megaphone oz your megaphone...but the grand size and scale of source belies its fragility, just like...
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Water the source of all creationAugust 10, 2012 By Winsome Walker 0 Comment
Water the source of all creation http://megaphoneoz.com/?p=1667
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How often do you stare blankly at an artwork – be it painting, sculpture, performance or installation –completely bewildered by the intentions of the artist?
The cryptically confusing written statement alongside a work often complicates its meaning evenfurther.
But what if the artists themselves were available to guide you through their creative process anddemystify the tangled web of meaning surrounding their artwork?
At the Biennale of Sydney I was lucky enough to meet Toronto-based artist Ed Pien, who took me ona tour of his work, Source.
Source is a towering paper labyrinth that combines installation, paper cuts, drawing and shadow play.
“I wanted it to be really huge, because it’s about water. I wanted it to be overwhelming andconsuming, so that when you’re inside you would be engulfed and disappear,” Pien explains.
But the grand size and scale of Source belies its fragility, just like the world’s waterways.
“In our world there’s a contamination of the water, things are degrading, they’re getting sick andthey’re dying. This whole piece is about transforming it.”
Water the source of all creation http://megaphoneoz.com/?p=1667
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Artist Ed Pien with his BiennaleInstallation at Cockatoo Island
As people pass through Pien’s work, the delicate paper sheets answer to the movement, rippling likethe tide. What a beautifully poetic articulation of how nature responds to the most minuscule forms ofhuman intervention.
Within the spiralled interior of Source, the shapes of sea creatures are projected onto rippled sheets ofmylar. These floating images are accompanied by the audio of Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, a voiceof haunting, grotesque beauty.
As a site-specific work created especially for Cockatoo Island, Source engages with the artworks thatsurround it. Peering through the hand-cut shapes in the paperwork, Monika Grzymala’s piece,coincidently titled The River, can be glimpsed.
“I’m going to show you the inside of the work now,” Pien announces. He weaves his way through theblue and white tentacles of rope suspended from the ceiling and leads us into the centre of his work.
“It’s kind of disconcerting to come in here and see no one. You’re expecting someone in here castinga shadow, but it’s all an illusion,” he says.
But how did he create this illusion of shadow play?
“I’ve actually videotaped myself with all these objects, and then projected the whole thing through thereal objects,” Pien explains. “They’re kind of familiar, but they’re not.”
Source engages personally and politically with the theme of this year’s Biennale, All Our Relations.Accessibility to clean water, as well as humanity’s relationship with Mother Nature was weighing onPien’s mind when he devised the work.
“In the Source, everything is connected,” he says. “The waterways are all connected and we are
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connected to them. I feel that unless we become much more connected and engaged, we will cutourselves off and create our own demise.”
Biennale of Sydney, 27 June – 16 September
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Filed Under: Arts and Entertainment, Galleries Tagged With: Ed Pien, Sydney Biennale
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