arbor temporis momentum
Exhibition dates: 25 November 2017 - 18 February 2018 Louiseann King is the Bendigo Art Gallery 2017 Going Solo artist; an initiative providing contemporary artists living and working in central Victoria the opportunity to produce a significant new body of work for solo exhibition. For King, the natural world provides rich symbolism for self-reflection as well as a medium to probe broader cultural and social structures and histories. Her immersive installation arbor temporis momentum is an imagined landscape comprised of objects foraged and formed; in some cases completely transformed through a casting process. Paying homage to the fragility and beauty of nature, these tangible elements, many gathered from the bushland near King’s home and studio, are woven into the work in poetic layers, which touch upon family and the lived experience of women in Australia, particularly in connection to the land and domestic enterprise. Soundscape by renowned Australian sound artist Philip Samartzis and Louiseann King. Louiseann King is a sculptor/installation artist and academic based in Eganstown, Victoria. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections. In 2006 she completed a Doctorate in Philosophy at Monash University where she held the Monash Silver Jubilee Scholarship. King has exhibited widely and is the recipient of numerous grants and prizes, most recently a VicArts New Work Grant and the Craft Victoria Love Locks Commission.
Exhibition dates: 25 November 2017 - 18 February 2018
Louiseann King is the Bendigo Art Gallery 2017 Going Solo artist; an initiative providing contemporary artists living and working in central Victoria the opportunity to produce a significant new body of work for solo exhibition.
For King, the natural world provides rich symbolism for self-reflection as well as a medium to probe broader cultural and social structures and histories. Her immersive installation arbor temporis momentum is an imagined landscape comprised of objects foraged and formed; in some cases completely transformed through a casting process. Paying homage to the fragility and beauty of nature, these tangible elements, many gathered from the bushland near King’s home and studio, are woven into the work in poetic layers, which touch upon family and the lived experience of women in Australia, particularly in connection to the land and domestic enterprise.
Soundscape by renowned Australian sound artist Philip Samartzis and Louiseann King.
Louiseann King is a sculptor/installation artist and academic based in Eganstown, Victoria. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections. In 2006 she completed a Doctorate in Philosophy at Monash University where she held the Monash Silver Jubilee Scholarship. King has exhibited widely and is the recipient of numerous grants and prizes, most recently a VicArts New Work Grant and the Craft Victoria Love Locks Commission.
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<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong><br />
LOUISEANN KING<br />
25 November 2017 - 18 February 2018
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong><br />
LOUISEANN KING<br />
The stunning works that comprise<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> immediately<br />
draw the viewer into complex imagined<br />
worlds that connect with both the<br />
natural environment and the constructed<br />
landscape of the domestic. The familiar<br />
and yet the unfamiliar; the uncanny and<br />
the spellbinding. Territory we think we<br />
know and territory we are yet to know.<br />
There is an implied apprehension and<br />
fluidity. Things slip and slide, multiply<br />
and whisper. Textured and plain glass,<br />
transparent objects and the returned<br />
stare of reflective mirrors create an<br />
iridescent portal to the heart of each<br />
work. While a gathering of natural<br />
sounds from the land the artist walks on<br />
every day return as aural whisperings<br />
that seem to rise from the gallery<br />
floor. The unexpected is everywhere.<br />
This soundscape is the result of a<br />
collaboration between Louiseann King<br />
and the renowned Australian sound artist<br />
Philip Samartzis.<br />
King is not only an artist, she is a<br />
poet and alchemist. Not a poet in the<br />
conventional sense of rhyming verse but<br />
in the ancient meaning of the word which<br />
casts the poet as a maker of ‘things’.<br />
The term ‘things’ remaining undefined.<br />
As poet/alchemist, King brings together<br />
the foraged, the cast and the collected,<br />
transforming her found and made objects<br />
into a chorus, allowing the memories and<br />
histories associated with every element<br />
to sing silently.
A central character is the found kitchen<br />
table, a domestic work bench from<br />
times past. A gendered object. A passive<br />
witness to life lived within its gaze – the<br />
memories of the object now deeply<br />
ingrained in its surface patina. In the work<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – respiro, a<br />
transparent city of objects sits proudly<br />
atop the table, the domestic altar. It is as if<br />
the breath inhaled in the natural landscape<br />
as the artist forages for flowers and bark<br />
has been exhaled into these vertical glass<br />
vessels. As though the vessels equate to<br />
the framework of suspended tubes we call<br />
lungs. Waxed flowers, a magpie cast in<br />
bronze and an ornate tablecloth float on a<br />
glassy pond below. Shakespeare referred<br />
to the soul as a ’glassy essence’ and in this<br />
work the essence of women past murmur<br />
their histories.<br />
The elaborately constructed works<br />
encapsulate the explorations, musings<br />
and imaginings of the artist as she lives<br />
her life on either side of the mirror. The<br />
artist/poet/alchemist on one side and<br />
Virginia Woolf’s ‘angel in the house’ on<br />
the other. Slipping into the Arcadian<br />
dream of the landscape, becoming<br />
invisible, hiding, foraging, making. And<br />
then returning to the familiar.<br />
King’s otherworldly landscapes evoke<br />
the inescapable – the mortality of all<br />
living things. As a woman immersed in<br />
the natural environment she is acutely<br />
aware of the power and danger inherent<br />
in that domain; floods, snow, black ice,<br />
fire, lightning strikes. These threats, as<br />
Dorothea Mackellar writes in her poem,<br />
My Country, are part of the ‘beauty and<br />
the terror’ that define our country.<br />
The artist/alchemist uses glass as a<br />
recurring metaphor for anxiety and<br />
impending catastrophe as can be seen<br />
in <strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – cortex<br />
and <strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – flore.<br />
In these works, glass cylinders and discs<br />
threaten to roll or fall from their tables<br />
at the slightest vibration. And within<br />
these works the power of a moment<br />
disconnected from the natural cycle is<br />
conveyed by the bark sheddings and<br />
twigs cast in bronze, rendering them<br />
forever now.<br />
Louiseann King is an artist who revels<br />
in the magic and tension of the space<br />
between moments; between something<br />
that has just happened and something<br />
yet to happen. The alchemist no longer<br />
attempting to create gold from base<br />
metals, but rather golden moments from<br />
the gathered and the made. A sense of<br />
time transformed into visceral landscapes<br />
of the body, mind and soul.<br />
Once immersed in the rich theatricality<br />
of <strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> the viewer<br />
drifts and glances. And the works look<br />
back as they collaborate reflectively.<br />
Dr Greer Honeywill<br />
Artist, researcher, scholar
42 View St, Bendigo Victoria 3550<br />
03 5434 6088<br />
www.bendigoartgallery.com.au<br />
Proudly owned and operated<br />
by the City of Greater Bendigo<br />
with additional support<br />
provided by Creative Victoria<br />
All images courtesy of the artist | Photography by Danny Wootton<br />
Front Image: <strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> - recedo (detail) 2017. bronze, vintage glass vessels, early Australian colonial kauri pine table,<br />
vintage wool crochet baby blanket, vintage glass panels.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> - recedo 2017. bronze, vintage glass vessels, early Australian colonial kauri pine table, vintage wool crochet baby<br />
blanket, vintage glass panels.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – chartam (detail) 2017. bronze, vintage scientific glass tubes, early Australian pine table, vintage steel stand,<br />
vintage cotton handmade Australian flag, vintage window glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – chartam (detail) 2017. bronze, vintage scientific glass tubes, early Australian pine table, vintage steel stand,<br />
vintage cotton handmade Australian flag, vintage window glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – cortex (detail) 2017. bronze, vintage glass industrial tubes, Australian Sheoak & white cedar colonial table,<br />
vintage Australian wool blanket, vintage patterned coloured glass windows, vintage window glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – cortex 2017. bronze, vintage glass industrial tubes, Australian Sheoak & white cedar colonial table, vintage<br />
Australian wool blanket, vintage patterned coloured glass windows, vintage window glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – genere (detail) 2017. bronze, vintage laboratory fittings, vintage sewing machine fittings, early colonial<br />
Australian cedar table, 1890’s silk & paper quilt, glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – genere 2017. bronze, vintage laboratory fittings, vintage sewing machine fittings, early colonial Australian cedar<br />
table, 1890’s silk & paper quilt, glass.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> – respire (detail) 2017. vintage & contemporary glass scientific & domestic vessels, early Australian colonial cedar<br />
table, hand embroidered waratah vintage table, dried and waxed Australian straw flowers, bronze, vintage glass panels.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> - respiro 2017. vintage & contemporary glass scientific & domestic vessels, early Australian colonial cedar table,<br />
hand embroidered waratah vintage table, dried and waxed Australian straw flowers, bronze, vintage glass panels.<br />
Louiseann King with <strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> - flore (detail) 2017. bronze, mirrors, convex mirrors, convex glass, glass, fire-scorched early<br />
Australian kauri pine table, pressed acacia mearnsii, vintage milk-glass jars.<br />
<strong>arbor</strong> <strong>temporis</strong> <strong>momentum</strong> - flore 2017. bronze, mirrors, convex mirrors, convex glass, glass, fire-scorched early Australian kauri pine table,<br />
pressed acacia mearnsii, vintage milk-glass jars.
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