underpoetics

Let’s Get Dirty: LIVING, BREATHING, THINKING SOIL

7 support images
1 video (please watch first 3 minutes)
 
 
 

Images of related projects

 
 
 

1 Tender Leavings

Tender Leavings	2016	mixed media installation	multiples
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	the-nonhuman
In collaboration with termites

Tender Leavings is a mixed media installation containing fragments of the remains of 850 romance novels buried for one year in a desert sand dune. The action of termites has fragmented the tales of love. Uncontrollable deconstruction is followed by reconstruction of new dialogues from the absences (Termite-Ma) created. The artwork follows a line of investigation where ‘exformation’ of a ‘material archive’ builds possible future environmental scenarios. It searches for nuggets of wonderfulness in the papery remains. More obliquely, the installation alludes the possibility of change from below, and to the possibility of cooperative recovery from disaster. The work “looks forward,” creating an anticipatory archive, that is anti-monumental and that continues to eat away at us.

 
 
 

2 Impossible Containment — it slips sideways

Impossible Containment — it slips sideways	2016	sculpture	inimitables
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	fieldwork

A work for the exhibition Field working Slow making, curated by Nien Schwarz and Annette Nykiel. The sand was collected from Well 26 on the Canning Stock Route. For an elucidation of the artist’s process of fieldwork, see field working slow making: the certainty of connection
 
 
 

3 Tactile Response Gloves

Tactile Response Gloves	2016	mixed media sculptures	inimitables
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	wonder

This artwork was generated in response to the Roe8/Perth Freight Link highway extension which, if successful, will slice through the Beeliar Wetlands. The artist collaborated with Nandi Chinna, Sharyn Egan, Annette Nykiel, Perdita Phillips, Nien Schwarz and Holly Story in a variety of responses to this local urban wetlands issue for the exhibition Direct Address. The artwork plays against the orthodox understanding of the abbreviation TRG. These small sculptures invite the viewer to physically engage with the material nature of the wetlands through their palms and fingers.

 
 
 

4 Night for Day (The Owl of Bunbury spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk)

Night for Day	2015	mixed media installation	inimitables
(The Owl of Bunbury spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk)		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	the nonhuman

In this work sea level rises and climate changed were linked to owls and change processes. The quote about owls is a paraphrase from Hegel, arguing in his case about philosophy, but here referring to the positive potential to respond to change, even when it is right upon us. THe materials of this installation included wood, Bureau of Meterology rainfall maps of Western Australia from the late 1960s and early 1970s, cut brass, watercolours, digital prints, water samples.

Artist statement:

This work is about reversals: how it might be possible to change from one state to another. It uses the metaphors of swapping night for day and far for near. It began when I noticed the yellow glow of light coming from the covered up convent windows and wondered what it might be like to see this light as a concentrated field of colour. What then might it mean if we could see the light of the night instead of the day? Like staring all the way around the world at the back of your head, what might it mean to see a possible future that you could not see before?

That of course is a pretty hard (and pretty absurd) thing to do, but we are living in times where society needs to be flexible and responsive to accommodate the changes that are facing us. Here I’ve combined this call for resilience and openness with things from nonhuman worlds. For me, seeing and experiencing nonhuman worlds is important because they can decentre us, and change day for night. Underlying my art practice generally is an interest in ecosystemic thinking and its role in imagining environmental futures.

 

 
 
 

5 doing so that (tie a knot in it, the world is a handkerchief, a pile of promises)

doing so that (tie a knot in it, the world is a handkerchief, a pile of promises)	2013	Handkerchief exchange	nonhuman
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	eclogues

This artwork was generated as part of the .–. / .- / .- artist in residence with The Cross Art Projects 29 August to 9 September 2013 for the Novel Ecologies exhibition curated by Jasmin Stephens. The project was based around the Little Penguin colony at Manly, Sydney. In the exhibition each handkerchief had a label with the words: .– …. .- – / -.. — . … / .- / .–. . -. –. ..- .. -. / .– .- -. – (What does a penguin want). Handkerchiefs could be taking by the audience, but in order to accept a handkerchief participants were asked to make an assurance…

In exchange for a handkerchief I will:

1. ask “what does a penguin want?” and do something practical about it
2. volunteer 3 days a year for a hands-on outdoor environmental project
3. swap permanently from using tissues to using handkerchiefs
4. other:

Further details of the P A A project
 
 
 

6 Pasteur. Synecdoche.

Pasteur. Synecdoche.	1997	Laboratory glassware and found objects	multiples
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	wonder

 

The Pasteur. Synecdoche. work consists of 142 glass bottles, which have been sealed in the same manner as Pasteur’s famous experiments proving the microbial origin of decay. Inside each of the bottles are found postcards or photographs, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. The subject matter of the images is most often rural and “natural” images of the United States. Many are of the highways of America. Some postcards were included unaltered, with the original text and addresses. Other blank cards were annotated with word definitions or soil samples. Some bottles grew spectacular yellow mould. The text on the cards, photos and other found images are catalogued and presented next to the work on small cards.

 
 
 

7 Rate of Soil Formation: two tonnes per hectare per year. Rate of Soil Loss: two hundred tonnes per hectare per dust storm event

Rate of Soil Formation: two tonnes per hectare per year. Rate of Soil Loss: two hundred tonnes per hectare per dust storm event	1991	Installation with documentation of site specific work	spatial project
		Artwork, image and photography © Perdita Phillips	fieldwork

 

 

This early work dealt with a contradictory aspect of environmental management in Australia: whilst over 80% of Australians live in urban areas, Land Degradation, which is the most extensive, expensive and difficult environmental issue to fix, occur in rural and remote areas. Environmental issues in the hinterland are largely invisible to the urban majority. How do you communicate these issues to predominantly urban audiences? The title of the work is self-explanatory, referring to the average rates of soil creation and soil loss In Australia, and thus pointing to the problems of soil erosion and land degradation. The Royal Doulton bunnies from bunnikin bowls were a signifier of the more complex issues of land ownership and traditional agricultural practices imported by Australia’s colonizing cultures, and consumer demand created in urban markets world-wide. It is easy to make negative and depressing (and humourless) works about environmental issues. The intention here was to create positive solutions for contemplation and action in the work.

 
 
 
 

Learning field texture (two channel video installation, 2015)

Please listen to the first three minutes with stereo headphones.

How do we know soil? This point, 16.039013 degrees Latitude South 128.405413 degrees Longitude East, in the Southern Kimberley Ranges Soil Province, is called Quadrat. A handful of soil is scooped into the hand in an attempt to ‘know’ one small place. The videos alludes to the difference between field experiences and the laboratory. It gives a field measure which is an immediate knowing. But this information is distinct from what is measured in the laboratory: The manual intones: “these percentages [of different particle sizes] must not be used to determine a field texture, that is, do not use them to convert a laboratory particle size value to a field texture grade. Similarly do not adjust a field texture grade when laboratory particle size data becomes available.”
In modern soil science, sophisticated proximal soil sensors, advanced laboratory techniques and computer modelling are used to combat the impossibility of knowing every corner of the earth. How do we account for the folly of scale? Soil mapping necessarily relies on interpolating the spaces in between: sophisticated statistical techniques are used to predict a value at a given point using known values surrounding that point.

Conceived as a two channel video installation, the field data here (produced by an amateur) shows one place, doubled. Metaphorically, new, very local ‘data points’ are inserted within the range of a continent-wide set of known data points. As the narrative weaves in and out of sync, a message of doubt is introduced or inserted (interpolated) within a situation. The artwork is therefore not only an audio-visual allusion to the spatial and temporal variability of soil but also an oblique response to the advanced statistical approximation that takes place between the whole and the part in modern soil mapping.