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| Granny's Barra, 2015, located at the artist's residence |
This installation uses steel and natural elements to speak to common themes of the artist's work - those of death and rebirth, and of the dire necessity for humanity to reposition itself back into restorative natural rhythm, before it manages in its insanity - acknowledged as yet not in each individual bosom but only in everybody else's - to ruin the whole fucking game via collective psychosis.
Keen fans of the artist's poetry will note the reappearance of the blue hydrangea. In the poem Scuttlebutts and Plop, published in The New Yorker in 2016, the flower symbolises the next evolution of the species, while in Gloppy Tankard, from The Paris Review in the same year, the hydrangea indicates the renewal coming from that which Westerners most lack - imagination and the ability to follow breadcrumbs into dark forests. It signifies the 'left hand not knowing what the right is doing and unwilling to anyway, even if it was possible, being totally drunk on its own limited perspective,' which was the loose theme for her most recent exhibition at Hobart's MONA, featuring pieces made from string.
The steel used in this piece is literally from her dearly departed grandmother's wheelbarrow. Once a vivid yellow and surviving years as a well-kept tool in her granny's gardening repertoire and stored religiously in a shed, the barrow lasted barely 10 years when in the untidy possession of the artist, lying about any old where in the rain before being appropriated for one of the most stunning and profound examples of her glimpf period.
Somehow we're sure her grandmother won't mind.
I have a pet Hydrangea now, name of Pompom. :) She flowered beautifully for me this year, her second year in the ground here. She was trapped in a pot before and not happy. I say pet because really it is silly to have such a water loving plant in our dry WA climate, but she is a joy to me, no doubt about it!
ReplyDeletePs. The Artist has a good eye. :)
The artist is profound indeed.
ReplyDeleteI have the odd "glimpf period" where death and decay are similarly represented, but haven't cycled back to rebirth...
Stunning hydrangeas BTW.
I miss hydrangeas. They do great in Louisiana, where I used to live, but not so well in the harsher climate of northern New Mexico, where I live now. We do have a lot of rust here though!
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