PEARLESCENT VERSE

From across broad sweeping currents a singular grain of sand may by chance become lodged within the mouth of an oyster. Abrogating soft issue, it can become irritable, causing friction, forming a wound. In an act of defiance the oyster tongues the grain, conjuring up a fluid called nacre—a strong, resilient material also known as mother-of-pearl. Layer by concentric layer, these minute crystalline licks coat the grain over time until it becomes newly built, regenerated and altogether harmonious, forming a lustrous object that is at once one and apart.

The birth of a pearl is a healed wound. Without the wound there would be no pearl. Healing is an act of metamorphosis.

In this exhibition the pearlescent verse is an articulation of poetics and politics: a passionate vocabulary wrapped around a tough syntax; a defiant wrestle to glisten a resplendent creation; an arduous labour becoming an amorous gesture; and an iridescent beauty to test the most trying circumstances. The presented artists explore the fluidity of identity, gender, culture, spirituality, knowledge, and memory, whilst surging issues surrounding human migration, climate change and social politics.

The therapy of water transmits through these digital channels, with each lapping wave encouraging new and transformative thoughts, washing upon the shorelines of our minds. These videos, like pearls, glisten with nurturing, potential futures, with messages born off utopian tongues, wet with the depth of resistance, compassion, strength and healing.

Hoda Afshar surges tidal urgency to the voices of Australian asylum seekers in Remain. Through moving image and text, waves of violent experiences on Manus Island are retold by detained refugees, juxtaposing the surrounding beauty of the island with nightmarish realities. Recounting personal and shared stories, these men recall memories and traumas, of the death of friends and the loss of freedom. The Australian government’s dislocation of bodies from potential futures and recent pasts results in a horrific and permanent liminal state. In this iteration, Afshar projects the video with socio-political agency, raising waves of awareness within these public spaces. Here, the azure waters and white sands do not depict paradise, but instead, a prison.

Tané Andrews composes a song in The Static of Nature, awakening the slumberous therapies held in the verse of art. A ceramic plate becomes a pure static ocean upon which a southern sea pearl glides and dances to imagined waves. The gentle rocking of the plate demonstrates the microcosmic magnitude cradled in nature's embrace, where even the smallest ripple echoes out across the universe. The smooth quality of the pearl reverberates a score upon the minute texture of a porcelain surface, evoking the harmonious and therapeutic orchestra sung within water. Andrews offers reflection and meditation through the vespers of this video, allowing us to reconcile with the Sublime and in turn ourselves, and to produce the pearls of good thought and action.

Walter Bakowski performs a queering ceremony for the unseen and unheard: a healing act of letting go. In Embrace; A river runs through,the remedy of a river to washes over them, through them and with them, allowing for oneness and a cosmic communion. The river’s force nourishes a rite of passage, a queer baptism, a bath of transcendence and a pool of reflection, in order to let go of the confines of ones skin. In this video the gentle and rhythmic dance of the river is a meditation upon the esotericism of nature, in turn celebrating the fluidity of gender. Bakowski demonstrates that upon relinquishing the anchors of binary statuses, liberation of flesh and spirit may be achieved, allowing the currents to guide us into glistening states.

Léuli Eshraghi and Joe Joe Orangias convalesce by the nourishing waters of the Merri Yaluk. At once a sacred source of life to the Wurundjeri people, in this video the Merri Yaluk witnesses rituals that bind young men to each other and the landscape. To the symphonic chorus of birds, and the camp sounds of a distant radio, The Golden Flow of The Merri Yaluk demonstrates this site as a diverse meeting place of converging ecologies and communities across time. Here, three young men commune in other queer ceremony, where amorous and gentle gestures operate beyond conforms of society. The adorning of body and spirit occurs ephemerally without asserting title of First Nations territory. Coalescing in the afternoon sun, these bodies tread lightly, queering space through the respect of traditional knowledge associated with this waterway, in turn allowing its golden flow to fleetingly reveal a haven.

Nikki Lam balances between sea and sky, an echo across the horizon that conjures memory in between places. In Still…what is left a reflective suite of gestures resurrects residue across place, where between two lands cultural sediment is carried across the breeze. The haunting dance within a liminal landscape speaks of the complexities of self and hybrid identities, of belonging. Lam’s gestures enact the remembering of ritual that is no longer practiced as a result of migration. The shrouded figure is neither here nor there, yet like a spectre, possesses the potential to translate place and transcend space. The repetitive gestures evoke the past, and through such, re-imagine the emotions conjured in performing a ritual across time and geography.

Blake Lawrence traces the horizon, becoming a wanderer above the sea. To the choreography crashing waves and glistening backdrop of the dawn, A Cathartic Action unfolds in slow-motion, a queering of Romantic ideals. The sublimity and ferocity found in nature is enacted as Lawrence unfurls repetitive and emotive gestures. The stockwhip is a diviner to shepherd, a tool for redirecting emotion. With each crack of the whip, an indemnification of emotion echoes across the waves, dissipating as memory like foam collecting at the shore. Stripped back to an honest and vulnerable state, the tender teetering across the terrain both impedes and empowers, where the queer presence at such a liminal juncture of sea and land declares, I am here.

Sean Miles channels rivers of the underworld, opening chasms of volcanic terrain to exude the legends of their ancestors. In Pōhutu, sulphuric splashes erupt from the earth and spit into the sky, raining a story of metamorphosis. Birds fly through this vaporous, ever-changing space recalling the story of Maui, the trickster hero who transformed into a kererū in order to enter the underworld. A liminal portal opens, a brimstone scented threshold between two worlds, where one cannot discern the clouds in the sky from the mist of the geyser—background and foreground collapse and merge into a swell of ambiguous, billowing and almost ominous feelings, tones and textures. Here, Miles presents a space of uncertainty that may be scary for some however can be comforting for others.

Lucie McIntosh extrapolates time into a continuous river, looping moments upon themselves to flow an endless universe of images. Within these two videos, the magic of the sublime manifests within the stillness of action, multiplying out beyond the screen to flow the static of nature. In I still believe in paradise, a waterfall carries with it endless potential worlds with every drop pouring over the precipice. Each frame becomes a ceaseless meditation on the infinite number of distinct physical configurations that never recur. In Red Lagoon, McIntosh looks to nature in order to construct personal philosophical mantras and independent signification, finding within the abstract the deferral of absolute meaning. In meditative succession, we too are invited to divert our own expected trajectory, and to surface personal latency within the image.

Angela Tiatia performs strength in the waves of change. In Holding On, the theatre of the sea plays out a performance of body and nature, of culture and ecology. Urged by the celestial swell of the moon, the tide rises as Tiatia clings to a rock, finding grip in earthed resilience, yet also of lunar communion and cleansing. The intuitive, cyclical and feminine power of the moon gravitates the dance of the oceans' currents, as well as our own. Being in harmony with waterways and their cycles brings about deeper understanding of eco-connectivity and provides thoroughfares in community and communication. However, when this knowledge is lost, or neglected, or becomes corrupt by commercial capital, the fight is very much against the tide. In this video, Tiatia's performance becomes an allegory of an unrelenting faith required by the people of the South Pacific as they confront the monumental challenge of losing their home to the effects of climate change.

Justine Youssef and Duha Ali perform and repeat gestures of healing to venerate the aura of identity. In Body/Cartography, the washing of carpets maps tradition and ritual passed on from matrilineal knowledge. Here, memory wefts and wafts, where pattern radiates history and familial ties across time and place. Salvaged from hard-rubbish, these carpets can traverse: they wrap up experience and fly, carrying a narrative of home, resilience and strength across seas. Here they are washed to keep these stories cleansed and resplendent, to heal transgenerational wounds. Water purifies in order to remember, to restore, to indemnify cultural displacement and sanctify intergenerational knowledge. Upon the stone slabs of a colonial monument, Youssef and Ali conjure water to preserve heritage, whilst their actions soak post-colonial discourse, into the very fibres of these carpets.