Arcadian Dreaming by Andrew Rewald
It’s World Environment Day as I write this, in a time that we’re finally realizing the precarious state of our planet and starting to see our role in this. Thanks, in part, to mini-cams and the media savvy-ness of environmental disasters, but more importantly to government programs and the ongoing drought that create popular awareness of ideas and knowledge long held by a minority of people in the know. Art is one forum used for raising public consciousness about the environment and related issues, an effective and lasting one.
As an art practitioner, I believe that sometimes our (artists) thoughts on the work of others should maybe stay just that. So when asked by my friend and colleague Jack Robins to review Companion Planting (CAST Gallery, 24 May to 15 June 2008), I was momentarily conflicted. Fortunately, I respond positively to art that explores human folly and the error of our ways. This exhibition presents a middle ground between us, the earth and other living things as a metaphoric space to take stock of our achievements and/or actions.
We see a reflection of our own lives within the iconic and representational in the work of artists Lucy Bleach, Michelle Cangiano, Dean Chatwin, Reaf Sawford and Amanda Shone. Their works are responses to the idea that we are inextricably linked to events and actions beyond our control, as not so innocent observers so to speak. The forms, sounds and images, used by the artists, reference the domestic, technological and environmental concerns of today bound together with echoes of the past. They tap into something fundamental to humanity about our basic needs-desires-fears and engage us with their frankness.
I’m reminded of a campervan holiday to Tasmania fourteen years ago, and of how selective our memories can be. I remember the physical demarcation by Hydro Electric infrastructure slashing through the countryside like a line drawn in the sand, between a brooding archetypal wilderness and the gentrified farmland peppered with cottages and dry-stone walls. Being a tourist, I chose to forget the log trucks hauling splintered trees past a protected ‘Big Tree’ I’d been photographing and contemplating for its age and size. The Colourbond and concrete urban-scapes, like elsewhere in the world, the denuded hills and valleys, the dead rivers from generations of shocking ore mining practices, I also forgot.
Through the CAST Curatorial Mentorship Program, Robins has produced a show that resonates from and beyond a succinctly produced exhibition about the environment. In conversation, Robins draws from childhood memories in the Australian Capital Territory where he was exposed to what seemed at the time a limitless countryside to explore. His early adult years immersed within the inner city Melbourne established a contrasting, yet complimentary, world-view. This he draws on to describe a search for balance between the themes of Nature and Culture in Companion Planting.
In the accompanying essay for the catalogue, Robins poetically and rightly evokes a world of dysfunction, irony, contemplation and ultimately, optimism. On opening night I was struck by how audience friendly the work was and planned a return visit for a quiet one on one. To my surprise the absence of people in the gallery, like in the art, was tangible; it felt like walking into a suburban display home that is fully functional but with a sense of waiting, for no one has lived in it - an urban Mary Celeste.
We are directed by this sort of exhibition to see, from another angle, onto a different plane. For me, it opens doors into parallel worlds where there is more to celebrate than the echo’s of modern man and the resilience of the untameable. This is a statement about our endeavours from pre-history to now, about the ongoing struggle between man and the environment. I’d argue that at a time when we are finally seeing our place within the world, when we finally begin to acknowledge the true nature and presence of indigenous cultures and their relationships to the land, we have a platform for looking back towards a future.
Andrew Rewald is a Postgraduate Research Candidate at the University of Tasmania.