ENMESHMENT

“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.” – Thinking Like A Mountain, Aldo Leopold.

Ice caps are melting; species are going extinct; the ocean is acidifying; the climate is rapidly changing – the planet is in trouble. While one could say that we have a lot of problems to deal with, arguably there is a singular issue which undergirds all the crises we face – the Western world view. As a society, we default to structures of binaries, framing humans as sperate to ‘nature.’ However, what the myriad of current environmental crises has revealed to the Western perspective, is that our species has never been sperate from the morethan-human world. As many non-western societies have acknowledged for millennia, humans have always existed within an ecological totality. Like a webbed string wrapped around fingers in a game of Cat’s cradle, we know the truth – everything is connected.

By acknowledging this reality, and the ecological crises which threaten our survival as a species by extension, one could argue that there is a moral responsibility to become entangled in this dilemma, and to examine and engage it completely. To take such an approach is to actively engage in the act of enmeshment, and to submerge into the world through acts, forms, and representations that heighten our awareness of the more-thanhuman condition. As such, Enmeshment is an exhibition which considers the ways that artists engage the more that human world and considers the dynamic relationship humans can have with their environment. From seminal performances by artists such as Allan Kaprow and Stelarc, to more contemporary works by Erin Coates, Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield, Rizzy, and Amy Youngs, Enmeshment draws attention to the ways that artists engage the senses, reframe situations, and immerse their audiences and nurture empathy to diminish the divide between humans and the more-thanhuman world.

Artists Erin Coates, Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield, Allan Kaprow, STELARC, Rizzy, Amy Youngs.

Opposite STELARC

Seaside Suspension –Event for Wind and Waves – Japan, 1981 (detail)

Clockwise from Top Left Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield Soft Vibrations

2022

Amy Youngs

Belonging to Soil: Subterrariums

2022

Erin Coates

Swan River Dolphin Bone Series (detail)

2021