUMULATION OF SUSTAINED SUBTRACTION
In life’s pursuit of ‘nothing in particular’, this is a reasonable outcome. If this constitutes an example of ‘applied modesty’, then that is of no note and this block must sit alongside my neighbours and expect no preferential treatment.
This is where we find ourselves, taking rather than giving dictation. It is right.
Ground beam, made from light.
Sky beam, made from steel
Ground beam. This beam was projected from a crack in the door of the shed. Being that the door is so high, the beam was this long. It is as thick on the ground as light is and only fog and daylight can erase it. When it is erased, there is no waste.
Sky beam. This beam is part of a steel sculpture. Unlike the ground beam, the sky beam is not erased by daylight. The ground beam requires our presence in the shed whereas the sky beam projects in our absence.
The word beam has been applied to steel and to wood and to light. The only requirement of a beam is to travel in (any) one direction, like a crow.
The Concersion
Reconciling the vertical with the horizontal is one of the big challenges.
We aspire (to the vertical), but we have to be realistic, (the horizontal).
Recently I speculated on how a text can alter the reading of an image. When are the roles swapped between primary and secondary? When does the driver swap seats?
See May 8 post, titled ‘Peripheral Core’.
In my deliberations about making a life here at Wamboin, I had imagined the land and all the changes wrought by our presence would remain primary. These blog posts would always remain supportive, ethereal, virtual.
It is possible though, just as the explanation of the ‘image’ can become the driver, so can the blog become foreground and the landscape can drop back. It is the blog which holds the more tangible substance. The slippery landscape is just mud and whimsy in comparison.
Even though the materiality of sculpture had drawn me, it may emerge that materiality is subversive and the hardware is happy to play second fiddle.
This notion is useful to the blog reader then, who does not need to witness, first hand, ‘Sculpture in The Sky’.
Hard to know where we are, in history. Is this the beginning? Is it the middle? Is this the end?
We have arrived here in Wamboin, seemingly a perfect place, in terms of air and space and light, but in reality, the place is a mess on the way to ruin.
The landscape is recovering from a hundred years of grazing degradation. The previous owner made good repair with planting and the ground has somewhat recovered. Many trees were planted in the last thirty years which were not native to the area. Grasses were planted that were likewise not native. A considerable amount of earthmoving in the early 90’s distributed the rain water to parts that were not were not accustomed to it. There’s plenty of rain recently but the dams aren’t filling. Weeds abound. The land reeks of confused attitudes. We have now arrived and begun to apply our set of values which may be equally out of line within a deeper history.
The land is asset rich but broken.
An artwork may be applied to a finished place, where all the above arguments had been settled. An artwork would underscore that ‘finished’ picture.
Given that finishing the work of repair will take another hundred years, all work here is propositional and not conclusive. All artwork is applied to shifting sand and shifting meaning.
Overhead power lines run along the bottom edge of the block. Beyond the lines, 2000 acres wait to be developed. This part of the property exists in the present but sits in the future’s long shadows.
Fence Detail 1984 & 2019
Fence Detail enjoys, describes the way in which fencing wire attaches to a fencing post. The wire stops briefly at the post on its way somewhere, having come from somewhere else. It’s one of many posts in a line describing the edge of land, separating two ‘parcels’ of land from each other. We do it here, on our land to know where we stand and where others shouldn’t.
The sculpture is an accidental account of where it finds itself. The imagery is naturally compatible with the overhead power lines which accidentally ‘over line’ the boundary. The power lines, due to their function, cannot start and stop as they are able to do in the sculpture.
None the less, there is a conversation which makes the sculpture feel and look at home.
While there is conversation, there is hope for life.
We’re trying to resuscitate the place.
The works here document the condition of the land, it’s recovery and or further ruination. The placed works constitute a diary of our presence for better or worse.
This place, like like places is a metaphor for our time and describes where we stand.
Train and Fence
Fence Detail (Detail)
The human figure or any animal figure sits uneasily in contemporary and modern art. It is the common enemy of both camps. The figuratively inclined artist finds themselves alienated by both camps for being out of step. Should an artist find themselves inclined to making modern, contemporary and figurative art, that compounds the problem.
First Coming 2003 (detail)
Without going into the historical detail, most readers will know the alignment of different philosophical positions in time. The linear legacy in which we grew up, is hard to shake. As time passes however, we proceed not from the understanding that history has provided, but from finding ourselves free to explore all of the above. The notion of ‘progress’ was always a ruse. That was the lesson.
First Coming 2003 (detail)
And so the figure seasons come and go, according to how urgently they impress themselves into the picture. In my case those moments come when I can no longer resist the pleasure of working with the figure or cannot resist the fee from the commission. Generally though, the forms are not charged unless I am fresh with them again, after a break, a decade, or in the hands of another, further down the track.
First Coming 2003 (detail)
First Coming is a rescue sculpture. As a rule rescue animals can have psychological problems. First Coming was retrieved from Byron Bay Resort after fourteen years stationed at the entry to the resort. They wanted to update the decor. The sculpture is very much at home here. Far from being damaged, it speaks to the landscape and the landscape responds.
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Sky at Wamboin
This blog is called sydneyschoolofsculpture@blogspot. In the blog I talk about and show my world, much of it concerning sculpture and ideas around sculpture.
As of this week, this land at Wamboin too, has a title, or name.
Sky at Wamboin
That name is ‘Sculpture in The Sky’. Sculpture has been shown for the last twenty years or so at place specific sculpture events. Those places have been by the sea, at the vines, on the edge, in the paddock. They have taken their name from where the sculpture is shown. This exhibition of sculpture has a longer duration than those shows and SITS (Sculpture in The Sky) exhibits just my work.
Sculpture, by virtue of being normally grounded would appear to have little scope accommodated in the sky and yet, here we are at Wamboin on a plateau above Canberra. The sculptures are grounded in the sky and are at home there.
Just as our bodies sense the loss of pressure on the head and shoulders by being in this location in the sky, so too do the sculptures rejoice, to become more truly themselves, unshackled by proximity to the ground, to other objects and to the compressed time that ‘elsewheres’ inhabit. Time, here in the sky is more expanded.
Sometimes we become over connected to the ground as if that was our inescapable destiny. The sky shifts and can lack substance.
The real estate industry has begun to commodify the sky by selling air space to property investors.
Generally though, the sky does not lend itself to subdivision. Vegetables cannot grow there, cartographers are drawn to land masses more than sky masses.
An easy transition to the new normal will be aided by visiting Sculpture in The Sky.
Sky at Wamboin
The pines have been eliminated. We have achieved herd immunity here at Wamboin. The chance of a cell developing withIn the boundary is now quite remote.
The roots of the pines are displayed at the gate as a warning to saplings thinking of settling here to think again.
The logs extracted from the pines that were pushed over have been redeployed as barriers within the property to underline natural divisions within the property. Those logs which stood so tall are now prone, subservient.
Branches and leaves have been burned. (See earlier post.)
We are not complacent however. Strategies employed must be religiously maintained. Two rogue trees seen today, that had evaded the earlier cull will be processed.
Pines shoot to the sky as the crow flies. There is no gum meandering, no ‘journey’ philosophy evident.
Pines are in a rush. Here at Wamboin, there is no rush.
In this context I would like to present today’s pineless postcard.
Crown 1987
Bowl 12 2011
Air 1990
Boat 1979
Modern Sculpture 1984
Blessed 2004 & 2019
Magic
This place here is a liquid garden. That it is made of material is incidental. The rock, the wood, the steel, the leaf and air move like water.
It is liquid when it is relieved from neglect. When it is let go, it moves and comes to life. It needs, responds to care and to being noticed.
Without care, it is dormant.
Each part of it waits to be attended. Each part is a world in waiting, waiting to be stirred into the pot. Each part is a voice in the choir which cannot start until after the role call.
I am carried around, along the current.
The edge is the boundary of the block. The 20 acre pool has a hill, a shed with its ‘arena’, a hill crest with its wooded slopes. It has the dams and the green lowland. There is the other side of the wires with the avenues.
There’s the forest of little trees where the wind doesn’t blow. There is the kangaroo dormitory. There’s the old stables area with it stone ribs exposed.
There’s the shed which is our domain, which, by having no windows looks only in, and in.
There’s the guest caravan, cosy and clean and the back yard with clothes line and compost bin.
All of this is moving and changing. You can drag a rake across any part of it and the the ground blinks. There are fresh blades of grass waiting for air and sun and the opportunity to proliferate.
There are the remains of the dreams of the previous owner everywhere. Everywhere is Cinderella and the sleeping frog.
It’s like a book here. You don’t have to start from where you left off. You can just let it fall open and keep going.
Deepening Crisis 1987
Modern Sculpture 1987
Hung 1983
Flower 2015
Agatha Ascending 1982
Agatha Ascending 1982
Split Column 1984
There seem to be a thousand sculptures here. Each work is reiterated every hour, every day.