Last Dance Orange Roughy depicts the final Australian voyage of the RSV Aurora Australis to the Antarctic continent. The Aurora Australis has been carrying expeditioners and resupply to Antarctica for over 30 years. This final voyage was special in many ways. It departed with COVID-19 just a whisper and returned to a fundamentally changed world. The extra protocols instituted on the ship in response to COVID-19 reinforced the interdependency and collaborative actions of such a tightly knit microcosm, already essential for survival in Antarctica, but with a renewed sense of urgency in the emerging emergency. At that time Antarctica became the last COVID-19 free continent and we had a duty to preserve that status.
Using laser and photogrammetry scans and ambisonic sound recordings of the ship, crew and expeditioners, Last Dance Orange Roughy presents a virtual experience depicting the intricate choreography of ship and expeditioners. Using an artistic rendering of the ship along with choreographed impressions of the crew and expeditioners, Last Dance Orange Roughy portrays the final voyage as an intricate dance sustaining life.
Last Dance Orange Roughy is an immersive visual and sonic feast of three-dimensional environments and spatial sound visualising and sonifying the last grand Antarctic dance of the Aurora Australis, crew and expeditioners. John McCormick and Adam Nash (Wild System) were the 2020 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellows on the final Australian voyage of the icebreaker Aurora Australis to the Antarctic continent.
Antarctic Art Fellows: John McCormick, Adam Nash 3D Artists: Casey Richardson, Casey Dalbo Choreography: Kim Vincs, John McCormick Dancers: Valentina Dillon, Wendy Feng Ambisonic Sound: Adam Nash Antarctic Arts Program: Sachie Yasuda, Tiffany Brooks Drone Filming: Simon Payne, John McCormick 3D Stereo development: Joshua Reason Ambisonic sound consultant: Simon Maisch
John and Adam would like to extend their thanks to all the crew and expeditioners aboard the final voyage of the RSV Aurora Australis to the Antarctic Continent.
Whilst the wearing of masks is not mandatory it is recommended in certain situations by Tasmanian Public Health. Masks will be available upon entering the venue for those patrons who would like one.
If you’re unwell, it is recommended that you stay at home, and we look forward to welcoming you at Salamanca Arts Centre another time.
Artists
Photo John McCormick
John McCormick
John McCormick is a technology based artist with a major interest in movement. John is a lecturer and researcher at the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology where he investigates artistic practice in mixed reality environments, robotics, artificial intelligence and human movement. John has collaborated on works worldwide, including at ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Melbourne Festival, SIGGRAPH Asia, Ars Electronica Futurelab and Art Science Museum Singapore.
Photo: John McCormick
Adam Nash
Adam Nash is an artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer working in virtual environments and generative platforms. His work has been presented all over the world, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, ZERO1SJ, the National Portrait Gallery and Venice Biennale. He is Associate Professor (Virtual Interior) in the Interior Design discipline, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University.
A painterly surface with the echoing motif of the bottle.
This work talks directly to Jake Walker’s exhibition Grog, which was held in Kelly’s Garden and which is part of our curated OPEN SKY / Kelly’s Garden Program.
Jake Walker | Genevieve Griffiths
Jake Walker
Jake Walker was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 2000. His practice is inextricably linked to the natural and cultural landscapes of New Zealand. Walker admits that as a child he ‘didn’t really know there were too many other kinds of painting’ aside from landscapes. His works are constantly shifting and revisited after some time, with chance and instinct at the core of his working practice. Sometimes this results in works of ‘weightlessness of accident and incident.’ Exploring themes of modernist architecture and abstract perspectives, Walker’s free and loose sense of play embraces material forms. Walker sees paintings as objects, not flat two-dimensional images. This openness to experimental processes has led to a series of works using clay- painterly forms and stoneware frames that lead from one thing, to another.
Thursday 20 January- Sunday 27 March 2022 This exhibition is part of the OPEN SKY / Kelly’s Garden 2022 program Curated by Ainslie Macaulay
Closing Event 23 March 2022 5.30pm – 7pm
Jake Walker will present a group of ambiguous ceramic objects, alluding to keys, paintings and alternate realities.
Grog: a granular material that has been crushed down from brick, refractory rock, or other pre-fired ceramic product and added to clay to give textures, reduce shrinkage during firing, help the clay to form uniformly and stop cracking and warping when being fired.
Grog; a strong alcoholic drink, originally rum , mixed with water
Jake Walker was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 2000. His practice is inextricably linked to the natural and cultural landscapes of New Zealand. Walker admits that as a child he ‘didn’t really know there were too many other kinds of painting’ aside from landscapes. His works are constantly shifting and revisited after some time, with chance and instinct at the core of his working practice. Sometimes this results in works of ‘weightlessness of accident and incident.’ Exploring themes of modernist architecture and abstract perspectives, Walker’s free and loose sense of play embraces material forms. Walker sees paintings as objects, not flat two-dimensional images. This openness to experimental processes has led to a series of works using clay- painterly forms and stoneware frames that lead from one thing, to another.
Consisting of paintings and a musical composition, Notation by Hann Pärssinen is a loosely woven abstract diary of contemplation and dialogue with loved ones over a period of 5 years.
The paintings are figurative. Oil on canvas and timber.
when the world feels it has endedthe equator is in prayer
with love
grief
continue
still like trees, living
under the one sun
The works have been a language in the dialogue with family, before and after the death of a parent in 2021.
A story of sex and society, as told by the self portrait paintings of Malachi Quinn.
“Sex is the unspoken god of society. Sex, gender identity and sexuality dictate both the social realm, and individual conscious experience in numerous ways. Explicitly there is the overtly outdated gender roles, but on a more subtle level there is a philosophical assumption underlying traditional views on sex and gender: that people are their bodies. This argument posits that mind and the body are one (as opposed to dualism: mind with a body) by extension no different than an animal or a complex biological computer. There is no soul, no free will, rather we are machinery fulfilling out the urge to procreate until we die.
Problematic. Treating people as merely their bodies is an argument long used to justify discrimination. For social change to occur across the board we must change the underlying philosophy and begin to see people as beings rather than bodies. If we see a person, a being, we look past labels and connect authentically. Discrimination becomes a foolish concept because fundamentally we are all the same.
This exhibition features two years’ worth of self-portraiture, and a life time of self-exploration and philosophical inquiry into the nature of identity and existence. It began as a documentation of change over time and turned into an immortalisation of aspects of myself. In the paintings I depict myself nude in various settings. Clothing is a label: man, woman, rich, poor, formal or casual, when taking away this label we see the being as it truly is. Furthermore, the normalisation of nudity in non-sexualised settings perpetuates the notion that bodies in and of themselves are not sexual objects. Everyone has a body, and for some reason it has become a controversial thing to see or even discuss. We often only see nudity in sexual contexts, in porn, in sexualised music videos, in advertisements using sex for profit, this misappropriation of the human figure subconsciously internalizes the idea that the function of the body is limited to sex, and thus it becomes an object of shame and secrecy. To counter this, I paint myself enjoying beautiful moments, a sunset, an art session, a bubble bath, a walk, all non-sexualised depictions of nudity. In this raw and real way, I hope to be seen for who I am, a being, not a body.
Malachi Quinn. Bubble (2020). Oil pastel on black paper. 29 x 42 cm.
This painting series reflects my own journey of realising I am more than my body. Initially inspired by the recognition of ones own mortality following grief, the paintings follow my own journey of gender confusion and exploration. I began to go by he/him pronouns as I felt they better reflected who I was on the inside. Eventually I came to understand is that it is never our physicality that defines who we are, and gender expression is no different: people are more than their bodies. This transformation of ideology and physicality is shown chronologically in my paintings, with the 2020 works featuring my feminine side, cartoon, colourful with a cute style, which gradually become more fluid, dark and abstract, culminating in the 2021’s emotive expression of masculine figures.
The paintings are filled with symbology which I have created to tell a more nuanced story. Each painting is a chapter, and the exhibition is the book. The images are the words and the symbols provide the key to reading them. The presence of the armour costumes and sculptures is to create a sharp contrast to the 2D nudity, as reminder that in theory it easy to think we are our authentic selves in the privacy of our own minds, but in the 3D world, the pressures of society have us guarded. The juxtaposition between 2D nudes and 3D armour is to illustrate this difference between who we are to ourselves, vs what costumes (or what ‘face’) we wear into the world and share with others. It is my hope that beginning to see people as beings, rather than bodies, will mitigate the need for such defences. The world I hope to see built is open and encouraging of expression and diversity. I believe this world begins with a subtle but powerful shift in perspective: recognising oneself and others as more than their bodies.
Treating people as more than their bodies is a call to celebrate diversity and encourage open exploration of these ideologies. As sex and sexuality is such a fundamental facet of the human experience, squishing it into acceptable categories and punishing any deviation is not the way forward. Instead, we should celebrate all expressions of ourselves, accept others and aim to see people for who they truly are. Human beings are capable of so much more than fulfilling labels. Humans are beautiful and our bodies are not label makers. Fundamentally, we are so much more than our bodies. Lets celebrate ourselves and each other as human beings.” – Malachi Quinn
