City of Joondalup Community Invitational Art Award (2014)

An invitational art award held in The Great Space, Lakeside Joondalup Shopping City, Joondalup, incuding This hopeful universe, This difficult universe and the Overall Runner Up: Another Time Table.

Judges’ comments on Another Time Table:

This is a cohesive and thought provoking work which has been beautifully executed. In some ways the materials reference the mould-making process through the use of gauze and bandages; these are also reminiscent of bodily injury and of discarded materials, connecting the work to the body and human activity, and serving as a reminder that we are linked to the natural world. There is a sense of playfulness and quaintness in this artwork, which is underpinned with serious intent, making this consistent with the artist’s wider artistic practice.

The Generosity of the Ocean

Up until recently the world was big enough to swallow anything. It was OK to throw your rubbish over the side, safe in the knowledge that your problems would not return; that the Ocean was generous in what it could absorb. But these days washed up on the shore, along with the discarded plastics, are whole shoals of assumptions about how we might live. Rainfall in the southwest of Western Australia has already declined by 10% since the 1970s. The Government of Kiribati is buying land in Fiji. Hyperconsumption smothers feelings and exponentializes wastes: we are environmental procrastinators. But if provisionality is the underlying condition of the world, we may not need to wait for conditions to change. And if it is possible to think ahead, it might be possible to ‘make’ ahead. This is what I am working on in my studio.

Dr Perdita Phillips is an environment artist who often refers to scientific understanding in her work. At the same time she is interested in things that aren’t explained by science, which might be about what is not seen or logically sensible. Her work is marked by a continuing interest in the relationships between humans and nonhuman others. Underneath Phillips’ work are allusions to strategies for socioecological change. Her current practice circles around how to consider, and to think, like ecosystems: to understand our place in the world, to treasure diversity and to be flexible and responsive to change. Works such as .–. / .- / .- (penguin anticipatory archive) (2013) create alternative timescales and alternative futures. Her artworks grapple with notions of complexity and equilibrium/disequilibrium conditions, via time, sound and materials. After years of wrestling with the ideas of beauty and wildness she has decided that things are not simple: they are complex and contested and worth fighting for.

Image above photographed by Chris Kershaw.