PLEXUS

18 Sep - 5 Oct 2019

Curated by Kate Vassallo

Opening Night | Thursday 19 Sep, 6pm–8pm

Floor Talk | Saturday 5 October, 2-3pm

Will Cooke, Ham Darroch, Annelies Jahn, Lieutenant + Vassallo, Katy Mutton, Nadia Odlum, Britt Salt.

Plexus is a group show of Australian artists who work with geometric abstraction and spatial intervention. These ‘process-based’ abstractionists each use self-designed systems to generate their artworks. Deriving from the Latin ‘to braid’, the title refers to an intricate system or network of parts. This term could refer to the intricacies in each individual’s art making. In bringing this group of artists together, their creative systems will interweave creating a larger ‘plexus’.

The artists in Plexus could be described as ‘process-based’ abstractionists. Using repetitious and laborious actions to create artworks, they share an interest in geometry and spatial intervention.

These artists have an intense devotion to their self-designed ‘systems of making’. Each has been slowly developed over years and years of studio-based research, constantly making and refining the smallest of details. These systems are a sophisticated, highly intricate and maybe even unnecessarily elaborate way to generate their final artworks. It is a process that is unseen to the public, but one that is a necessity for these artworks to exist. In bringing artists together that share such a detailed approach to art making, viewers will be reminded of the often-unbelievable lengths artists go to in making their artworks.

While the systems used to make these artworks highlight artistic labour, the end product is far from a show of personal expression. The intimacy of the time spent sweating it out in the studio is, for the most part, hidden by the polished finish of these artworks. They are Post Minimalist and mechanical, cool and detached, shiny and clean. This tension between the creation and finish of the work becomes a focus of the exhibition. In a way, it echoes a similar tension evident in contemporary life. It is like the coldness of scrolling through social media on your smart-phone, connecting with your loved ones through the endless cold interfaces.

The artworks in Plexus range from large-scale, site-responsive installation, to more traditional sculptural and wall hanging pieces. Bringing these artworks together, each the product of its own unique and laborious system, implies a larger network of creative production to be decoded by visitors. Initially the immersive space has been designed to slow down viewers, inviting them to take a closer look at these artworks and decipher the systems behind them. You have to get up close to look for the subtle presence of the artists hand in these artworks.

Plexus brings together a group of Australian artists working with geometric abstraction and spatial intervention. Focused on process and materiality, these abstractionists use self-designed systems to help generate their artworks. Deriving from the Latin ‘to braid’, plexus refers to an intricate system or network of parts. In this context, systems and networks are reflected both in the art making of each individual and the way these artworks weave together within the gallery space.

Geometric abstraction has a history of communicating our experience in the built environment. Three small-scale works on paper by Nadia Odlum consider individuals navigating space. Her process begins by observing people in public environments, mapping out their trajectories and considering the way their actions are shaped by the surrounding architecture. These observations often lead to spatial interventions, using vinyl, wood, steel, mirrors and/or painted surfaces to create immersive installations, she reflects the built environment back to the public. These studies led to a large-scale, site-responsive vinyl artwork, applied to the floor in the space where Odlum originally observed the patterns of movement. A loop of process is formed, from observing large-scale movement, to small-scale mapping and digesting in the studio, then returning back to immersive scale. These studies reflect the quietest moment in this loop, an artist working through their ideas. Using gouache on paper to map out pathways that overlap and zigzag, this meditative and precise act of making reflects an internal thought made public.

In a similar way, Will Cooke’s work feels like the product of visualising the meditative thought processes that happen in the studio. Working on the boundary of handmade and mechanical art making, his process incorporates repetitious layering of airbrushed stencils. The outcome is precise, but the process leaves space for the materials to dictate the direction an artwork will take. Unexpected outcomes or slippages that occur throughout the layering process are reminiscent of misregistration in industrial print processes. But these small moments are what make Cooke’s work feel intimate and personal.

Katy Mutton is also working through incorporating mechanical and digital processes into her art practice. She is focused on research into data visualisation, visual language systems and propaganda. Recently thinking through ideas on data mining and population surveillance, this work employs 3D printing to connect thousands of small ‘scales’ to tulle fabric. The contrast of the hard and soft creates a unique materiality. Her work is at once celebrating the digital, while being suspicious of it. Mutton is taking digital ideas and planting them firmly in our real, tactile world.

Like many of the artists in this show, Britt Salt is focused on spatial engagement and response. Navigating materially driven processes of repetition and pattern making, her work responds to both art and architecture. Often working to enormous scale, it feels as natural to see her artwork occupying vast space among architectural structures as it does within the confines of a gallery. Her artwork often features multiple picture planes and optical play that appears to be expanding or contracting. Like the Light and Space artists from West-Coast America in the 60s, Salt works with a kind of minimalism that is always in flux. Reliant on the viewer within the space to activate the installation, it is translucent, mobile and shifting. The intricacy and layering of the subtle pattern evokes a sense of camouflage, at once illusionistic and simple. There is no single vantage point to view this piece. Viewers in the space become active, no longer passive bystanders but initiators who are actively navigating and experiencing.

Lieutenant + Vassallo also specialise in interventions in the built environment. The visual artist pair collaborate using geometric wall painting as a tool to visually investigate and interrogate architectural spaces. Often using patterning like camouflage, they at once respond to the spaces they work within while obliterating their surfaces with colour and form. Working in the grey area between art and design, the pair uses collaboration and instruction as a way to question authorship and remove personal expression from their work.

Also working with instructionally created spatial installation, Annelies Jahn presents an artwork that began with an element of chance. In 2016 Jahn made the artwork 5 x 9, installing and removing a grid of found cardboard boxes pinned directly to the wall. After removing the artwork, she was struck by the grid of pinholes left behind, disturbing with the otherwise pristine gallery wall. Maximising on this serendipitous moment, the artist began putting pins back into the holes of the grid. Connecting the pins with string made a new artwork, the 5 x 9 series was born. We see the latest iteration installed in Plexus. Jahn has developed a set of instructions to replicate the original process, while also responding to the dimensions of Blindside’s gallery space. These new instructions still incorporate a level of chance and serendipity that makes the piece feel both logical and organic.

While Jahn uses her past artworks as building blocks for new pieces, Ham Darroch has similar serendipitous moments when painting onto found objects. Sourcing and working onto objects that have had a previous life, he uses the formal elements of these utilitarian objects as a starting point. He then applies colour and pattern to the object’s surfaces with meticulous and precise detail. Patterns skimming across the worn surfaces feel spontaneous, like little bursts of new life. Despite the painted colours looking geometric and sharp, the angles and forms that emerge are playful and fluctuating. Some allude to optical perspective; others appear to be tumbling off the surface. This object augmentation goes beyond simple decoration or embellishment. These objects have been deeply considered and cared for. In choosing to paint on the flat plane of the floats, Darroch is somewhat subverting these objects. We see them with the handle facing the wall and the flat plane exposed to the viewer, defiantly opposing their function and daring an audience to see beyond this.

Each of these artists has developed a sophisticated and highly intricate artistic process. Over years of studio-based research, the smallest details are considered at length. They utilise repetitious and laborious actions in the studio, their artworks are time consuming to construct. Some use external references to inform their processes, others rely on internal instinct and intuition. Universally, they deeply consider the sensory dialogue created when viewing their artworks. These artists play with pattern, perception and spatial awareness, while each working through their own versions of logic.

Will Cooke (b. 1989) is a Sydney based artist whose practice adopts abstraction to understand the connection between body and mind. Cooke is intrigued by the invisibility of memory, and the way it is experienced within the body. He explores his own personal mythologies and memories, and attempts to make these internal thoughts and experiences external. He makes illusion-based paintings that begin a dialogue, and thus, the work develops a sensory relationship with the viewer. Cooke uses various supports, such as aluminum, canvas and paper, to concrete the sensation of memory in the physical. Cooke’s focus on the relationship between form, surface, and the viewer, produces independent physical objects that transcend the mind. Will finished a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) in 2011. Cooke has shown in numerous group exhibitions around Australia and has had solo exhibitions with NKN Gallery, Melbourne (2017), Alexandra Porter, New York (2016), NKN Gallery, Melbourne (2016), Chalk Horse, Sydney (2015).

Will is represented by NKN Gallery, Melbourne.

Ham Darroch is an Australian artist working in sculpture, performance and drawing. His sculptures are created from existing objects which are altered and redirected using colour to reveal new meanings. His paintings are inspired by the action of everyday objects. His imagery is universal evoking shared histories and experiences, place and perception while revealing a deep sensitivity to the optical effects of geometric colour. In early 2006, he completed an MFA (research) COFA University of New South Wales and in 1997 a Bachlor of Arts from Australian National University. From 2006 he worked as an assistant to Bridget Riley.

Annelies Jahn is a Sydney-based multi-disciplinary artist. Her art practice investigates ideas of space, relationship and temporality as they are experienced through things or objects, and space or place. The contingency of these perceptions is observed via the agency of measure to become a process of art-making. Annelies’ work has been exhibited in group shows both in Australia and overseas. She has had solo shows and short residencies in Sydney. Her work is held in the National Art School Archive and in private collections. Annelies has held an extensive professional career (thirty years) in graphic design and publishing, working in Sydney and London. She has since completed her Master of Fine Arts at The National Art School, Darlinghurst. Annelies is a sessional and public programs teacher of Drawing at the National Art School. She is a Director at the Sydney ARI, Stacks Projects Inc., having previously acted as a director at ES74 Gallery, 2015-2016. Annelies was awarded in the .M Contemporary, YAI 2015. She was the recipient of Coutts Family Award for Excellence in Drawing, FONAS Drawing Award and has been a finalist in the John Olsen Drawing Prize.

James Lieutenant and Kate Vassallo have created large-scale, wall-painting artworks as a collaborative pair since 2013. Currently based in Canberra, the pair previously lived and worked in Sydney from 2011-2018. They each completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) from the Australian National University School of Art in 2010, where they met. Since then they have each sustained a solo practice while also working together. The collaborative pair has delivered highly praised solo exhibitions at respected ARIs and institutions throughout Australia, including Canberra Museum and Gallery, Bus Projects (Melbourne), Archive Space (Sydney) and Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Lieutenant + Vassallo have also been engaged for commission projects by institutions including Artbank, Goulburn Regional Gallery/Goulburn Mulwaree Council and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, as well as private clients.

Nadia Odlum is an emerging artist and researcher from Sydney, Australia. Her work explores the perceptual experience of navigation within urban and architectural environments. In particular, she is interested in the connections between vision and movement in perception, and the way the various sensorimotor capacities of the body impact on our understanding of and feelings within physical space. Her practice spans drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation. Nadia completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the National Art School in 2012, graduating with First Class Honours and the Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement. In 2016 she completed a Master of Fine Arts by research at UNSW Art & Design, for which she was a recipient of the Australian Postgraduate Award. She has presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the New York Transit Museum, The Murray Art Museum in Albury, Artspace, Firstdraft and Penrith Regional Gallery. In 2018 she was an Artist in Residence and Education Fellow at the Wassaic Project in New York.

Britt Salt’s practice is an ongoing spatial experiment where fundamental elements such as line, form and space intertwine. Employing repetition and materials that have an inherent ability to create movement, her work centres on the symbiosis of art and architectural practice and questions how these genres influence the notion of place and impermanence in contemporary urban environments.

Britt received the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists in 2010, which supported residencies in the U.K., France and China. In 2015 she undertook a residency in Tokyo, which culminated in a public installation at Youkobo Art Space. Her work has been selected as a finalist in numerous awards including the Paramor Prize 2017 and Gold Coast Art Award 2015. Most recently Britt has completed residencies at Arteles (Finland), Heima (Iceland) and the Australian Tapestry Workshop. She has worked on significant large-scale commissioned artworks for Fender Katsalidis Architects, Büro North and Asia Pacific Airports Melbourne.

IMAGES | Nadia Odlum, Our separate ways, study I, II, & III, 2018, gouache on paper, 21 x 15 cm each | Britt Salt, Formless (installation detail), 2015, vinyl, enamel, aluminium, dimensions variable, installation, C3 Contemporary Art Space Abbotsford | Ham Darroch, Measure.2.2015, 2015, wall painting, dimensions variable, installed at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair Carriageworks | James Lieutenant + Kate Vassallo, Mistints #3 (Canberra), 2014, wall painting, dimensions variable, installed at Canberra Museum and Gallery. Photograph Rob Little | Katy Mutton, ‘Stacks and Stripes’, 2015, acrylic on board, 50 x 50cm | Annelies Jahn, 5 x 9 #2.1, 2017, string and pins, 230 x 325cm, Document Photography | Will Cooke, ‘New Sensation (Inside Illusion)’, 2017, spray paint on canvas, 120 x 100 cm | Courtesy the artists.