Audio descriptions for the Open Borders, Regional Arts Triennial exhibition at John Curtin Gallery.

OPEN BORDERS 2023

Kate Alida Mullen Audio Description
Kate Alida Mullen - The Snake Way Home 
The Snake Way Home, 2022-23 by Kate Mullen, materials include bronze, ceramic, hand-dyed bamboo thread and natural pigments on canvas drop sheet, the size of the artwork is approximately 275cm x 212cm. This artwork features a canvas drop sheet that starts off discoloured at the top with random smudges of yellow and dirt and gets progressively darker and dirtier as it reaches the ground. These marks are the result of the canvas being buried in a creekbed (where the Jingarmup Brook meets the Indian Ocean on the Cape Naturaliste Peninsula, Wardandi Country, South West). The canvas was tied to an over-hanging melaleuca branch and weighed down with river stones before being left to marinade in the merging of tannic, gushing fresh waters and sparkling, briny tides. After several multi-day submersions, the canvas was left to dry and residual markings of the currents and sediments fixed upon it. Attached to the canvas are roughly forty small bronze and ceramic objects. The work acts like a map. The artist collected pieces, ‘fallen fragments’, of nature on her journey back to Western Australia after being caught in isolation on the East Coast. She also asked her friends from all over Australia to send pieces of the natural environment to her home in Eagle Bay, Western Australia. The collection of elements amassed from the many Indigenous Nations around Australia that the artist had passed through include: leaves, reeds, driftwood, bark, nuts, seeds, herbs, sea sponge, shells and bulbs of resin. These were then used to create the small bronze and ceramic objects. The placement of these objects on the canvas drop sheet relates to their geographical place of origin, forming a map of Australia’s body. For example, the object that is shaped like a boab seed is a direct cast of a boab nut that was gifted to the artist by her friend and Gija leader Gabriel Nodea of Warmun community in the East Kimberley, where the artist spent time working and living. The cast of this boab nut is placed relatively in the ‘northern’ area of the canvas to represent the artist’s time on Gija Country. These forty small objects placed around the canvas, range in size from approximately twenty centimetres to one centimetre. They sometimes appear in groups or stand-alone like a bronze casting of a stick. Some of the objects look like beaten pieces of flat metal, the surfaces pockmarked, and others are smooth like polished stones. The top of the canvas sheet wraps around a metal rod, the work hangs suspended from the rod cascading towards the ground, it ends by pooling over a low wide plinth. Kate Alida Mullen is interested in the subtle, layered histories of places. Through her multidisciplinary art practice and work as a curator and writer, Mullen investigates and listens for, the seen and unseen. In ‘the Snake Way Home’ the artist maps her journey back to her home after being isolated on the East Coast, after border restrictions. She documents this unexpected two-year drift traversing many Nations. Mullen retraces something of the living imprints of each of the landscapes she took refuge in over this historical passage in time.

Kate Alida Mullen

Betty Bundamurra – Hunting for the animals

‘Hunting for the animals’, 2022, by Betty Bundamurra, is made from natural pigment on paper, the size of the artwork is 57 x 76cm. This artwork created in an illustrative style depicts a busy traditional scene of figures and animals in a bush setting. It features a yellow ochre background with seven long thin figures spaced evenly around the artwork. Three of these figures are red ochre in colour, they are dotted with white ochre and lined with black to create skirts, long hair, and traditional bags. Two of the red figures are located to the far left of the picture, one is positioned above the other and the third is located two thirds along the bottom of the frame. The other four figures are black ochre, these figures are dotted with white ochre and lined with white to create skirts, long hair and traditional bags. Three of the black figures are in the top half of the painting and the fourth is located in the bottom right corner. These figures appear to be both women and Kira Kiro spirits. They look as if caught in joyful motion with some of their arms uplifted, hair swaying,  some of the backs are bent in movement. The figures are surrounded by animals, painted mainly in white with red ochre and black detailing. These animals include two lizards, a snake, an echidna, a bush turkey, a turtle, a Barramundi, and a dog. There is also an emu with a white body, face and legs with red ochre feathers dotted with white. Five white shapes with black marks, and four black shapes with zigzag lines are scattered throughout the scene, these depict rocks after rain. There are also tufts of grey grass, some with white flowers placed randomly around the picture. There is an overall sense of richness and a connection to country.

The artist is a prolific artist, storyteller and poet from Kalumburu. Along with other community elders, she established the Kira Kiro Artists in 2009 to represent artists from her area. Their involvement with Waringari Aboriginal Arts demonstrates the way in which Waringarri fosters artistic activity across language groups, moving across cultural borders.

The artist describes the scene ‘ Women hunting and gathering the animals. Animals hiding in the hedges and animal tracks of all the animals following their friends. Spirits too talk normally around pools and rock areas. Kira Kiro are planting during the rain season dragging their long hair while dropping seeds.’

Betty Bundamurra

Melissa Boughey – Audio description


Melissa Boughey – Body in Repose(obscure, veil, overlay)

‘Body in Repose(obscure, veil, overlay)’, 2022,  by Melissa Boughey, is an oil on canvas, the size of the artwork is 135 x 110cm. This window sized oil painting, features the layering of different shades of blues, browns, greyish green, pink, white and flesh tones. 

The work is hung on the wall at eye level in a portrait orientation and as we study the artwork we begin to see connections to its title; the obscuring, veiling and overlaying. The painting comprises energetic broad brushstrokes, which vary in direction sometimes horizontal and other times vertical. These abrupt strokes break the painting into shapes and sections. In the top half of the picture, a pale sky blue on the left and turquoise blue on the right have been overlayed with a reddish brown tint, redolent of the red dirt of Central Australia and also in a striped horizontal movement that is suggestive of a gorge or mountain range. These were significant places for her subject.

This section has been interrupted randomly by streaks of vertical white, symbolic of the simplified form of white ghost gum trunks and spirit forms. A dark blue zigzags across a greenish blue background in the right hand middle segment. A section of greyish green erupts from the bottom righthand corner and also a similar shape is found three quarters of the way down the left side of the artwork. The artist was considering the colours and patterns of the Moroccan textiles of the burial cloth and other shapes in the room.

Reddish brown zigzags over a flesh tone in the bottom left hand corner.  Smaller gestures of pink, scrawl across flesh tones in a middle portion at the bottom of the painting. There is a fleshy splotchy shape that is located just south and to the right of the centre of the painting, which suggest elements of the body in repose. The shapes float above the push and pull of the paint below.

The artist is usually inspired by the landscape. Through her energetic gestural marks she expresses, both the wild and tamed aspect of  nature though her close daily interactions of living and working on a farm in Denmark, Western Australia. 

This work, one in a series of four, reflects her experience and feelings about the intensely personal experience of witnessing her close friend’s death. She was honoured to be present when her friend, passed between life and death; the ultimate border. 

Following  a period of inertia, the artist eventually began painting, trusting the process. With oil stick she began with a gestural memory drawing of her friend lying in repose from the perspective of the end of the bed, particularly focused on the underside of the chin and foreshortened features, she then subtly erased, obscured, and layered using personal cues and references, so that only a hint of the original drawing remains. The artist found the process cathartic, saying ‘these works freed me’.

Melissa Boughey

Amelia Blanco – Audio Description

Amelia Blanco – Metal Trees Don’t Grow

‘Metal Trees Don’t Grow’, 2022, by Amelia Blanco, is made from steel wire, the size of the artwork is 70 x 50 x 40 cm. The artwork features a sculpture in the form of a tree sitting on a white plinth at waist height. The tree made from steel wire looks bent and tortured it’s branches ending in bristly leaves. The roots coming from the base of the tree and surrounding it are bent upwards from the earth as if wary of the soil or searching for water. The sculpture sits out from the wall, a strong light shining onto the tree casts a large shadow of the sculpture on the wall behind. As we study the shadow we notice that the roots on the tree create the words HELP in the shadow cast on the wall behind. The artist is from Port Hedland, a place that is wholly driven by the mining and the export of iron ore for steel production. The artist uses steel to express their concern for her community and the effect that mining is doing to growth in her home town.

The artist takes inspiration from her three simultaneous careers in, videography and photography, lighting design for events and as a mechanic. They see the opportunities and limitations that mining has offered the young people in her community. Blanco has overcome barriers and borders by pursuing education and work in other places, before returning home to her multi-generational family. She enjoys drawing on all her skills in her art, focusing on movement, light and shadow.

Amelia Blanco

Andrew Bowman – Bright - Avarice + Truthfulness

‘Avarice + Truthfulness’ , 2022, by Andrew Bowmen – Bright, is made from a printed canvas (the game) and a wooden ladder, the size of the artwork is 280 x 280 cm for the canvas and 214 x 40 x 6 for the wooden ladder. The artwork consists of a human size version of the game Snakes and Ladders attached to the wall, and a wooden ladder that sits in front leaning on the game. The printed game is made of squares that are yellow, red and grey. These squares of colour alternate randomly through the canvas. All the squares are numbered from 1 to 100, starting in the bottom left hand corner, running to the right across the canvas to 10, before preceding to 11 in the square above.  Then moving across the canvas to the left to 20, before moving to 21 above. This process of moving horizontally, zigzagging up the canvas proceeds to end in square 100 at the top left hand corner. Based on the original version of Snakes and Ladders created in ancient India and known as Moksam Patam. This large version contains twenty one of the squares that have text and images linked to positive and negative attributes or behaviours. Eight yellow Ladders are linked to positive behaviours like kindness and truthfulness, indicating when we land on these we progress in the game. Thirteen red and yellow snakes are connected to negative attributes like selfishness and depravity, these indicate we would move backward in the game of life. 

This work comes from the cultural renaissance which is happening in small Mid West  communities through North Midlands Project. Bowman-Bright works across several fronts, in caring for the town and region’s history, while also playing a role in creating opportunities for individual and community expression. North Midlands Project challenges stereotypes of identity in the by giving voice to diversity. This version of Snakes and Ladders, is an enlarged reproduction of an edition from the collection of the Carnamah Historical Society & Museum. It conveys the social borders which can exist for an individual or in a community. The placement of the wooden ladder against the boardgame conveys a sense of hope by offering a way to climb over these barriers of judgement. The artist poses the question that whether they are positive or negative, all behaviours have the potential to restrict, constrain and create walls within us.

Andrew Bowman-Bright

Tina Carmody – Spring in Our Country.
‘Spring in Our Country’, 2022, by Tina Carmody, materials and techniques include pyrography, carving, etching and acrylic on board, the size of the artwork is 100 x 60cm. The artwork is a wooden board depicting the abundance of life and vibrancy in the desert in springtime. The piece is about the size of a window and has been installed on the gallery wall at eye height in a portrait orientation. The work is divided into three sections, two smaller portions about 25cm wide surround the larger middle segment. There has been a variety of techniques being used over the surface to create illustrative shapes and patterns. The top section is a made from multiple layers of paint and mark making. The bottom layer of the top section, contains a washy pattern of pale yellow, red and greys. This pattern has been overlayed with a light dry brushing of a deep blue. The blue has been applied in wavy sections over the bottom layer to create, a rippling effect, with lighter thin bands running through the deeper blue. We get the feeling of water. Black circles surrounded by white dotting are placed randomly throughout this dark blue section, looking like bubbles erupting through the surface of water. The black circles and most of the black marks on the wooden board have been created by pyrography, by burning marks into the wooden surface. The focus of the top section is an aqueous shape with a mushroom like top, created using dotted burn marks. The shape made from hundreds of small burn dots spreads from the top portion of the artwork into the top of the middle section. 
Seven long black lines, representing the seven sisters, with circles on each end, start in the aqueous shape at the top of the artwork, run vertically through the middle section, to end in the last section. Painted on a bare board, the middle section contains an abundance of patterns depicting walking and meeting places, illustrative representations of flora, bush foods, rock holes, sand dunes and animal tracks. We see clusters of light purple flowers, and smaller bunches red flowers spread throughout. Light green leaves on winding vines are found at the top of the middle portion and concentric semi circles (often representing sand dunes) are seen towards the bottom of this section. Three circles linking together with thick black lines to form V’s are found on either side of the seven long lines that divide the image. To the right side of the lines the V is upright and to the left it is upside down (mirrored). There are small orange shapes that have an inner circle and five pieces coming off this circle to form other small circles. Small circles of yellow surrounded by half circles, people sitting around fire. Light blue circles containing concentric circles are linked with dotted connectors. These series of shapes represent meeting places around rocky outcrops and water sources. Throughout this section we see small half circles, and small lines representing men and women sitting. There are also the animal tracks making long sweeping lines through the abundant landscape.
The last section of the artwork features a mostly turquoise blue background that has patches of pink and yellow mixed in. This has a network of red ochre lines , that meet with varying sizes of black circles. These circles are ringed with white dotting.  This section makes us think of the network of rock holes or soakage points running through the desert landscape.