After Reflecting on the matter
30th November 2016 - 15th January 2017
Caloundra Regional Art Galley
Curated by Hamish Sawyer
(Catalogue essay by Hamish Sawyer Below)
Causal loop #5 2016
The Impossibility of objectivity 2016 (single channel projected video loop, acrylic mirrors, MDF, acrylic paint)
Skydoor 2016
Lenticular works, various, 2015
Associated children's activities (adhesive collage with single channel video projection)
Assembling Causal loop
After reflecting on the matter
Catalogue essay by Hamish Sawyer 2016
Lincoln Austin is known for his sculptural and relief works which explore the interplay between colour, geometry, pattern and scale. Alongside regular gallery exhibitions over the past 15 years, the artist has also produced a number of significant public art commissions, which have allowed Austin to work on an architectural scale, in turn influencing the development of his studio based practice.
The potential of banal, often industrial materials such as chicken wire, matt board and paper to express new possibilities has also been a defining characteristic of Austin’s studio practice. In an age of artwork fabrication and the outsourcing of production to studio assistants, Austin is decidedly a ‘maker’, he still crafts everything by hand, yet the resulting works are always refined and robust. In reflecting on Austin’s sculptural works, Queensland College of Art Senior Lecturer Dr Rosemary Hawker has suggested:
‘It is as if that craft and labour are hidden in their precision, making it almost impossible to understand how they are made’. (1)
Austin’s practice is often addressed in terms of its formal and technical qualities; however, a more nuanced approach is to consider the process-driven nature of his work, the artist’s contention that the finished artwork is in fact, the ‘detritus of the studio process’ (2).
After reflecting on the matter brings together works made over the past two years by Austin, both in the lead up to and following his Australia Council for the Arts funded-2015 residency at the British School at Rome. The purpose of the three-month residency was to research and document the 'Cosmatesque' mosaics, a style of geometric inlay stonework produced in and around the city throughout the 12th and 13th Centuries. Derived from a style originating in the Byzantine Empire, Roman Cosmati were used primarily in the decoration of church floors (3).
During the residency, Austin visited over 80 sites and buildings containing examples of these mosaics, compiling a digital archive of approximately 2500 photographs as well as sound and video recordings. He also produced a series of small objects and wall based works, using ephemeral materials including plastic, wooden fruit crates and reflective tape, found during his travels around the city, or purchased inexpensively from local shops. Austin consciously sought to utilise found or recycled materials as a way of referencing the use of spoil material from the Fori Romani (Imperial public squares) in the Cosmati mosaics. The artist has described the works produced in Rome as being ‘both a distillation of the experience of looking at the Cosmati first hand and an attempt…to integrate elements of the materials and geometry employed by these 'Cosmatesque' artists into my practice.’(4)
Formally, the works represent a continuation of his ongoing interest in geometry and pattern. What makes them notable within the context of the artist’s practice is their ephemeral and temporal nature. They were made in immediate response (and proximity) to the Cosmati using materials at hand. Longevity was not a deciding factor in their construction. At the conclusion of his residency, Austin gifted a number of the works to friends and family based in Europe, while others were destroyed or did not survive the trip back to Australia. The residency provided the artist the freedom to experiment with new materials and forms that the context of a commercial or public gallery exhibition does not usually allow.
For his exhibition at Caloundra Regional Gallery, Austin presents iterations of two works originally produced during his British School residency, alongside a new, site-specific installation, which draws on his Rome experience and suggests a new approach to materials for the artist. The combination of several, interconnected bodies of work, emphasise the artist’s transformative approach to materials and provide a deeper insight into the artist’s process.
Sky door 2015 was originally shown in a group exhibition at the British School in Rome in December 2015. In the Roman version, concentric bands of small triangles in alternating colours of blue, red and green book covering vinyl reference the geometric forms of the Cosmati. The work was installed high on a wall, resembling a mandala as much as a church floor. For After Reflecting on the Matter, Austin has remade the work at a slightly larger scale, mounting it to a wall with a timber frame and replacing the opaque book covering material with theatre lighting gels.
The use of different materials is significant as it changes the effect of the work; the translucent theatre gels casting coloured shadows like a church’s stained-glass window. The choice of theatre gels is also a nod to the artist’s earlier career as a theatre designer. In replacing one ephemeral material with another Austin extends the experimentation with materials that informed his Roman works into his studio practice. Although structurally more resolved than the original Sky Door, the work’s materiality affords it a similar precariousness.
An inherent fragility also characterises Causal Loop # 5. The original version was made from thick, white paper and exhibited on a table, resembling an architectural model or maquette, in the Mostra (group exhibition) at the British School in late 2015. Since then, Austin has remade the work several times on a larger scale using more robust but still malleable materials such as Milliner’s felt or plywood.
Causal Loop # 5 2016, is made from a black and white aluminium-plastic composite: a robust, industrial material that the artist has utilised in previous works. In this iteration the artist manipulated a thin sheet of the composite material into the desired form then fixed it temporarily in place until the object held its shape, albeit precariously. The resulting form, an elegant, infinite loop, rests on its own tension points, the potential for collapse always present.
In physics, a causal loop is a sequence of events, in which an event is among the causes of another event, which in turn is among the causes of the first-mentioned event. The idea of self-reflexivity is useful in considering Austin’s process, specifically the way in which excess materials or off-cuts from one body of work can inform the development of the next, how the formal qualities of an earlier series are revisited in another body of work several years later or even how the artist’s previous career as theatre designer has influenced his practice. The progression of Austin’s practice, while continually evolving, is not linear, it is a loop.
This idea is reinforced when viewing Austin’s most recent work, The Impossibility of Objectivity 2016. Although the artist has previously made video works, they have not been exhibited widely. In this site- specific installation, a camera records an image of a mirrored screen, which it feeds into the projector, creating an infinite feedback loop. When the camera and projector are aligned in a certain way a fluctuating fractal pattern is produced. When the ambient light changes, something is reflected in the mirrored screen, or a body steps between either the projector or the camera and the screen, the projected image is altered. The kaleidoscopic nature of the screen amplifies this change, making for a highly dramatic effect.
By incorporating new media, The Impossibility of Objectivity represents a development in the artist’s practice; while through its literal looping of the projection, its abstract, geometric imagery, and the use of a ‘frame’ resembling a theatre set for the projection screen—another nod to the artist’s earlier career—it is also a visualisation of Austin’s process.
The works that Austin has recreated or made specifically for After reflecting on the matter represent a consolidation of ideas, materials and forms that have informed his practice for nearly two decades. Austin’s work can be best understood as a continually evolving sum of its parts: objects draw on previous works to push his practice forward and so on. The exhibition is not intended as a representative survey of Austin’s practice, rather it is an opportunity to reflect on the artist’s unique and sensitive approach to everyday materials and their transformative potential.
References
1. Hawker, Rosemary, ‘Open Closed’ (ex cat), QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, 2012, np.
2. Author’s interview with the artist, September 2016.
3. de Piro, Tristram. "Cosmati pavements: The art of geometry." eds) Rezo Sarhangi and Carlo Séquin, Proceedings of Bridges Leeuwarden 2008 (2008): 369-376.
4. Artist statement, 2015
Hamish Sawyer 2016