JGM Review | Vol. I

CONTRIBUTORS & TABLE OF CONTENTS

LUKE CONROY

Luke Conroy is an Australian artist and sociologist based in The Netherlands. His practice engages with socio-cultural topics, utilising humour and irony as essential tools for critical reflection and expression. He has previously been awarded a variety of grants, including funding through the European Cultural Foundation, The Consulate General of the Netherlands & Arts Tasmania. He currently collaborates with the audiovisual designer and artist, Anne Fehres.

In 2022 he was selected by the Australia Council for the Arts as an assistant for the Australian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.

JULIUS KILLERBY

Julius Killerby is an artist and the Manager of JGM Gallery. He has more than 6 years of experience working within the Art Industry, including his selection as an assistant for the Australian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. He has previously held positions at Metro Gallery, Scott Livesey Gallery and Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. He has also worked alongside The Torch, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of artworks by incarcerated or ex-incarcerated First Nations Australians. Within the context of his own practice, he has exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Art Gallery of Ballarat & Geelong Gallery. Killerby completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2017 and was an Archibald finalist in the same year, the youngest person to achieve this distinction.

Previous sitters for Killerby include the former Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Ron Walker AC CBE, Paul Little AO, Robert Richter QC, Julian Burnside QC and Brendan Murphy QC.

4

An examination of 7 paintings from Colour Power 22, by Millie Potter & Julius Killerby

Julius Killerby & Millie Potter analyse 7 works from JGM Gallery’s mid-year exhibition, Colour Power 22. The exhibition focuses primarily on an aesthetic and palette that evolved from Aboriginal Australians first encounter with acrylic paint in the 1960s. These vibrant colours differed markedly from the traditional earthy tones and natural ochres that had, until that moment, largely defined the aesthetic of Aboriginal Art. This expansion of the palette extended their already vast conceptual horizons, allowing First Nations Australians to more viscerally convey “country”.

6 Incoming Tide | The Ghost Net Collective: Lynnette Griffiths in conversation

In the final week of September JGM Gallery opened Incoming Tide, an exhibition featuring works made from discarded fishing nets (Ghost Nets) by the Ghost Net Collective. Ghost Nets are one of the most harmful marine pollutants. Each year, nets weighing five to ten times the weight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge are discarded to drift aimlessly in the world’s oceans. On the occasion of the exhibition, Julius Killerby sat down with Lynnette Griffiths (Director of the Ghost Net Collective) to discuss the show. Included is a short introduction by Killerby.

MILLIE POTTER

Millie Potter is the Assistant Manager of JGM Gallery. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts (History of Art) at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

With a strong foundation in Art History, Potter directs much of the communications planning at JGM Gallery.

12 Marco Fusinato’s DESASTRES:

The audience’s reactions to the Australian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale

Luke Conroy and Julius Killerby write about the audience’s reaction to Marco Fusinato’s DESASTRES. The work, described as an “experimental noise project”, features a live performance by the artist every day of the Biennale. Conroy and Killerby worked alongside Fusinato as invigilators at the Australian Pavilion and were originally commissioned to co-author this text by Liquid Architecture.

COMMISSIONED BY JENNIFER GUERRINI MARALDI

Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi is a leading specialist in the art of First Nations Australians. Following her years as a private dealer, where she exhibited regularly at The Saatchi Gallery and Masterpiece London, amongst others, she founded JGM Gallery in 2017. The gallery has since developed a broad program, exhibiting the work of both British Contemporary artists and Aboriginal Australians.

Guerrini Maraldi (nee Heathcote) was born in Melbourne, Australia where, in the 1970’s, she was owner and director of the Powell Street Gallery in South Yarra. At Powell Street Gallery she advanced the careers of many artists, placing their work in significant public and private collections, including The National Gallery of Australia and various State Galleries. It was also during this time that she was appointed by the Australian Government as a valuation specialist for Contemporary Australian Art.

ITIS WITH GREAT DELIGHT that I introduce the inaugural edition of the JGM Review. This publication will focus primarily on exhibitions and projects within the JGM community.

One of the keys to appreciating a work of art, I believe, is a willingness to rigorously examine the concepts held within it. I have often found that a painting lives and breathes for far longer when it presents ideas that one can constantly grapple with. I have commissioned this publication and future editions in the hope of fostering a greater appreciation for the art exhibited at JGM Gallery and beyond.

I have always encouraged a collaborative and cross-cultural atmosphere at my gallery and this journal is an extension of that approach. In this edition, the contributors have authored and co-authored varying responses to exhibitions that would have, themselves, been impossible without a collaborative ethos.

Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, 2022. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.

- Jennifer Guerini Maraldi

An examination of 7 paintings from Colour Power 22

COLOUR POWER 22 WAS EXHIBITED AT JGM GALLERY FROM THE 29TH OF JUNE UNTIL THE 17TH OF SEPTEMBER. THE EXHIBITION FOCUSED PRIMARILY ON AN AESTHETIC AND PALETTE THAT EVOLVED FROM FIRST NATIONS AUSTRALIANS FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH ACRYLIC PAINT IN THE 1960s.

THESE VIBRANT COLOURS DIFFERED MARKEDLY FROM THE TRADITIONAL EARTHY TONES AND NATURAL OCHRES THAT HAD, UNTIL THAT MOMENT, LARGELY DEFINED THE AESTHETIC OF ABORIGINAL ART. THIS EXPANSION OF THE PALETTE EXTENDED THEIR ALREADY VAST CONCEPTUAL HORIZONS, ALLOWING THEM TO MORE VISCERALLY CONVEY “COUNTRY”.

Much like Barney’s work, there is an intense sense of heat conveyed in Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah’s painting, Millinjinang & Willi. All three stages of burning are denoted by the palette: incipient yellow, fiery red and charred blackness. This is intensified by the wavy contours of the shapes, almost as if we were viewing this image through a haze of sweltering heat. There is also a distinct sense of space expanding and contracting, perhaps because of this heat. Squares condense more and more until, at the centre, they transform into a circle. These circles are in fact "jila" and, like the "tjukula" in Barney's work, they represent waterholes. Their elemental juxtaposition to the heat lends the image an alchemical quality and a sense of geographical transformation.

Nerrimah's early life may help to further contextualize this work. Much of his adolescence was spent evading drought and bushfires and the "jila" sustained him and his family through many of these disasters. These "jila", then, may also signify the communities Mawukura travelled with, while the squares perhaps rep resent the fire and heat that constantly pursued them.

PAINTED

IN 2020, Ngura (Country) is an archetypal work by Eric Bar ney (Mungi) Kumanara, composed with a patchwork of pinks, oranges and reds with a grid of double rings laid across the surface. The squarish shapes are perhaps suggestive of the way Barney views his natural surround ings in Yankunytjatjara Country in the northwest of South Australia. Amidst the ostensibly unmanageable surroundings of the “outback”, Barney sees an orderly arrangement of the natural resources that have sustained his people (Anangu) for generations.

The black and white double rings represent "tjukula" (water sources). By em phasizing the intensity of the reds and oranges that surround them, Barney conveys a sense of intense heat and, by extension, stresses the importance of the "tjukula". Masterfully, he has used an apparently simple arrangement of three colours and two shapes to communicate his knowledge of Yankunytjat jara Country and why that knowledge is so vital.

One of the few sculptures in Colour Power 22 is Luke Djalagarrarra’s Bird Carving II, an elongated piece of carved wood, adorned with bright reds, yellows, blues and whites. What we first perceive is the simplicity of the figuration. As a silhou ette, the sculpture would more closely resemble a didgeridoo than the figure of a bird. However, with very subtle curves and a carved hook at the top, Djalagarrarra represents wings and a beak. This innovative sense of design is typical of artists from Ngukurr, where Djalagarrarra lives and works.

Decorating the bird with hatched reds, yellows and whites in the style of a lower garment, Djalagarrarra anthropomorphises the creature, conveying a very hu man, perhaps ancestral, presence. The hatching has another conceptual function. Much like Barney’s work, the representation of nature (or a natural creature) with meticulous geometry imbues the painting with a sense of order and intercon nectedness.

- Written by Julius Killerby

TWO

WORKS FROM Colour Power 22, Kurtal - Living Water I & Kurtal Living Water II were painted by Jukuja Dolly Snell in 2015, the same year she won the Telstra NATSIAA Prize. Both painted with vibrant colours, these are archetypal works by Snell and a seamless fit for the exhibition.

Laid down quite gesturally, the lines in Kurtal - Living Water I convey a distinct rawness, while the playful palette perhaps suggests Snell’s fondness for the land she is depicting. This land, or “country”, is the Great Sandy Desert, southwest of Lake Gregory, where water runs through the sandhills. This is represented on the canvas with alternating lines of blue and yellow, or blue and green.

Kurtal - Living Water II follows the same theme, depicting “jila” (waterholes) scat tered amongst the sand dunes. Snell represents these as irregular black dots with rings of green, engulfed by a wash of purple. Dolly, her two brothers and her two sisters were born near these “jila” and so for her they have an ancestral relevance. Moreover, Spider Snell (Dolly’s husband) once rescued her brother from one of these waterholes. It is perhaps because of the significance these “jila” have in the context of Snell’s life that she encases them within a thick red bank, aesthetically emphasising their importance. Both these works, then, perfectly articulate the theme of Colour Power 22. With an acrylic palette, First Nations Australian artists, such as Snell, found new ways of embellishing the landscape, conveying a visceral passion for “country” through the colour scheme.

“For the first time, First Nations artists discovered the blaze of colours available in acrylics which helped them portray the burst of floral blooms that appeared after the seasonal rains in their ancestral lands.”

Millie Potter with Kurtal - Living Water I & Kurtal - Living Water II, 2022. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.

In contrast to the other works from Colour Power 22, Joy Kngwarreye Jones’ Enteebra is conspicuously monochromatic. In the context of this exhibition, it is further distinguished by a pedantically applied uniform pattern. Repeated white lines push from the centre of the canvas, forming petal-like shapes that curve out ward from their base, becoming whiter as they do. The painting represents a flow er which is found in a cave called Enteebra, located northeast of Alice Springs. For the Kngwarreye women, this site is used for ceremonial purposes and is of great cultural significance.

The palette used by Tjawina Porter in Tjarlirli Rockhole Tjawina is unique amongst the works in Colour Power 22. Impasto white dots line the edges of blue and green sections of paint which, in combination, project an intense aquama rine. It is surprising, then, that the land represented is not the ocean or a riverbed, but the undulating landscape of the desert near Yumara, where Porter lived most

of her life. To Porter, this terrain is not barren or unforgiving, but full of life.

In relation to artists such as Porter, Jennifer GuerriniMaraldi (Director of JGM Gallery) states that “For the first time, Aboriginal artists discovered the blaze of colours available in acrylics, which helped them portray the burst of floral blooms that appeared after the seasonal rains in their ancestral lands in the desert region.”

This observation seems particularly true of Tjarlirli Rockhole Tjawina and, through her contradictory palette, Porter conveys something very alchemical and transformational about her “country”. Having participated in many national and international group exhibitions, Porter’s skill is now widely recognised, and she is represented in public and private collections in Australia and overseas.

by Millie Potter

Lynnette Griffiths

In Conversation

TO MARK THE START OF THE AUTUMN SEASON, JGM GALLERY IS EXHIBITING INCOMING TIDE AT ITS BATTERSEA SPACE, FEATURING WORKS BY AUSTRALIA’S CROSSCULTURAL GHOST NET COLLECTIVE. THE EXHIBITION INCLUDES SCULPTURES OF SEA CREATURES MADE FROM DISCARDED FISHING NETS (GHOST NETS).

THE GHOST NET COLLECTIVE IS RENOWNED FOR MAKING LARGE OUTDOOR INSTALLATIONS, AS WELL AS SMALLER-SCALE WORKS. ARTISTS EXHIBITING IN INCOMING TIDE INCLUDE MARION GAEMERS, EMMA GELA, NANCY NAAWI, LYNNETTE GRIFFITHS, FLORENCE GUTCHEN, LAVINIA KETCHELL, RACY OUI-PITT, ELLAROSE SAVAGE, JIMMY JOHN THAIDAY & JIMMY KENNY THAIDAY.

Above: Jimmy K. Thaiday, Thaiday, 2022,

Net,

& twine, 140cm x 53cm x 53cm.

courtesy of Lynnette Griffiths.

An

THERE

of new works by the Ghost Net

IS AN INTRIGUING CONTRADICTION between form and content in Incoming Tide. We are presented with beautiful sea creatures, yet they are made from repurposed Ghost Nets, one of the most damaging marine pollutants and predators. They are, in a sense, constructed with the substance most opposite to them, the very material that is killing them. These works do not only function as graceful sculptures, then, but as stark warnings about the future of marine biology.

It is hard to think of a more fitting symbol for the environmental crisis than a Ghost Net. Much like global warming and pollution, they exist as a colossal, relatively slowmoving menace in the abyss. Because they are beneath the surface they also exist, much like the issue, almost as an abstraction. Until, of course, they are not just an abstrac tion, but a catastrophe, strangling reefs and washing up on beaches. Incoming Tide counters the abstractness of this issue, placing it in a human context – an art gallery. The audience find themselves unintimidated by these sublime creatures which, far from instilling fear as they might in their natural environment, incline us to touch and walk around them.

That is perhaps the greatest achievement of this exhibition. The way the works are presented puts the audience in the world, proportionately and positionally, of these sea creatures, countering any apathy to the issue. The exhibit forces us to engage with the problem of marine pollution, to see things from the sea creatures perspective. In this context, we can appreciate every detail of the creatures whose well-being we have too long ignored.

- Written by Julius Killerby

JK Perhaps to start with I might ask, what is The Ghost Collective and how did it begin?

LG Although it was only formalized in 2020, it began a long time ago. We started to work collectively with Erub Arts in 1996. When the Ghost Net Collective came around, I guess it developed from a mentor position into a true collaboration. It grew out of trust and it grew out of collaboration.

JK For a bit of context, what is a Ghost Net?

LG A Ghost Net is a derelict fishing net that has ended up in the water for various reasons. They’re sometimes dumped or caught in storms. Some coun tries are still using gillnets. Those are nets set with radio beacons and they’re baited. They can be kilometres and kilometres long. When they become rogue nets, they just start fishing themselves. So, they’re a deadly invisible mecha nism for fishing. And they’re collecting all sorts of species, not just the species that they were initially intended for. This is especially true in the Torres Strait. In northern Australia there are six of the seven marine turtles and a large part of Ghost Net catch is turtle. Quite often there’s other endangered species, like the stingrays, the bottom dwelling fish, swordfish, all sorts of things like that. So, they become rogue nets and they become a problem. Not just for fishing but for the reefs and beaches as well. They’re plastic, they’re heavy, and they’re full of all sorts of things as well as rubbish. A Ghost Net is an awful predator in our oceans. It’s a silent predator.

JK Do we know how many Ghost Nets pollute the oceans each year?

LG It’s estimated that 46% of ocean plastic pollution originates from fish ing, but we don’t realize how much of this fishing gear is also submarine. It’s still caught down there.

JK Prior to this conversation, we were discussing how Ghost Nets also end up as microplastics. Could you speak a bit about that?

LG Not only nets, but all sorts of things become microplastics as they wash up. Microplastics pose a huge threat and there are studies being done to see what percentage of the sand on beaches is made up of microplastics.

JK How does the Ghost Net Collective go about collecting Ghost Nets? Is it by cleaning up beaches in Erub and the surrounding areas?

LG Erub itself doesn’t actually get a huge amount of net because of the tidal stream. Where the tidal streams wash, you obviously get a lot more net. The western edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria gets huge amounts of net which drift down from Indonesia. And then other places down the east coast also get net as well as various other places in Australia. We partner with Tangaroa Blue who are a plastic retrieval NGO who do a lot of beach cleans. Some of us will go with them and some of us will go with the Australian Navy who have picked up net for us in the past. So, we have a number of sources, but it’s all either washed up on the beach or ends up as a marine pollutant. We’re recycling all of that stuff to create an awareness around the message.

JK I think the fact that it doesn’t effect Erub as directly as other places

is an indication of, as you’ve said previously, the collaborative ethos of the Ghost Net Collective. It’s an indication that it’s not just your problem or someone else’s problem, but it’s everyone’s problem. Would you say that’s accurate?

LG Yes, it is everyone’s problem. Unfortunately, a lot of the problem is in visible because quite a lot of the places where it does wash up aren’t populated. Indigenous communities and Indigenous rangers were the first people who the Federal Government actually funded to clear the nets because they were in remote locations. But unfortunately, that program was defunded a number of years ago. So we’re now relying on groups like Tangaroa Blue to go into remote areas and to partner with those Indigenous rangers as well, especially at the top end of Aus tralia, which is obviously a huge area.

JK Does this exhibition, Incoming Tide, differ in any way from previous ex hibitions or projects by the Ghost Net Collective?

LG Yes, I think it does, because we’re not just looking at sea creatures that are around Erub but we are thinking a bit more broadly. We’re thinking about what happens when the net actually does drift. And we’re looking more closely at some of the species in terms of the predator and the prey. The rays, for example, are fleeing from the shark, which is one of their natural predators. And then they are crossing a boundary where the net becomes the predator as well. I think that’s a really important message that that we need to portray, and we need to talk about. We need to talk openly about the fact that the plastic pollution is a problem for all animals.

JK And what other considerations were there in terms of which sea creatures were depicted?

LG Well, the Eagle Ray was chosen because we’ve been working with that motif for quite some time now… since the beginning of Covid really. And we looked at the Eagle Rays that are around Erub. Then we wanted to be more inclu sive, so we looked at species that were endemic all around Australia. You’ve got the rare Ornate Eagle Ray, you’ve got the Port Jackson Eagle Ray, which is in Sydney Harbour. You’ve got all sorts of Eagle Rays that are endemic to the coastline of Australia. It was important to use a species that everybody could relate to. And in Australia most people visit the beach at some stage and just about everybody’s got a story about a stingray. So, it was something that brought everybody together as well. It wasn’t just a traditional story. It allowed everybody else to participate and tell their own stories. The work that we’ve been doing over the last couple of years has been quite participatory and inclusive, although this show is just Erub and ourselves (the Ghost Net Collective). We’ve gathered a lot of stories and we’ve talked to a lot of people. And I think that’s where we’re at. It’s really important that we all talk about this

JK Do you strive for a consistent aesthetic when you put a show together?

LG Yes, we do. When we discuss what we’re going to do for a potential show, we talk about the issue (marine pollution) and what we’d like to say about it. All of us have grown up along the coast. I grew up on a boat so, you know, we’re used to the tide coming in and out. The tide renews. It brings in new water every day, but it also washes up all this terrible debris. Everyone can relate to the tide, in one way or another. So, with that we then talked about the species that come over

the reef on an incoming tide, like small reef sharks. The rays move in and out on shifting sands. The idea is that the tide was with everything and everything related to it. Everything flows from it. And it was there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. But everything shifts: the tide line, the people who traverse the coastline, all sorts of things shift and change every day.

JK Some of the works I particularly like in the exhibition are Jimmy K. Thaiday’s sharks. Could you speak a bit about those works and about Jimmy’s work generally?

LG Jimmy has worked really hard with the guys and he’s been instrumental in making some of the large sculptures. He’s very interested in traditional history and what the sharks mean in the Erub culture. He’s also interested in the idea of them as a predator. Though it’s not just him specializing in the sharks, he’s sort of perfected his own design with them. And he’s made them his signature, I guess.

JK Ambivalence seems to be a through line in this exhibition. As with Jim my’s sharks, they’re beautiful, but at the same time they’re predators. The same goes with the nets. It’s interesting how recontextualizing something can com pletely transform the way you look at it. Ghost Nets are, on the face of it, tragic and horrific things. But when recontextualized by the Ghost Net Collective, they become sublime, beautiful sculptures. And they’re not just transformed into works of art but, because they’re repurposing the pollution, they’re almost symbolically finding a solution to the problem. Would you agree with that?

LG Yes. But I also think that at the beginning, back in 2009/2010, when we first started, we used to say we’re saving the ocean one net at a time. But clearly that’s rubbish. We’re not. We’re raising awareness. But what we’re doing is by hand. So, in a time old tradition of stitching, which includes all people, I think we’ve overcome the fact that it’s just something that women do. Because historically, you know, men were gilded to stitch. Men made costumes and knit ted stockings in the old days and the colonial period. And, for Torres straight men, they made nets and repaired nets. And so reviving an age-old tradition and reworking it has meaning as well.

JK Jimmy John Thaiday, as I’m sure you know, was recently awarded the Telstra NATSIAA multimedia prize for his video, Beyond the Lines. He has three works in this exhibition: Raydon, Rayleen and Boycar. Could you speak a bit about those works?

LG So Jimmy John… we call him Gondo… is incredibly prolific and enthu siastic and he, in his video and in his work, wants to talk not only about fishing practices from a European perspective, but he also wants to talk about the fact that, if there’s going to be a future for his grandchildren, then Torres Strait peo ple also need to reassess their fishing practices. In this modern age they can talk about conservation, but everybody drives a dinghy now. Everybody hunts a little bit faster. So, he’s incredibly thoughtful in terms of his environmental message.

JK In many respects, then, it’s old meets new. You couldn’t get a more con temporary piece of material than a Ghost Net. But then it’s being used in a traditional way to tell traditional stories. Lavinia Ketchell’s work is also very striking, I think. What is her work about?

LG Lavinia is a young woman and she is very engaged with her environ ment. She dives and is always out on the weekends, working with the fish traps, on dinghies and stuff. She comes from a family of fisherman and… yeah, she’s an amazing young woman, finding a voice in what she does. She’s also incredibly technically competent. I think she just wants to talk about what it is like for a young woman to be able to have a voice in the Torres Strait, which isn’t easy.

JK I think this exhibition does a great job of countering the abstractness of the issue. These creatures are no longer hidden beneath the surface but are po sitioned in a way that the audience cannot avoid. You usually can’t view sea life up close but in this exhibition the creatures are recontextualized in such a way that the audience can walk around them, appreciate their beauty and appreciate the problem more broadly. Was that a deliberate conceptual decision, when the Ghost Net Collective first started to exhibit?

LG Something really magical happens when you touch a Ghost Net. I can’t quite explain it, but when we first started the Ghost Net Collective in 2009/2010, we had this Ghost Net. It sat in a big bag outside the Art Centre for a good six months. It just sat there. Rats got into it. No one really knew what to do with it. It was just a bit of a nothing. And we were all like, “Well, you know, we should take it to the dump.” Anyway, one day we dragged it all out and

started to gurney it off and clean it. And it was at that moment of picking it up and turning it over and having it in your hands that you realized, here was some thing that was really deadly. But here was something that you could also pull apart, you could deconstruct. Here was a material that you could use to shape and make a statement out of. It was a powerful moment. I was there, hosing it, going, “Oh my God! Here is a destructive material. We can reconfigure this. We can send a message. This problem isn’t going away.”

JK It is such a loaded material, isn’t it? I’ve never touched a Ghost Net. The first time will be when we receive the works, which are on their way as we speak. But it must be so strange to think of the journey that the material has gone on, travelling through the oceans. I’m very excited to see the work in person.

LG Well when you get the net for the first time, it comes all bundled up and it’s pretty horrible. Don’t get me wrong. It’s full of mud and dirt and reef. It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of work to get it into a state that you can cut up and use. But when you do first get it, especially the Indonesian net, which is soft gill net - it’s a green sort of grainy colour - it’s often full of small fish bones, and they’re usually jawbones because of the teeth. A lot of the other bones wash out. But there’s these little jawbones and you’re cutting and picking little jawbones out of this net going, “Oh my God, this has killed. Not for food. This has killed because it’s been left in the ocean. It’s killed coral reefs all the world over. It’s, you know… it’s destructive.

JK How has the Ghost Net Collective evolved since its inception?

LG In 2016 when we had the first collective show in in the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, it was a great show. It was lovely. It’s an amazing building. It was in the main salon. It was fabulous. But every show since then, I think we’ve grown conceptually and thought more about what we’re making. In 2019, when we had our first show at JGM, it was a white show. We were looking at that whole kind of ethereal thing and death and destruction but clearly Ghost Nets comes in all sorts of colours. So, you know, I’d like to bring the colour back into it. In terms of our technical capabilities… when we first started, we were all making dinghy cushions and bags and utilitarian objects. And we didn’t really get to that sort of sculptural level for a couple of years. And now it’s just growing. Every time you handle it you make something new and you come back with lots of different ideas. And I think through the Ghost Net Collective we can talk more openly to a lot more people. And we use social media a lot more and people are coming back with different ideas. You springboard ideas and that’s very exciting. Now we’re talking to people internationally. I’d love to see more international stuff happening where we can collaborate on an international scale with other people and other groups.

JK Is the Collective growing and taking on more members?

LG In the project that we’re currently doing for Sydney Harbour, I’ve had over 100 people making small stingrays for us. I had well over 100 people mak ing sardines for me. I had over 800 children making little turtles for another installation. If you look at those people that can dip in and out and that can then come to a public work and say “There’s my stingray” or “There’s my sardine”… and believe me I get a lot of emails from people… that’s the joy, you know, being able to have other people come in. It’s a collective that people can come in and out of. But we want to, I guess, give authorship and recognition to all the people who contribute. I think that’s really important!

JK Well, a broad question to finish, Lynnette, but why do you think Art is important?

LG Being creative is really important. I think we all rely on technology. There are so many computer driven things out there. But for me, being creative is making things, it’s working with my hands. And I think that Art made with your hands is incredibly important as we’re emerging into the technological age. I don’t know if I really want to be part of that world, or if I just want to continue making things with my hands. For me Art has to have, not only a concept, but it has to be quite technically beautiful as well.

JK Yes, I think that tactile creativity is something very innate in us and it’s something that we’re slowly losing. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Lynnette. I’m very excited to see the work when it arrives and I’m looking for ward to the show.

LG Yes, I look forward to it.

Thanks Lynnette.

Luke Conroy & Julius Killerby analyse the impact of Marco Fusinato‘s DESASTRES on the audience of the 59th Venice Biennale

AT THE INVITATION OF LIQUID ARCHITECTURE, LUKE CONROY & JULIUS KILLERBY CO-AUTHORED AN ANALYSIS OF DESASTRES DESASTRES IS THE WORK OF AUSTRALIA’S REPRESENTATIVE AT THIS YEAR’S VENICE BIENNALE, MARCO FUSINATO.

CONROY & KILLERBY WERE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO WORK ALONGSIDE FUSINATO AS INVIGILATORS AT THE AUSTRALIAN PAVILION, AND WHAT FOLLOWS IS WHAT THEY OBSERVED IN THE AUDIENCE

ADIVERSE

AUDIENCE FILTERS daily through the doors of the Australian Pavilion. It includes the typical fashionable Art crowd, elderly couples speaking of their experiences at previous biennales, young Art students eagerly making notes, and families pursuing Art in-between their children’s naps and icecream breaks.

Upon entering the exhibition space, this varied crowd sees an arrangement of recognisable and possibly reassuring objects: a freestanding LED wall, a stack of amps and a guitar. For the audi ence, these objects are familiar from past experiences of watching big name musicians in a sta dium or local acts at the pub. The audience signals their recognition of these objects in multiple ways. Frequently, this is through physical movements such as headbanging, making the devil’s horns hand signal, or an impromptu air guitar performance. On other occasions the audience simply states out loud the names of famous musicians — “Jimi Hendrix!” — or yells “rock on” to anyone who will listen.

Through this series of performative actions the audience signals that they “get it”. Their atten tion then turns to the sounds in the space, listening for what they expect to come next. Perhaps it is the first series of big power chords; an easily recognisable rhythm; a catchy melody; or a soaring guitar solo. As the audience waits, these expectations never eventuate. Instead, what unfolds daily in DESASTRES is a musical language that involves various explorations of noise and feedback. In the exhibition space, the audience is confronted by a wall of audio signals crackling, rumbling, vibrating, and piercing at a volume that invites the whole body in on the experience.

The artist, Marco Fusinato, activates the exhibition objects during his performance throughout the day. He knowingly embraces the famil iar cultural status and symbolism of his materials, yet uses them in unconventional ways. Sitting with his back to the audience, Fusinato can be observed generating sound by placing the guitar upside down on his lap; strategically hitting certain areas of the guitar; rhythmi cally unplugging and plugging in the guitar lead; and holding the guitar at various angles, noticing how the vibrations in the room hit the guitar to generate even more noise. Whereas a typical musician aims to avoid such moments of audio chaos, Fusinato is actively seek ing them out.

Observing the audience in the space, at DESASTRES’ peak intensity, the work’s sheer volume is overpowering for many. With fingers in ears, the audience finds new ways of communicating through a range of facial expressions and body posturing. The audience can also be observed discovering they can make a familiar musical structure by rhythmically blocking and unblocking their ears amongst the noise. Further active listening is found by the audience experimenting with how their movement throughout the space, and changes in head posi tion, affect their sonic experience.

Whether inside for minutes, seconds, or even hours, upon leaving DESASTRES the audience is clearly enlivened. It is not unusual for children to be seen running out of the venue, shocked at their first en counter with such volume. While some visitors will stop to chat, for most their experience is communicated through a combination of an open mouth; raised eyebrows; a shake of the body to release tension; or perhaps an encore air guitar performance. For those walking in the other direction about to enter the exhibition space, these actions are a tantalising hint of what is to come.

- Written by Luke Conroy

ON

ENTERING THE space, the posi tioning and scale of the screen induces a sense of claustrophobia, accentuated by a row of towering amplifiers. The noise — a tem pestuous equivalent to the images of death and disaster — is inescapable.

Above: Marco Fusinato, A page from the Score of DESASTRES, 2022, facsimile on Edition Peters manuscript paper, 45.5cm x 30.3cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Opposite: Marco Fusinato’s equipment for DESASTRES, 2022. Image courtesy of Julius Killerby.

Many visitors read DESASTRES as an expression of the chaos of the 2020s. The title, an allusion to Goya’s Disasters of War series (1810–1816), would certainly reinforce this. However, the longer one spends with the work, the more this seems like a deliberate misdirection. The rapid changing of images prevents the audience from processing any conceptual or narrative significance. A photo of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion (1565) might appear, and before you can register its ostensible relevance, it is replaced by an image of a beached whale and a corresponding roar of amplification. This is true of the work at its most tranquil, and certainly at its most turbulent when Fusinato, through the control unit at his feet, sometimes triggers sixty images per second. Rapidly, the audience vacillates between uncomfortable states of mind. It is perhaps this, more than anything, that frays the nervous system.

In various ways, Fusinato stresses the constructedness of the apparatus of DESASTRES, ex posing much of the work’s devices and mechanisms. The back of the screen is bare, revealing its wiring and scaffolding. The brush strokes of a Rembrandt are zoomed in on or displayed with a negative exposure, divulging the painting’s technical architecture. The accompanying brochure even includes a diagram explaining how the mechanisms of DESASTRES func tion. In this context, the objects seem more like the equipment of a scientific experiment than the elements of a contemporary artwork

The exhibition also includes a series of images with a superimposed blank musical score. In the absence of notation, the images take on an auditory quality. We hear lightning when we see a thunderbolt. We hear trickling when we see a polluted riverbed. It is not enough for Fusinato to politely illustrate these disasters. They must invade our space, penetrate our ears, and exceed the ability of images to make us uncomfortable.

- Written by Julius Killerby

For the original publication, please visit Liquid Architecture at disclaimer.org.au.

“A

-