Curated by Vicky Browne and exhibited within Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, Topographies is a group show navigating the interconnectedness of art practice and ecological issues.
Browne’s curation goes deeper than the surface-level exploration of experimental artmaking, beyond exploratory processes the works delve into ecological critique through collaboration – underlined by the accompanying essay, the show simply asks “how might we approach the practice of topography?” Through installation and natural materials, artists weave meaning through the process of marking out the shape of the world; it is of compromise and partial views, turning inwards and out and being open to chance.
The exhibition’s layout creates a journey for the audience, the many sounds an exploration which in turn maps the surroundings. From the moment you set your foot in the gallery, you are immersed in sound and visuals that create a tracking system, a topography of the space mapped through the accompanying essay. The show features heavily on the use of materials to traverse the landscape, rethinking our relationship to our surroundings. It speaks to the quiet activism protesting against climate change to reveal scientist’s shortcomings in giving agency and emotions to the land. As The Conversation’s article suggests, “ecological art brings scientific language into the gallery and into our conversations”, something which I believe Topographies achieved.
Along the long corridor before the main gallery (an underused space), runs an embroidered sheet, bobbing up and down like a wave and adorned with names, ideas, and places. Listen for the Beginning 2024 by art group Magnetic Topographies & Friends and Biljana Novakovic is an interesting exploration of language and an interpretation of Gooliyari (Cooks River). The river is highly polluted: each letter is so thick and bolded by bright colours crying for attention in swarms that follow the waved hang. The fabric rips at the intensity of sewn appliques, becoming translucent at some angles and starkly white through others.
Within the gallery space is a plethora of sounds and movements, most interesting the machines capturing movement on either side of the great divider. On one side is Vicky Browne’s work disruption and connections 2024, the vibrating leaves along with swaying metal discs in glittering sands built upon her previous works on the complex networks of work/play. The bouquets of dried invasive reeds are loud, their movement so subtle that only the cicada-like sounds give it away. Within these bushes are dangling strings adorned with copper and metallic plates, slowly circling paper mache bowls full of glowing lustre pigment. Browne’s movement is unnatural, fans and small electronics allow the piece to move — something which within an outside setting would have been more interesting but does highlight the limitations of the gallery space.
Kinetic sculptor Ben Denham’s series of works are further visualised through the mapped diagram, Topography of Air; Generalised Diagram 2024, which draws out his use of the atmosphere as a material. It jumped out at me, how can one list the atmosphere as art? Is it not just the situated aspect of the work, wouldn’t every work include atmosphere? Denham comments on changes in the atmosphere as a form of topography itself, ever-shifting it is “a topography patterned by the earth’s rotation on its axis and the Sun’s cyclic heating of air, land and ocean”. Out of Denham’s body of work, the most interesting were once again the explicit tracking of movement found in Air Sine (black flag) 2024 and Blade Grass Barometer 2024. The first is an aggressive motor, the sharpness of its sound cuts the naturalistic echoes of dried grass yet the black flag floats more naturally than the machined grass. The second is a recreation of changing pressure systems showing the almost dancing shadows of four reaching blades of grass and its hum fed through a feedback loop.
Following through the space are the large hand-printed photographs of Amanda Williams, exploring space through documentary-esque photographs. I found the hangs of these works interesting, leaving empty white space, the lens’s black frame is the defining factor in matching vastly different almost x-rays of these plants. The alchemical processes create seemingly unnatural stark greens and pinks that glow off the walls. This glow directly speaks to Brandan Van Hek neon works, the hand that governs 2022. The two hands directly on top of each other speak to a play in power, one blows brightly and the other is dull. This simple symbol is a clear indicator of fictional and personal politics, an interesting link in both material and meaning to the overarching theme of ecology.
In addition to these works are clear photos of caves as voids, more sounds of our surroundings, and a video work showing man as possibly a selfish destroyer. It takes you on an interesting journey, asking you to join the dots on a puzzle situating yourself in our environment, a topography if you will.
Topographies curated by Vicky Browne runs until 7 September at the SCA Gallery, Old Teachers College.
