FIONA GAVINO

There is an intrinsic link between basket weaving techniques and the natural world, for example – the construction of DNA. It appears to mimic a repeated action as if woven together to form one strand that is life and, in nature I have found numerous patterns that weaving mimics. Working through this medium leads me to negate the nature/culture divide. The process of weaving also inadvertently brings about a kind of residual transformation, small snippets of knowledge are gained sometimes about the materials or techniques and sometimes about the big picture of life, love and living. I have been taught that relationships are the magical invisible thread interconnecting us all. The installation The Relational Weave of Life, is a multilayered work juxtaposing Weaving Meditation II and The Sentinel. There is the idea of a strong environmental concern that these artefacts make in the artist’s modest choice of materials – repurposed rusty metal strapping, cane off cuts (from the studio) and salvaged marine rope. The technique of weaving the herringbone metal work The Relational Weave of Life is taken from the Filipino sawali (woven wall) with my two halves bound through the centre with the presence of the natural. The Relational Weave of Life feels like you’re looking at a window, not outwood looking but backwards and forwards. It is a glimpse at a need for a new ecology promoting an understanding of the relationship between past/ present, left/right ideologies & nature/culture. The Sentinel stands with a slight tilt of an old woman, suggestive of the matriarch, of mother, of nature. The two objects’ interconnectedness is discernible. Framed together synthesising the manufactured with the natural as a representation of the socio ecological relationships that bind us all.

Fiona Gavino

The Relational Weave of Life; Weaving Meditation II & The Sentinel 2022/23

Salvaged mild steel strapping, plywood, mesh, cane; salvaged Sea Shepherd rope

Fiona Gavino has been described as an intercultural artist working the traditional into the contemporary. Gavino graduated from Charles Darwin University with a BA Visual Arts in 2006 and was a practising artist there for 12 years. Her work features in Hot Springs; the Northern Territory & Contemporary Australian Artists (Macmillan Art Publishing), in 2007 she relocated to Western Australia and currently lives and works in Fremantle. In 2014 Gavino was a recipient of an Asialink Residency and was invited to return the following year to exhibit at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines with a solo show, In-between-spaces Gavino uses basket making materials and techniques in new and innovative ways, working within a framework of intercultural and transcultural pursuits, a reflection of the artist’s own ethnic ambiguity and well developed political consciousness.

Jillian Green

I feel that there are two competing concerns which have been apparent in much of my work over the years. One is a need for simplicity and minimal designs with ‘shape’ being the essential element; the other is for texture and quite detailed pattern within these shapes. I have danced around these two issues over the years, be it with drawing, painting, or textiles. I am very interested in folk art and my current ideas increasingly revolve around my home and animals. As local as folk art traditionally is, there seem to be some qualities that span centuries and continents. I see these qualities in early Christian art, especially the naive wood and stone carvings of the 12th-13th century Europe, the Primitive Folk Art of late 18th-19th century North America, all the way up to the astonishing contemporary folk art of Japanese artist Samiro Yunoki.

I was born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in 1966, my family moved to Perth in 1974 where later attended Applecross High School as a Special Art student. I began exhibiting in 1989 and went on to complete a degree in Visual Art at Edith Cowan University in 2001. Following this began exhibiting with The Church Gallery, which later became Turner Galleries. To date I have had 12 solo exhibitions and been involved in many shared and curated exhibitions. My work was shown at The Melbourne International Art Fair 2006 and 2008 and was presented in The Role of Abstraction in Contemporary Art 2012 in Istanbul. It is held in 17 public collections and several private collections.

This work represents the intersection of natural and synthetic processes. The piece itself conjures images of sky and land, the inner world of the biological, and the limitless expanse of our cosmos. The forms that emerge within the paintings are simultaneously cloud-like and cellular, shapes that could just as easily be observed through a telescope as a microscope. Before us lies the red dust of the open pit mine or the pitted surface of Mars; against that backdrop we observe the gleaming metals acquired through excavation or the silvery dance of celestial bodies.

By contrast, these works are rendered through synthetic means. What binds the evolving forms and pauses them in-situ is the poured resin, immobilising previously shifting shapes to be observed at a later stage. It is the application of a permanent, immovable sheen enveloping all movement that allows the onlooker a glimpse at (otherwise hidden) organic interactions. The viewer becomes an active participant in the work and is at once engaging with and reflected in the piece.

Miik is a researcher and educator in contemporary arts in Western Australia. He is also an associate editor for two international art journals, a published author and previous chair of Artsource, Western Australia’s peak visual arts body. He has been invited to speak on arts practice at national and international conferences, from Paris and Rome to Budapest.