HARRIET BODY
’ONWARD’
1 JUNE – 24 JUNE, 2017
Onward, 2017, Installation shot. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There are two wooden framed watercolour paintings on the wall. The one on the left has earth coloured pigment swiped horizontally across the top three quarters of the paper, and black ink illustrations on the bottom. On the right, it has various earthy coloured dots across the top half of the page and orange-brown watercolour swiped horizontally along the bottom, in the middle there is black ink illustrations.
PROCESS
Each of Harriet Body’s works on paper and sculpted forms is the result of a series of actions, and can be unravelled to describe her body in motion. Her materials speak of walking, gathering, selecting, grinding and blending. The works evidence pulping, sifting, burning, mark-making, pasting, moulding, placing, inhaling and exhaling. They are traces of the artist’s body in action.
Harriet forms small terracotta mounds in her hand, pierces a hole in each, and arranges them on a page. A hollow, dry grass stem is placed in each hole and she lights the top of the stem. From here, the materials do the work: smoke travels down through the stem and into the cupped space held between clay and paper, marking the paper with the heat and colour of its insistent downward force. Smoke stains thick paper in strange converging patterns like bacteria under a microscope.
The artist sets the parameters and directs the motion, bringing materials together so that they alter and reconfigure one another. Kozo bark paper is made by hand and dipped in a tub of murky indigo dye which creeps up the fibres; egg yolks are separated and dropped from a height, breaking their clear tissue casings to form flat yellow suns. The rich orange-yellow protoplasm cracks as it dries.
Each work is the result of this process of control and release.
Unlimited Support, 2017, Installation shot. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There are four wooden framed watercolour paintings across a white wall. The first one on the left is mainly a blue-black reflection of the space, with the next work of twelve yellow dots across the paper. The last two display an interpretation of abstract landscapes with a mixture of earthly tones and repetitive illustrations.
PLACE
Harriet’s materials are gathered from across Australia: shells and sea urchin spines from south coast beaches; porcelanite rocks from her family’s property near Darwin; wild oats and grasses from the banks of the Nepean River during a residency over the summer. Harriet’s slow walks along the river were part of her process, a period of total immersion in her surroundings and awareness of her body moving through space, collecting fragments of mineral and vegetable to process during the day.
Harriet crushed stones in a mortar and pestle and stripped the lower sprigs from long switches of riverbank grasses. Getting to know the place through its small, earthy details. She hand-pinched ceramic bases for each tall, waving stem, and they started to snake along the studio floor, drawing a wobbly line from the wall and into the space: a meandering river, or a garden path.
Onward, 2017, Installation shot. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There is a line of brown wheatgrass across a white wall.
TIME
Inherent to process is time: the period of action that precedes (and produces) the product. In this sense, each work is a time capsule of sorts, a container for the moments of action that led to its production. Harriet measures this through charcoal marks, where short verticals measure an inhalation | | | | | | and an O is each exhalation. Broad brush strokes were painted on a single exhalation, embodying that moment in time and space like a Zen ensō, an ink circle painted in a single brushstroke that represents the moment of its creation.
This exhibition was titled Onward, a word that contains both time and movement. The paradox of the inexorable forward momentum of living things: growth and decay. The works were titled after progressive stages in the growth of a tree, an organism that appears static, but is constantly moving and changing. When a tree is cut down, this incremental growth can be read through concentric rings, a series of ‘O’ exhalations that punctuate each phase of development. Each ring contains stories of internal and external forces acting on the tree at a particular stage.
Similarly, the marks, forms and materials that comprised this exhibition are embedded with the forces of time, action and location. Materials momentarily arrested, gathered and altered before being released again, and left to slowly settled into new configurations. To continue that inevitable, slow dissolution back into earth.
Rebecca Gallo, 2017.
Onward, 2017, Installation shot. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: There are four wooden framed watercolour paintings across a white wall. The first one on the left is mainly a blue-black reflection of the space, with the next work of twelve yellow dots across the paper. The last two display an interpretation of abstract landscapes with a mixture of earthly tones and repetitive illustrations.
Onward, 2017, Installation shot. Photography by Document Photography.
ID: On the left, there are two wooden framed watercolour paintings on the wall. The one on the left has earth coloured pigment swiped horizontally across the top three quarters of the paper, and black ink illustrations on the bottom. On the right, it has various earthy coloured dots across the top half of the page and orange-brown watercolour swiped horizontally along the bottom, in the middle there is black ink illustrations. In the middle, there are light brown wheatgrass along the walls, with another wooden frame to the right of it, with black illustrations across it.