Fragments of Place - by Andrew Harper
ISLAND | ISSUE 146Through contemporary artworks by Elizabeth Barsham, Matthew Armstrong and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Andrew Harper explores some less familiar Tasmanian landscapes …
Elizabeth Barsham, Song of the Mill, 2016, acrylic on paper, 58 x 41 cm
This might be a terrible thing to say, but I am troubled by ‘wilderness’. To me, ‘wilderness’ has little to do with the diverse and beautiful forests of Tasmania. Wilderness is a word that I have come to associate with tourism, branding, ideology and politics. It’s English. It’s derived from a culture that, well, invaded Tasmania. Wilderness, the word, came here on a boat, complete with connotations and a particular mythology. A mythology that is, at its root, biblical. It’s hard to find the first instances of any word, but I can be fairly certain that this one appears in the Christian Bible. And in the Bible this is the place where you wander, and if you are the Son of God, you may meet temptation and evil there. Wilderness is a blank space; it’s somewhere you go to find yourself, and that’s terribly interesting, but it says little of that context and a lot about you, or about the attitude of Christianity and colonialism to a place that is supposed to be, well, empty.
Except it is not empty. It has not been empty for 45 000 years.
The land wasn’t empty then, and it certainly isn’t now, so why are there so many postcards and posters and brochures that portray a land devoid of humanity? Selling an idea of an untouched, pristine space? I grow nervous when I look at those postcards, with macro shots of fern fronds, glowing, dappled with light on beaded dewdrops. I’ve seen those ferns while wandering on South Hobart fire trails. They look nothing like a postcard. These are images born of advertising and political manoeuvring that seem to portray a place I find unfamiliar. A place I do not recognise.
I’m suggesting that the portrayal of wilderness, land and place in Tasmania is something contested, and that there are commercial and political concerns at play that invest in a particular style of image that is almost a code. Plenty of artists, of all kinds, are interrogating this, and producing images and art that either show a different Tasmania or ask what landscape art is. There are many perspectives: some I feel comfortable engaging with and making observations about; some I do not. I don’t feel terribly comfortable going into the intricacies of the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples’ understanding of land and place. I’m more comfortable with contemporary art. Well, some of it.
*
Art asks things of you. I’d been uncomfortable with the word ‘wilderness’ and certain images of Tasmania and not known exactly why. But that began to change when I met some artists, the first of whom was Elizabeth Barsham. This artist’s work is awkward. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it; it is more that it does not fit neatly into any category of contemporary art. This may be its greatest strength. She calls it Tasmanian Gothic and this suits the work. It is singular, rich in technique and has a wit about it that reveals itself slowly, a bit like the artist herself. Barsham’s art doesn’t appear to involve itself with a traditional concept of place at all, and has an otherworldly, alien, haunted quality.
It’s all sleight of hand though: Barsham’s art is about Tasmania. Sort of. Barsham lives where her family has lived for a very long time, upon land on the Derwent River’s eastern shore. Here, remains and scraps and fragments are scattered about the land: tiny bits of wire, a twisted branch, disused farming machines, broken glass. These things have marinated in time and have a rich cerebral flavour to which Barsham is drawn. She wanders this large chunk of land, looking for details. From these she makes beautiful, fascinating dioramas, which in turn become her work. It’s some of the most accurate representation of historical presence you might ever encounter, and it is all filtered through a particular skill set (Barsham knows how to wave a brush about), to make archly Tasmanian images that are composed of fragments of human history.
There’s a pride in that history, there’s no doubt, but also a humble relativity: it’s just about her history. It is about what she knows. There are buildings on a property over the river that have been there for a century, and Barsham knows them. They may not appear directly in her work, but neither does she, yet she is in all of them; her personal mythology, made of recalled details and collaged fragments.
The paintings may not even be for anyone else to understand, and that would seem to be fine. Barsham seems to be almost compulsive in a way, as if her job, in that linear progression, is to record and analyse and make sense of a place her family has lived for so long. The impression that she would do this with or without an audience is incredibly strong. It is as though the making of the work, the whole process, is some sort of ritual practice that must be carried out in order to ask more questions about history.
Barsham’s Tasmania is small, but it is filled with yarns and anecdotes, all tiny, all real. She is modest enough to focus just on the land her people have been on. She implies other, vaster narratives that have existed for much longer and she does so by remaining precisely focused. Barsham’s ‘island’ is part of an archipelago.
Elizabeth Barsham, The Mechanics, 2012, oil on canvas, 56 x 71 cm
Elizabeth Barsham, The Garden God, 2010, oil on canvas, 76 x 91 cm
*
I’m a city boy. I was born in the old ‘Queen Alex’ Hospital, once located in Hobart’s inner suburb of Battery Point. I grew up in Taroona, then spent my teens down the Bay and I’ve lived in various abodes around the inner ‘burbs ever since. Well, some of them. I don’t go past Creek Road that much. There’s a long-running gag in Hobart that speaks of a class divide so profound that everyone has absorbed it uncritically. It is what people in Hobart call ‘The flannelette curtain’. This is the invisible line that separates ‘us’ from ‘them’ and it’s a class divide and an economic divide and a geographic divide. It is Creek Road, where the City of Glenorchy begins in the suburb of Moonah. It is a place where many migrants lived and built lives.
Matthew Armstrong is a bit bolder than me: he’s painting the Hobart suburbs of Moonah and Glenorchy. These are ‘the Northern Suburbs’. There’s rich history here and it is where Armstrong paints and finds his subject matter: the immediate surroundings of his studio. Sometimes he captures the light at night along the main drag; sometimes he walks around Moonah and Lutana after rain and finds massive puddles out behind warehouses, water that reflects and captures the crisp reflection of clouds and air, and does so no worse than an unspoiled lake. Armstrong looks among industrial spaces and sees how the land peers through: he does not go to the registered national parks and pay an entry fee, but looks closer to home, and feels the streets and back corners with his feet, looking for beauty (because his paintings are beautiful, and gentle, and contain time as well as light) in a place that no one looks for it, and that is the point.
Armstrong’s works are distinctly Tasmanian. They are some of the most place-sited works I’ve ever seen, and his art is trying to recoup the places he knows and show that wonder can be found close to home. His most recent works move slowly further afield; he has dared to head out into the bush at the edge of Glenorchy, in kunanyi/Mount Wellington’s foothills, to look in a damaged creek filled with plastic and tyres that is not in a national park or a reserve, and, miraculously, is still beautiful, rusted BMX bikes and tyres and all. Armstrong points it out: we trash the silent creek next door, then go for a walk along the designated track to Russell Falls at Mount Field and take photographs, complaining about how it’s always so busy there.
Matthew Armstrong, Parallel, 2015, oil on linen, 82 x 122 cm
Matthew Armstrong, Shortcut to Lutana, 2015, oil on linen, 51 x 76 cm
Matthew Armstrong, Tragic Optimism, 2015, oil on linen, 112 x 168 cm
*
As Hobart suburbs go, I like South Hobart; I enjoy the presence of the bush and the way one feels as if one is nestled into the roots of kunanyi. This is a new name that makes far more sense than the previous one – Mount Wellington – ever did, although to me, in my mind, it is The Mountain. The Mountain is unique and deserves more than an echo of the Napoleonic Wars for a name.
Kunanyi is a name. Some people made that name. People who have a language and names for the mountains and streams. For everything. People use language and grant names and tell stories. There are people here now, and there were people here then, and Tasmania is not all that populated now, and it was probably less populated then, but there have been traces of people here that reach back thousands of years. The old people walked lightly on the land I’m told, but they walked everywhere they could go on it. They walk on it still. My people, who came to this isle, walking heavily, are here too.
Amber Koroluk-Stephenson’s art is filled with people. Her art is not landscape art, but about it, and she is not specifically ‘painting Tasmania’. Her work comes in part from scanning the wide reach of the digital realm, and seeing what is portrayed there. Amber preferred to chat via email, and, to be honest, that seemed appropriate to me. I went to Barsham’s land; I visited Armstrong’s Moonah studio. I was in the places that they were; yet Koroluk-Stephenson’s work is not a place but is the idea of a place, and is not really anywhere. Tasmania is in her art though, and if you have lived in Tasmania or visited here, you are sure to recognise certain structures. Koroluk-Stephenson’s concerns though, are complex. Her landscapes are artificial, composed of carefully selected samples and images that she collects and blends together. In a way, her work echoes Barsham’s, who finds detritus and manipulates it contextually. Koroluk-Stephenson, instead, finds images.
Her paintings are filled with people – all looking away from the viewer, all European in origin. They look at something that exactly resembles a historic bridge from a small town whose primary economic focus is on tourism, but is not quite the bridge or the town. The land is not quite right. There is a sinister air, as if something has gone terribly wrong. Images of a landscape appear tainted with the mumbling yellows of drought, obscured by other scenes of a lush Arcadia, specifically that English idea of a garden. The reality is obscured by the art, within the art, and I realise I too am a European, out of place, staring at a landscape that doesn’t exist.
Koroluk-Stephenson draws you into her paintings, then reminds you that they are artificial. This is a powerful comment about every landscape ever made; you are not seeing the place. You are seeing someone else’s version of it, tainted by their ideas, obscuring the reality. The land is not framed: it bleeds out forever, and it surrounds you.
Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Foreign Object II, 2016, oil on canvas, 97 x 122 cm
Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, All the Way to the Bottom, 2016, oil on canvas, 97 x 153 cm
*
These are not the only artists presenting something different or interesting that questions notions and portrayals of landscape and wilderness. Barsham’s haunted landscape is filled with human experience and witnesses, Armstrong shows the spaces we overlook, and Koroluk-Stephenson asks about the implications of making landscape art. What draws these artists together, at least in my mind, is that they want us to care more about this place, and to do so by asking what beauty and value really are, where accepted notions have taken us, and what a wider understanding may offer. Instead of offering answers, they help us formulate better questions. ▼
Andrew Harper would like to thank the artists Elizabeth, Amber and Matthew for conversations and ideas, and Fiona Hamilton for some excellent perspective.
This arts feature appeared in Island 146 in 2016. Order a print issue here.
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.