Madeleine Kelly is well known for her figurative paintings that assemble information gleaned from the fields of archaeology and the sciences. Her works convey an ecological awareness with a stroke of magic realism. In this installation, Kelly has recreated species of birds – somewhat whimsically, using Tetra Pak drink containers – that she has identified on her walks through West Wollongong.
The inventive use of discarded materials has a certain correspondence with the fleeting encounters with the birds that inspire each form, the containers are used and crushed, suggesting ‘a crisis – those endangered, betrayed or disappeared’. This tension between nature and culture is exposed with the addition of the names of all the region’s threatened and extinct birds that the artist would like to view.
Artist Statement
My work incorporates aspects of archaeology, science, ecology and magic realism. In Spectra of birds, abstract images of birds spotted in West Wollongong are squeezed or trapped into the rectilinear architecture of empty Tetra Paks. The resulting expressionist distortions — angular in shape as determined by the cartons — are half-bird, half-cultural object suggesting the continual commodification of nature, the transformation of rubbish and a world gradually destroying itself. In capitulating to the cartons’ open spouts, the birds’ forms embody the phantasmic property of everyday materials replete with associative meanings of myth and consumerism. Two modes of identity — birds/cartons and art/consumer materials — are sustained simultaneously in a single object.
The planes of colour recall the work of colour field painter Ellsworth Kelly, who attributes his minimal colour abstractions and the titles of his works to birdwatching as a young boy with his grandmother. Yet, in contrast to the restraint of formalist colour field painting, these birds might be said to return abstraction to its origins in nature, producing effects whereby different permutations of colour and combinations of form embrace diversity, visual analogy and the aesthetic qualities of remarkable animals. The type of object depends on the intersection of birds that are seen and therefore made, but their squashed states also suggest a crisis — those endangered, betrayed or disappeared.
Brisbane-born Lindy Lee’s engagement with Buddhist thought has become increasingly important to the way that she both conceptually and physically approaches the creation of new works. Reflecting upon the inspiration for her bronze sculptures, Lee cites her desire to extend the traditional Chinese meditation technique of flung ink calligraphy, ‘in which you meditate, then take up a flask of ink and you splash it on paper and everything in the universe has conspired until that moment to deliver that action.’1 After learning this technique in 1995 during a residency in Beijing, Lee incorporated the action into her painting practice on return to Australia. It was not until 2009 that she began to test this approach in the sculptural realm, making a series of ‘flung bronze’. Organising herself into a meditative state, she would then pour liquid molten bronze onto the foundry floor without trying to dictate the shape. Once polished, these flat, shinny, fluid forms were mounted onto the wall in circular and rectangular shapes with a clean and crisp geometric outline.
More recently, however, Lee has expanded this technique into standalone sculptures, such as the impressive Unnameable 2017 (illustrated). To create this artwork, Lee hurled molten lead into viscous custard. The resulting shape was then 3D-scanned to create a scaled-up mould, which was used to cast the final bronze piece. The result is a lively form that has the dynamic appearance of liquid suspended in motion. The forces of gravity, space and time appear to have been exceeded, yet harmoniously balanced.
Unnameable 2017
Unnameable captures one moment in time which cannot be repeated. Moreover, it also contains every moment that preceded it and all that will follow — asserting a sense of continuum. This directly ties into the understanding of Cha’an meditation as a practice that links the body and mind in the present moment to the eternal cosmos. For Lee, the gesture of throwing ink or bronze is a meditative practice — focussed on the action of creation rather than a series of aesthetic decisions — that leaves an object which can also engender a meditative state in the viewer.
Unnameable also connects to ‘gongshi’, the Chinese aesthetic tradition of scholar’s rocks. Like the most revered gongshi, Lee’s sculpture is asymmetrical with a rippled surface and glossy finish. The naturally formed stones are prized for their capacity to convey the idea that transformation is central to understanding nature. In this respect, gongshi function as microcosms of the universe. Lee notes that time and change is at the centre of her artistic practice and has been since the 1980s, even if she might not have understood this earlier in her career. Lee explains:
Time is the most basic component of our humanity, but it takes a long time to realise that. My work is all about time. In Zen Buddhism the essence of being — or the fabric of being — is time. The primary truth is that everything changes from moment to moment – nothing is permanent. That means us too. For me, this is a very beautiful and poetic way of describing and embracing existence.2
Lee embraces change as a constant presence in her work. With more than three decades of practice behind her, Lee continues to deftly express the infinite expanse of life and art.
Ellie Buttrose is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA
1-2 The artist in conversation with Peter McKay, Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, and Ellie Buttrose, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, 21 February 2020.
