ἔργον - τέχνη

Intimacy

    White seed fluff
A-flurryin' telopea
Park

    Legendary Whitlambs
To the slarfter...

In the end, the ergon is out of the hands of techne. (Heidegger)

Oct 10 2008 went to the Canberra Contemporary Art Space,
in Manuka.

The exhibit was called Intimacy. A solo show by a Canberra artist, Kat Barter. The works were broken up into three groups. A series
of paintings that were hanging off fishing line, a set of
paintings stuck directly onto the wall, and some textile work
which hung like giant dreads from the ceiling.

The textile work, to be honest, did not interest me very much.
But I did enjoy walking around the giant woolly dreads.

The woolly things, and the paintings, both hanging from fishing
line, and stuck to the walls were coloured using natural
dyes. Most of the pigment from onion skins. This process allowed
for the interplay of chance and art, in a manner reminiscent of
surrealist experiments.

This type of painting allows the viewer to stare dreamingly at
the work and create his or her own interpretation. In my case,
I amused myself thinking of ancient Chinese maps describing
the far west of the country. With the second set of paintings I
thought of Flaubert's novel 'Madame Bovary', and how he urged
his work to evoke the mouldy yellowing wallpaper in the corner
of a certain room. These paintings, so intimately tied up with
chance and reverie, allowed the viewer to gaze at the
faintly purple and brown designs and the pale yellow shapes
and forms and dream of one thousand and one nights.