July-August 2004
Click on thumbnail images for a larger version (will open in a separate window).
GARY WILLIS | OUT OF LINE | SUZI ZUTIC | VINCE STORY | DORATA UJETZ-LATOS
Gary Willis
The Myth of Voss - Death by Landscape (1998-2002)
|
'DOLL'S CAMP' 1998
Photograph - Urapuntja - Utopia N.T.
This Aboriginal doll's camp was found abandoned following the rituals of 'SORRY BUSINESS' at Urajuntja, Utopia N.T. in 1998.
What Aboriginal people refer to as 'SORRY BUSINESS' is a very serious matter. Baldwin Spencer details the traditional rituals in his book 'The Arunja' (Arrente). 'SORRY BUSINESS' is the process of mourning, the objective is to enable the spirit of the deceased its proper passage back into the Dreamtime, settling unfinished business, making amends and gracing the community with peace. It involves the open display of grief, ritual self-mutilation, bloodletting, the systematic eradication of all traces of the deceased, including the burning down of their camp and shifting the entire community to a new location.
I had arrived at the Urapuntja camp in Utopia in 1998, shortly after the end of 'SORRY BUSINESS' to find the remnants of some twenty or thirty gunyas, wurleys and humpies stripped of anything useful and abandoned to the dust. One of the young men had been found hanging from a tree. Following 'SORRY BUSINESS' the entire community had moved some 30 kms down the track to 'Kurrajong Bore' out of respect for the dead.
Although this little 'Doll's Camp' had been abandoned some two weeks earlier, it had been left virtually intact. It presents us with a model of how a contemporary Aboriginal bush camp is constructed. Windbreaks made of canvas and tin panels, in this case an old numberplate, all held in place with sticks. The doll's head on the stick sports a Mohawk haircut and a deep scar across the forehead, which is possibly a consequence of a child's re-enactment of the purifying rituals of 'SORRY BUSINESS'.
Gary Willis: Painter - Post Conceptual - Australian
http://www.mostxlnt.co.uk/willis/
http://www.ahcca.unimelb.edu.au/postgrad/research/gwillis/
Out Of Line - Jewellery / Objects
by Dorota Ujetz-Latos, Vince Story & Suzi Zutic
Out of line is an exhibition representing 3 contemporary jewellers - Dorota Ujetz-Latos, Suzi Zutic and Vincent Story - who have used the theme of the line as a basis to project and materialize their ideas and interpretations into objects related to wearable jewellery. In the work there is a variety of techniques and materials. There is the use of enameling and alternative materials such as aluminium, titanium, paper and nickel as well as silver.
Using the body as the original site for the work their investigations explore personal perception utilizing metaphoric associations with the line and merging concept and function.
Repetition in the objects allows another dimension of display, away from the body, as installations relating to immediate environment.
Suzi Zutic
 |
 |
Title: ‘Get in Line’
Materials: Stg silver, Glass Enamel, Digital Print
100 pins = 1 line. What constitutes a line? By definition, 'a stroke
made with pen', 'a long narrow mark', 'continuous length without breadth'.
The installation of 100 enameled pins, independent of each other and
yet very much as one, calls to question the validity of these definitions.
The definite nature of line versus its elusiveness and fragility.
Vince Story
 |
 |
 |
 |
Title: Tessellated Chains
Materials: Anodised aluminium, stg silver
I am looking at line being movement; the passage from one point to
another.
My neckchains have variations on the same repeated design to produce
movement as contrast within each chain and from one chain to the next.
I am also recalling ancient Greek geometric line pattern and have merged
within an engineering style of linkage to produce a juxtaposition of
references compressed within the conformity of the line.
Dorata Ujetz-Latos
|
Rings
Materials: Stg silver, nickel, titanium, paper font (same) 16
I am reflecting on the object’s significance as it accumulates information,
history and reference in its passage through the line of time.
I have chosen probably the most personal from of jewellery, the ring,
to illustrate this complex layering of history, meaning and emotions.
To achieve this sense of dynamism the rings are divided into various
segments, interrupting but also reconnecting the rings continuous line.
They are made of a mix of metals suggesting permanence but are divided
with dissected elements with their own identity and influence on the
accumulated wholeness of the ring.