Uncommon Exhibition Catalogue

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Image: Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, Currajong, 2019 Photo: Lorena Carrington
UNCOMMON By Dr. Caren Florence At first glance these crafted organic shapes are pure fantasy, a deliberate transformation from their angular box origins, but there's no attempt to disguise the dun brown colour of industrial cardboard. Combined with black notes, the brown grounds everything, connects us back to earth. It's a minimalist palette that supports the maximalism of Gilchrist's imagination. Eliza-Jane Gilchrist is a visual and performance artist based in regional Victoria, who immigrated to Australia from the UK in 2009. Part of her practice is puppetry, which is unsurprising once we encounter her sculptural work. It could easily be read as theatrical props for the kind of story where the natural world triumphs over the reckless damage of our rampant industrial complex. The kind of story that saves everything with a beating heart. The large-scale works vacillate between longing to escape and staying to fix the problem. Trees bend into boats, architectural elements look responsible at first glance, legs want to spike down but then tentacle away, launching into flight. Gilchrist has the skills of a furniture maker, making the most of materials that are usually an afterthought once you've unpacked a piece of furniture that probably won't last your lifetime. Her titles can shift us away from fantasy into science: what I first saw as a tilting hat-stand reveals itself as a 'Burr' (2023), a sticking point writ large. It is caught on the wind, ready to burrow and itch into the even larger problem it lands upon: what is to be done about the problems we have created? Suddenly, it actually is that story where the natural world triumphs, whether we're looking at everyday shapes or objects that are wildly uncommon and therefore immensely precious. Seed pods, leaves, bark: all these shagged and pitted surfaces, often microscopic and unable to be seen or felt, are revealed via these transformed shards of waste. They radiate notions of usefulness, rehabilitation, celebration of difference. So much of this work seems to be built from a dream state of drawing: the doodles we do when half thinking, half-listening, the kind where solutions swim to the surface. They are manifest in the imagination of the built shapes and the lush drawn embellishments: fractals, connectors, camouflage marks, patterns-making, biological enhancements: she is creating strange new beasties from overlooked 'dead' materials. Not that paper (or card) is utterly dead: its capacity to be repurposed is remarkable. It also bears scars: a mark, once made on its surface, cannot be removed except by covering, disguising or repulping. If we can overcome our obsession with perfection and newness, Gilchrist suggests, maybe we can make do with what is already there. Her more recent works feature hollows, which are a more poetic form of holding than the capacity of sharpsided containers calculated to hold precise numbers of manufactured objects. A hollow is always ready for a few somethings that may shift, wriggle, grow, time-share and re-use. Gilchrist's skill and imagination shifts us outwards and inwards from things that we already know, things we need to constantly revisit, and encourages us to open ourselves to greater change – a badly needed change. Bring a child with you, if you can, to experience the full effect of her serious playfulness. Dr Caren Florance is an artist, designer, writer and creative researcher. Her practice is informed by material bibliography and book history. She works predominantly with text, often collaborating with artist and publishers. By using traditional letterpress and bookbinding processes along with more contemporary technologies, she produces diverse works across the book arts spectrum, from zines, artist books and installation work to formal publishing outputs. She is collected by national and international institutions (mostly libraries) and private collectors. Her most recent commercial volume is Lost in Case (Cordite Books, 2019). She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the University of Canberra Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR) and lives in Yuin Country.
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Uncommon Exhibition Catalogue

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