Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potatoes make me do it? Who hid the shoes inside the walls? Does the poison have an antidote or is the antidote worse than the poison?
This exhibition explores folkloric connection between us and the flora surrounding us. Wherever we are, the land we stand on is part of the story. Here the stories take the form of artworks and installations.The works examine aspects of our relationship to nature, positioning the question toward the vegetal and the symbolism held within each material used and uses.
WildLife Crossings, Folklores and other tales is my latest exhibition and was presented through August 2024 at The Gallery Schoolhouse in Clarence, Tasmania. A warm thank you for the support of all the team there. The majority of the photographies in these page are by Anna Abela. My warmest gratitude and credit goes to her.
The fifth thieve, 2024, Voilage, Dirt, Rosemary, Thyme, Nutmeg, Coriander seeds, Eucalyptus leaves and pods, Mint, Sage, Garlic, Sassafras leaves, Tea tree, Rose hips, Pepper tree leaves and berries, Lavender, Apple.
The Four Thieves vinegar is a plant maceration originating from the area of Marseille in France. It is said to have been used during the black death epidemics of the medieval period, to prevent the catching of the plague.The usual story declares that a group of thieves during a European plague outbreak were robbing the dead or the sick. When they were caught, they offered to exchange their secret recipe, which had allowed them to commit the robberies without catching the disease, in exchange for leniency.
Another version says that the thieves had already been caught before the outbreak and their sentence had been to bury dead plague victims; to survive this punishment, they created the vinegar. The common tale openly wonders which of the potentness or the bad smell emanating from the recipe covering the thieves kept Death away from them.
The solution was crafted with plants, local or compatible with the dry climate of Marseille where it originated. It happens to be where I originate to. I was born and lived in Provence until my early 20’s.
Now that I stand and live on the old land of lutruwita, surrounded by native plants I am learning to recognise and use, I often ponder about the similarities between myself and the non-natives and introduce plants who become parts of the current landscape, bound by ground for better or worse.
The symbolism is unequal, as I recognise the larger spectrum of responsibilities, duties, problematics and free will of my assimilation to the land as a human being, compared to a seed.
The motif of the chain has been one of my latest recurring making desires. Meandering through ideas and material, I ended up wanting to make a closed version of a chain: a circle. The use of the sheer fabric made the filling material of the chain an intrinsic component of the object itself.
A shift occurred in terms of what I see as valuable material to work with in my practice of making for a few years. More and more I am drawn to accessible, usual, natural, perishable, compostable, low impact materials, as the most precious and desirable materiality to work with. Materials that do not require an impossible fetch, materials that do not carry invisible costs of pollution and supremacy, materials that, like plants, can be sustainably grown, harvested, transformed and will be able to re-cycle.
When i understood my desire to creates a pieces around the somehow magical recipe of the fourth thieves vinegar, carrying my heritage toward another form, extracting folkloric naturopathy and potion making toward the realm of visual art, I was faced with decisions to make in terms of what are the actual important parts of a story to keep. Mimicking the “original recipe” will imply making the ground I am currently standing on almost obsolete. It will imply importing dried plants, traveling by planes, to tell a tale about nature. Somehow, it was implying walking all over the wildflowers while telling stories about wildflowers.
Is when my work of “translation” started. Plants from the original recipe were selected for their medicinal qualities and their accessibilities. I started gathering the land around me in search of similar qualities, potent and symbolic. I snipped at the town rosemary bushes, I harvested the garlic, coriander seeds, eucalyptus leaves and pods and pruned the pepper tree branches and dug the generous plot of land of the rental property I call home. I robbed many fences from their rose hips buds, scratched my skin to bushes and dried in pillow cases all of my findings. I did not mug the shops also supplying me with herbs I strongly wanted to use.
Still, I become the fifth thieve of this story of transmission, gathering, making and hopefully healing. Let the natural potentness of the links reach and heal us from the plagues of our time, political and bacterial.
Poison bottle series: Not to be Taken, 2024, mid-fired white raku, underglaze, glaze, dirt. Sold
Take a sit at the table, 2024
Chairs, Teasels, Fabric, Wooden table, Resin, Gold paste, Australian army plates, Crystal glasses, Dirt, Blackwood leaves, Eucalyptus leaves, ferns leaves, Wattle flowers, Water.
The table has been dressed. Dirt is filling the plates, more or less.
Teasels or Dipsacus, a non-native flowering plant in the family Caprifoliaceae, that I harvested near a local rivulet, are covering one of the chairs, morphing the upholstery into an inhospitable vegetal skin. Seating in that chair appears impossible or at the cost of great pain.
Starting with Francis Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, there is an ongoing debate about Teasels being carnivorous. Rain water can collect in the cup-like receptacles between the sessile leaves and the stem; this structure may prevent sap-sucking insects from climbing back to the stem, trapping them. The plant may use the collected nutrients from any animal matter that accumulates within them, making them a form of protocarnivorous plant.
The plate in front of the Dipsacus chair appears to have been dished a bigger portion of dirt than the plates at the other side of the table. The Dipsacus glass contains water while the facing glass does not.
The second chair is covered by a Throw made of collected Blackwood, Eucalyptus, Fern leaves and Wattle flowers, which are all native plants collected in my direct surroundings. In opposition to the Teasels, all of these have been used in their fresh forms and are now slowly drying at the time of the display.
The plate in front of the adorned Throw has an obvious smaller serving of dirt.
The crystal glass as well as much of the plate is overtaken by Dipsacus heads, so many in fact that they are spilling down to the floor.
The Throw is inviting enough to sit but it will seem impossible or greatly painful to stand before doing so, as the spikey organic invasion does not leave space for the foot to rest.
Tale for a broken chain, 2024 Fabric, natural filling, mallow flowers
It took years for Rapunzel to grow her hair long enough to use them as a rope toward her freedom. She also needed help, to express her distress to the outside world and find the reassurance, resources and support to escape her captive conditions.
Will Rapunzel have taken the risk to leap toward freedom if she was all alone? Or did she find the courage to brave a possible fall because she had support in the outside world?
Freedom is a common act and does not exist only in the singularity of our being, but in the commonality and community we are part of.
Like the hair of Rapunzel, I let that chain grow long. I originally designed them to accompany a show melting stories of dance, moving images and woman liberation.
Here, they symbolically hang down from above, willing to be used as a rope toward freedom. The last link is open, liberating the content of the chain and releasing dried mallow flowers.
Mallow plants are a native plant of Palestine. They grow wild and abundantly there and have been a source of food and naturopathic medicine for the Palestinian for centuries, even after the state of Israel made the foraging of wild native plants forbidden. The Palestinian population is currently being starved, attacked and daily displaced by the Israeli army with help from countries in Europe and the USA.
Recent articles report that presently the Palestinian are using wild Mallow as a source of subsistence to their soaring hunger.
I bear witness and position myself and my art to be the incarnation of the outside world landing support to the Palestinian people, who deserve a safe leap toward their freedom.The chain of their oppression must be severed. From the river to the sea my hopes are for the mallow flowers to grow free.
Inside the Walls, 2024, mid-fired white raku, underglazes, clear glazed ceramic shoes + Racines, 2018, Casted stone, natural ochres from Provence (France), gold leaves.
Here and abroad it isn’t infrequent to unexpectedly find objects inside the walls of houses hidden by previous inhabitants. Objects and stories vary in the significance of such practices. Was it hidden to protect the object itself? Or was it put there to deter calamities? Was it an act of resistance against death and oblivion? A time capsule of some sort? Or merely an impulsive gesture quickly forgotten?
One of the objects frequently found in walls are shoes. That particular item picked my interest as they are usual yet surrounded by symbolism and fantasies, and they are, to my test, of an exquisite aesthetic nature.
Shoes are what is worn between the top layer of the ground and the bottom extremity of our bodies. They protect as much as they restrain. They can be basic practical objects, as well as exist in the realm of high fashion, fetish and social representation. Not wearing any leads to many cultural and socio-economical considerations. As to what shoes we wear lead to many others.
It is an object we often wear off and outgrow. The sole can become so thin that eventually the purpose of the material boundaries is lost. Today we might not think of shoes worthy to become a hidden talisman, as access to a pair is, in most situations, easy. It will have been quite different in the past. Shoes are complex objects to craft, not many of us would know where to start if we had to make ourselves a steady pair on our own. In the olden days they were precious and expensive items.
Yet, not all the shoes found in walls are of small sizes or too damaged to wear, demonstrating an intentionality beyond the life term of the object being finished.
How many roads, steps and life decisions paths are now sleeping unknowingly in the darkness of the walls? What demons are we tricking to walk in shadows, instead of upon us, by giving them shoes condemned to walk the same plank for decades? What does those shoes liberate and tell us when we are lucky enough to find some? What will you hide within your walls?
Shiesties. From left to right, The Hairy Heiress, The Chick, The Hooker.
Ex-Voto Fera Vitae or the Visitation, 2023, Oil paint on wooden board
