MONA - WHERE ART AND LIFE COLLIDE

I turned 50 a few days back.  It was a big birthday.  For months I had been preparing.  Cleaning out my studio. Cleaning out my life.  Getting ready for the second half of the journey.  As my celebration I decided to visit MONA in Hobart. We stayed in a Pavilion and booked a 5 course degustation menu for the celebratory dinner.  An absolute treat.

 

We arrived by ferry on the morning of my birthday.  My dear friend Cate and her husband Philip came with Rob and I. As the birthday girl I received a glass of champagne on the boat.

We had a coffee and croissant and then took the journey into another universe. The museum is built into a cliff and you can walk or take a lift down into the bowels of the earth. 

The Red Queen exhibition was showing.

 

The first thing I see is an installation of light globes where you can hold a sensor that registers your heart beat and the light displays the rhythm of your heart.  I have had two coffees, a champagne and I am excited about being 50 and in MONA.  My heart is beating fast.

 I walk past two table tennis tables.  One has grooves cut into it and makes a game of table tennis virtually futile.  The ball gets caught in the grooves or bounces off at crazy angles.  Cate and I play and enjoy the hilarity of this encounter.  People say we are glad you tried this as we wanted to see what happened. I note that some people do not engage despite a tempting invitation to take up a table tennis bat. Some people observe while others experience.

 We continue and I walk through a corridor of red velvet curtains to enter a gallery of confronting artworks.  Transgender people, human pain and suffering, death, sex and gunshot wounds confront me.

 I am taking photos and listening to the commentaries. I sit down on a comfortable, lived in couch to discover I am in front of Philip Nietsche's euthanasia machine.  I feel sick as I give my approval via a laptop to be injected with a lethal injection. I experience what it must be like to make that decision.  The program tells me when the chemical enters my brain, when I will be unconscious, when my breathing stops and tells me I am dead.  Confronting art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I continue to immerse myself in art that is disturbing to say the least. I feel normal here as my art often disturbs.  I am loving this space of creativity and social commentary. I continue on and find an interesting installation. The viewer is invited to pull out drawers on a wall.  Each drawer says "I love you" in a different voice.  Children, lovers, men, women with different voices and auditory tones change the emphasis and intonation on those three simple words.  I get overexcited and pull out 12 drawers and there is a cacophony of people all telling me they love me.  A narcissist's dream. I laugh and show my friend Cate.  Cate is a serious art person and is often subdued in a gallery.  I take a short film of her opening the drawers taking note of her reactions.  She is curious and smiles.  She engages with this art object. She is having fun.

Suddenly I realise that MONA focuses on giving the audience an experience through sensory engagement. While there is an adequate supply of two dimensional art, there is an abundance of three dimensional sculpture and installations.  The viewer is invited to touch.  The touch seems to invite play - even with death.

It is a gallery that appeals to our senses.  Sight, touch, sound and smell (particularly the installation called Cloaca that mimics our digestive system and creates shit.  The exhibit stinks and people do not linger here I notice).

Taste is missing however in this gallery.  Mind you there is an abundance of cafes, restaurants, bars so that you can sit in amongst art and taste gorgeous things (macarons, Vietnamese salads, coffee, alcohol are some of the things I sample). I think to myself wouldn't it be fascinating to create an art object that could be eaten.  I imagine it won't be long before someone tries it.  I wonder if the curators have thought about this sensory experience for the visitors.  Have they chosen art that deliberately engages the audience with different senses. That would be interesting to find out.

I jot down the phrase, "Reality and art are blurred here.  Life and art interact and it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins.' I ponder the wonders around me.

My phone starts to vibrate and I am jolted from the depths of my thoughts.  It is time to check in to the Walter Pavilion (as in Walter Burley Griffin the architect) and I take the lift back to the surface and consciousness....oh hell I have just turned 50. 

 

 

THE WISDOM OF MY HANDS

WHAT HELPED ME TO EXPRESS MY EMOTIONS?

The studio space:

I was fortunate when my Auntie died that I was attending a week long art retreat.  The tutor had established a productive space where there was minimal interruptions.  Beyond showing us how to use our pig casings we were free to explore and play.  The group was very committed to their art practise and there were small breaks to chat but overall the atmosphere was quiet and reflective. There was an abundance of natural materials, a workshop environment with enough space to spread out.

The nature of the materials: 

The pig casings were a slightly disturbing material even before I went to visit my Auntie.  I found myself thinking about whether the material was living or dead.  I came to the conclusion that it had indeed been living and that the intestines were the flesh of dead animals preserved in brine.  I had thoughts of medical museums with specimen jars of body parts preserved in formalin.  The pig casings have a slight smell that reminded me of death.  It was ever so slight but unmistakably present.  The casings looked like white worms which was not attractive.  My first reaction to touching them was not pleasant – disturbing - as they were wet, soft and stretchy.  To prepare them they needed to be rinsed with water which needs to be run through the intestine.  This bloats the material and they start to look like giant sausages.  There was quite a bit of hilarity and an enjoyment that came with running water through the casings.  Once rinsed I was taught to put my finger into the casing, make a cut in the wall and then slide my thumb though to open them up.  In using the casings there is a slight resistance but it stretches extensively.  It adheres to itself and so is less messy than other materials as there is no need for glue.  The thinning out of the casings produces a translucent skin that is tough but delicate.  Parts of the intestine have an organic lace like composition which is visually interesting however this is lost when it dries.   There seemed to be a tendency to want to cover things or join pieces together to make larger pieces of gut.  Once dried it is brittle and hard.  I made one piece of art where I draped casings over a branch and dried it upside down.  In turning the branch up when the intestines were dry the extensions stood firm and upright as if in defiance of gravity.  The material shrinks quite extensively and can distort the structure it is placed on.  The smell is not discernible when dry.  Although our tutor described an incident where a dog ate a piece of her work at an exhibition suggesting that the smell does not disappear completely!

 

Death was on my mind after visiting my Auntie. The pig casings were from a dead animal.   The smell of the material reminded me of death.  It’s skin like qualities were able to represent the fragile and taut skin of my Auntie in her final days.  What better material to express my concerns.

I used wire to create a skeleton.  I enjoyed the resistance of both the skin and wire.  I was symbolically wrestling with strong emotions as well as my materials.  It captured the difficulty of my experience.  I repetitively wound the wire which felt rhythmical and soothing.  It calmed me.  Yet the resulting figure was full of energy – alive.  There was a  sense of tension created by the distinctly human figure created from inanimate materials such as computer wire.  Wrapping the casings around the wire gave me a sense of being able to contain the foreign nature of the wire so that the figure became more human.  This too echoed the tension I felt as I saw my Auntie’s physical body in the process of shutting down and becoming inanimate flesh.  Her familiar loving features were changing and becoming unrecognisable in a body that was dying.

 

 

The knowledge of my hands: 

While the material lends itself to three dimensional artmaking by adhering  to a skeleton or frame it requires a sense of touch.  To work with the casings it required the fine movements of the fingers to stretch the tissue.  My fingertips did much of the work and it was satisfying to encase objects within a skin.  My hands knew how to symbolically contain my swirling emotions. My feelings were quite overwhelming and difficult to contain or understand.  I made a conscious decision to allow my hands to take over and express my emotions.  I did not 'think' about making a wire figure.  Instead I picked up the wire and began to play with it. I enjoyed the sense of resistance and the repetitive wrapping movements.  Before very long I saw a human shape appearing. Once I recognised a human shape I consciously developed it.  I had no thoughts of who or what this figure would be or do at the time.  When I was satisfied with the form, I took a break and looked around me at the materials I had.  I knew instinctively that I wanted to make the form more human and encased it in pig casings.  After this I picked up a hank of silk strips and simply began to wrap the body. There was little cognitive thoughts but more an intuitive knowledge in my hands.  Once the figure was shrouded in silk, I bound the arms and feet.  The skin had dried and in the process of bending the legs and arms, the skin would crack.  This was disturbingly reminiscent of bones cracking and the feel was of stiffness similar to rigor mortis in a human body.  My hands kept working and there was only the occasional intellectual thought during this process. 

The life like nature of three dimensional form:

The wrapping of the figure reminded me of participating in death rituals  –  touching, caring and loving  people in life as well as death.  I was unable to do this for my Auntie in her final days. However I could do this in a symbolic way using my art.  I was able to keep my Auntie in mind and enact a ritual for her that I found both comforting and healing.  I cared for her bodily remains  and  I was able to face and accept her impending death.

My hands wanted the figure to be in a foetal position.  It’s tiny size meant that I could cradle it poignantly in my hand.  Or perhaps this was a reflection of my grief and wanting to curl myself into a foetal position?   Perhaps it was a reference to death being intimately related to birth.  I felt that giving birth connected me to the essence of life.  Likewise being present at my father’s death also connected me to the essence of life.  I coined a phrase in a story I wrote after my sister and I laid out his body – I felt we were midwives of the dead.  We cared for and helped transition our father out of the world just as a midwife helped  to bring my own children into the world.

I had made the cane tower earlier in the week before visiting my Auntie.  I had struggled with the material to create a structure with a pleasing shape.  I had thoughts of aboriginal fish traps during the process.  I had sat this 'fish trap' on my work table and many of my fellow artists had asked me what I was going to do with it.  I had no idea except I knew something significant needed to be inside the structure.  Once I had completed my little figure, I intuitively placed the object in the trap.  This was to see if it would fit and I was curious how it would look. 

 

I stepped back to look  at what I had created.I saw a fragile and lonely corpse lying bound and foetus-like at the base of a trap. I felt my body react.  Tears welled in my eyes and the familiar felt sense of disturbance in my 'guts' hit me again.  The figure had been shrouded and wrapped in silk evidencing a profound human connection of love and respect.  At the same time it appeared alone, constricted and unmoving encased in a trap where there was no escape.     Unknowingly my hands had expressed my conflicting emotions and painful realisation that no-one escapes death.  It is a fate that awaits us all.

MAKING SENSE OF MY HANDIWORK

After creating art that was somewhat disturbing, I begin to try to make sense of my underlying emotions.
 

Ultimately the word that summed up my feelings was disturbed with a 'felt sense' of hollowness in my 'guts.'  I found the physical evidence of impending death very confronting.  The changes in my Auntie's skin, the sunken eyes, her loss of consciousness – all evidence of  the body shutting down.  I felt shocked, horrified, helpless and distressed.  Was the feeling of disturbance a reminder of my existential pain pointing to the fact that I too -  and everyone I love - will die?  In our culture this does not sit easily.  We look for new cures so we can live longer, inject botox or have surgery to halt the signs of impending physical decline.   Death is kept at bay.  That is, until we cannot avoid it.  I remember the strong feeling of powerlessness as I watched my father die.  There was nothing I could do to prevent what I desperately did not want to happen. I felt angry at doctors who pretend they can cure everything.  When their patient  - my father - did not respond to treatment and continued to die they were uncomfortable with this perceived failure.  For me there was a lesson emanating from my fear and powerlessness  - I was forced to accept and tolerate my own existential pain.  I made a commitment to be present with my father,  to honour him and my own personal grief.  This led to intensely beautiful times of shared love, compassion and sadness.  Honest, raw but strangely uplifting.  I felt amidst the business of death that I was really alive.

The physical suffering of a dying body is traumatic to wtiness.  There were times when I hoped death would come quickly so they could  be relieved of their burdensome and ailing body.  With my father there came a point when the suffering was too great and I hoped for relief – for him and for me.  My three year old son summed it up succinctly while my dad lay dying.  He said innocently, as he sat on the edge of my bed – “ it takes a long time to die doesn’t it?”  With these thoughts came a sense of shame and guilt

My father died at 77 and while we would have liked him to be with us longer, he lived a rich life with friends, family and community.  His only regret was leaving his family.  We bought him home to die and his whole family was living alongside him for his final weeks.  His wife, grandchildren, teenagers, daughters, sons, flowers, laughter, tears, the aroma of home cooked meals , sunshine streaming through the windows and deep compassion and love surrounded him.  Likewise my 94 year old Auntie had lived  a long life and was a positive, warm, funny and loving lady.  Her family adored her and were with her in the final days.  It does not get much better than this. I was proud of my Auntie and my father who had lived a good life.

With the acceptance that my father was in the final stages of life, it opened up the opportunity for deep conversations about love, fears, regrets and hopes.  These conversations and the ability to be present for him remain in my memory (and body memories) as intensely beautiful occasions.  Moments of deep love, connection and compassion.  I felt in communion with him and the universe.  I felt whole and deeply engaged in the business of living, dying, feeling and healing.

So there you have it – a summary of why I felt disturbed.  Desperately sad, confronted by the suffering of loved ones, shamed, guilty, powerlessness, yet hoping that they will die to end the pain, and nestled in amongst these difficult emotions, blissful joy and pride emerged.   I suppose it was not surprising that this complexity of emotion was a recipe for confusion, disturbance and unease.  At the time there were no words as these conflicting feelings ran concurrently with few full stops in between.  It was just a gut feeling of something deep and disturbing. There was little time to reflect and to distill the emotional whirlpool. I can only write these words years after my father’s death and a month after my Auntie’s death.

Artmaking helped me to express this whirlpool.  Every emotion could be put into my sculpture.  Speech relies on one thing at a time and fails to show us what happens concurrently.  It was perfect for me to have an art retreat in amongst my Auntie's death.  There was a gentle holding space in the studio where I could use my hands to express my emotions and my small sculptures emerged.  People who have viewed these artworks have said they found them ‘moving but I don’t know why’ or they have looked deeply into my eyes and placed both hands on their heart.  Some people took deep breaths when they saw the figure in the cane structure as if in fright and others wanted to buy my artwork and take them home.  However at this point they are still all 'living' with me as I continue to explore my emotions through my hands. 

 

Letting my hands do the work and the resulting sculpture

 

A MEMORABLE MOMENT

 



Workshop space during art retreat

 

 

On a recent week long art retreat focusing on three dimensional skin and structure, I was introduced to pig casings (sausage skins) as a material by American artist Pat Hickman. (www.pathickman.com/‎)  It is an unusual material and at times I wondered whether I was working with living or dead material. It is stretchy, has a slight smell and is unmistakenly a fleshy part of an animal. (See following blog for more details about this material and the image of my artwork described in this story.)

During the course of the week I received the news that a very dear Auntie was dying. I took an afternoon off from the workshop to visit her in hospital. She was 94 and had been a warm and loving influence during my childhood. As I sat by her bed, I noticed her skin was shrunken and stretched taut over her skeleton. She was barely conscious but indicated she knew I was there. I talked about the wonderful things she had taught me as a child and how much I had enjoyed her company. I told her how much I appreciated her love for my children and how much she meant to them. I sat and held her hand and gave her a sip of water. I was struck by how much we are sheltered by the process of death and dying in our culture. At times she would raise her hand to wipe a tear from her eye. It was a privilege to spend time with her as she was transitioning from this world to another. I kissed her on her forehead, my lips registering her paper like skin. I was shocked by her fragility and there was a bitter sweet element to our final encounter.

On the 3 hour drive back to the workshop I reflected on her life and her influence in my family and on my own identity. I felt immensely sad and my visit made me think about my own mortality. I felt a deep sense of unease about witnessing the decay of her physical body. The confronting - and comforting - process of saying goodbye to those we love is difficult. My father had died 11 years ago and I had washed his body after he died and dressed and cared for him in life and death. This age old ritual while disturbing was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. This comforting and confronting ritual is now the business of undertakers who protect us from the impact of death.

I returned to my workshop with few words to describe the other world I had encountered with my Auntie who was in between life and death. I believe that our cultural taboos around death stop us from experiencing the pain and beauty when human life comes to an end.  As I started my creative work again I was unsettled about the process of death. Then I realised what better material than this strange organic skin to express my thoughts about life and death.  My despair, isolation and grief were central to my process of creating. There were limited words to express my emotions.

I made a figure from wire and then covered it in skin and tenderly wrapped it in silk. I bound the arms and legs and placed it in a foetal position. I placed the figure inside a structure that made room for death.   A space big enough for a ritual to honour the dead. (See next blog for images of the artpiece.)

On viewing my figure I felt deeply moved. I think it is a memorial to the hour I spent sitting with Auntie Mave. It pays witness to my love and loss and her life and death.

Auntie Mavis died 48 hours after my visit.

Auntie Mave in hospital 2 weeks
before she died

Auntie Mave and Uncle Jim on their wedding day