ISSN 2340-1575
THE ROYAL TAR COLLECTIVE DEEP MATERIAL
LÃnea de Costa Contemporary Art & Culture Visual Magazine issue #20# PINEA A.I.R. special issue
Línea de Costa Contemporary Art & Culture Visual Magazine issue #20# PINEA A.I.R. special issue
EDITOR / PUBLISHER Asociación Cultural LINEA DE COSTA DIRECTOR / EDITOR Pablo Alonso de la Sierra Rocío Arévalo Vargas DISEÑO / DESIGN LosVendaval FOTOGRAFÍA / PHOTOGRAPHY The Royal Tar Collective / Pinea-Línea de Costa A.I.R. COLABORADORES / CONTRIBUTORS Isabel Figueroa ISSN 2340-1 575 CÁDIZ (SPAIN) www.magazine.lineadecosta.net
P I N E A- LI N E A D E C O S TA A. I . R . E S P AC I O P I N E A ART G ALLE RY Avda. de Sevilla 22, Rota 1 1 520 Spain pineaonair@lineadecosta.net www.pinea.org
Linea de Costa Contemporary Art & Culture Visual Magazine es una publicación independiente. Publicación sujeta a licencia Creative Commons. Linea de Costa Contemporary Art & Culture Visual Magazine is an independent publication. Under Creative Commons License.
D E E P M AT E R I AL
THE ROYAL TAR: DEEP MATERIAL // a project for PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA A.I.R. The Royal Tar is a collective comprised of artists Anya Antonovych, Sam Jones, and Heather Lyon, each of whom reside in the coastal town of Blue Hill, Maine in the United States. Each of the artists maintains a strong independent studio practice. They also engage in collaborative work. They have been showing together since 201 3, but formalized their affiliation in 201 5, when they named themselves The Royal Tar. The residency at PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA is the first they are participating in as a collective. During the course of their residency, the artists investigate landscape and ritual. The central activities that define Cadiz Bay today are fishing and tourism, but that has not always been the case. The Royal Tar engages with the landscape and natural forces in a way that connects to its rich archaeological past. This past includes an acknowledgement of the divine feminine through the worship of the goddess Astaroth, after whom Rota is purportedly named. They confront the contemporary problem of the loss of ritual and ceremony that have historically given structure and meaning to life. This profound lack leaves many people now feeling adrift and unsure of how to deal with major life events, such as transitions to adulthood, motherhood, death. In their time here, Antonovych, Jones, and Lyon create meaning by enacting their own rituals in direct relationship with the landscape, approaching the transcendent through the material. Anya Antonovych addresses death in the performance Internment. With Jones’s assistance, she digs her own grave on the beach, and is buried by Jones and Lyon with a tenderness and attention usually only bestowed on a future bride or on a corpse being prepared for burial. The experience as a ritual supersedes the importance of the documentation of the project; the feeling of immobilization, the weight of the sand, the sounds and vibrations transported under the sand, the difficulty breathing: a visit to a state neighboring death. Evidence of the performance is presented in the form of photographs by Heather Lyon.Sam Jones’s video installation, Wake, features a video of a ship’s wake projected onto multiple layers of suspended silk. As the projection hits each successive screen, the image increases in size and diminishes in legibility, receding into the infinite. Wake, which in English means a gathering for remembering the recently deceased, the act of waking up, and the visible track of turbulence left behind, alludes to loss, awakening, and remembrance. The companion video pieces Spriritum Terrae (“Earth Breath”) and Quintum Essentium (“Quintessence”), present on one hand a disquieting image of sand breathing, and on the other, entrancing, shimmering waves, both framed by oval shapes that simultaneously reference the womb, the limitless void, and the face of the Divine. Heather Lyon’s primary project is a video of the durational performance Milk. Lyon, dressed in a simple white garment, kneels in the cave-like chamber of the Torre de la Merced. With the authority of a priestess, she very slowly and with deep concentration picks up a bowl of milk and pours it over her head in a ritualized gesture. The captivating effect of the milk dripping over her face, hair, and figure, eventually pooling onto the floor, invokes a synergy between the corporeal and the ecstatic. Lyon has chosen the tower as a location for the performance for both aesthetic and metaphoric reasons. The only building in Rota that withstood the great Tsunami of 1 755, the Torre de la Merced, is a symbol of resilience and survival. It was also a convent: a safe place for women cultivating their spiritual lives.
LĂnea de Costa Contemporary Art & Culture Visual Magazine issue #20# PINEA A.I.R. special issue