Catalogue Essay
Lisa Byrne and Christine Clark

Natural Selection explores the transformative potential of material culture in the varied works of five artists from Australia, India, Indonesia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Each artist, employing a different approach to the material use of objects, investigates alternative applications for items such as animal bones, earth, stones, clothing, recycled containers and international commodity items. Drawing on their immediate personal and cultural experiences the resulting works bring astute yet sensitive and at times humorous approaches to issues, both local and global in context.

In using the term ‘natural selection’ to introduce these works there is an inherent irony at play. Moving away from hierarchies associated with the modes of categorisations - high art/ low art, haute couture/off the rack, traditional media/organic and used materials – the works subvert the expected and tease out the inconsistencies of contemporary consumer culture. In doing this, each artist melds aspects of their personal history with their immediate environment and cultural surrounds. The term also plays with its own contradiction. The artists’ selection of materials is obviously artificial, involving a considered, careful and deliberate process.

Although taking distinct positions and approaches, the works display various correspondences. Integral to each of the artist’s practice is the notion of the ‘handmade’ and the use of the unexpected. All the works challenge the idea of obsolescence, by working with materials seen by most as ‘used’ and ‘passé’. Contributing to the unexpected nature of the works in Natural Selection is the humour employed by some of the artists whilst others evoke more whimsical interpretations. Niki Hastings-McFall, Sharmila Samant and Mella Jaarsma all use the humorous nature of the unexpected to create works that incorporate the existing history of the objects with that of an invented ‘new’ function. While Linde Ivimey also touches on the humorous, she and Caroline Ho-Bich-Tuyen Dang create works with curious purposes and spiritual resonances.

Melbourne based artist Linde Ivimey uses the latent potential of remnants to invent characters that are fantastical and provocative. Often seen as grotesque, these uneasy yet delicate works are inspired by various stories, including that of the intensely personal as well as the lives of saints and pagan beliefs. Ivimey works with discarded items such as animal bones, earth, wax, human hair, buttons, coloured foils from wine bottles, bobbins, fabrics from pre-loved clothes and more.

Ivimey creates characters that are reliquaries of her contemporary existence. Cleaned bones from meals shared with friends, combined with old pieces of fabrics from cherished garments imbue her works with the memories of the original objects. These newly fashioned reliquaries invest the present with the past, creating a symbolic connection between the personal and spiritual sides of her life.

Caroline Ho-Bich-Tuyen Dang’s current work uses ‘nettings’ in various forms to investigate the idea of permanency, the process of time and environmental concerns. Dang, who is currently based in the Blue Mountains, uses stone, paper, string and plastic nets to explore these ideas, Her materials suggest fragility and the changing of structures over time.

Like Ivimey, Dang investigates the memory of organic objects, however her specific interest lies in the ideas of (im)permanency and the shifting state of being. Her current focus explores the metaphysical life of things rather than the purely functional. This is illustrated in her cloud catching nets, rendered in gouache, and her ‘captured’ stones suspended in hand crocheted nets. In her cloud images Dang explores the idea of catching or holding onto the unobtainable, while in her captured stones installation she investigates notions of transitory suspension and inevitable change.

Niki Hastings-McFall transforms mass-produced items of consumer culture into delicate, colourful and strangely quirky works. Scouring bargain stores all over Auckland, Hastings-McFall visualises and invents new histories for abundant consumer items. Materials that are synonymous with her artistic practice include various types of plastic flowers, clear plastic soya sauce fish, nylon thread, and any other small unit items she can source.

Combining her training in gold and silver-smithing and interest in the stuff of everyday life Hastings-McFall manipulates these objects through repetition and proliferation. By turning the unnoticed discardable by-products of consumer culture into symbolic, culturally loaded objects, she draws on her Samoan/European background. For Natural Selection Hastings-McFall presents a work from her Polynising series. Covering a 1950’s table and chair setting with multicoloured plastic lei flowers sourced from $2 stores, she abandons the functionality of the furniture to re-contextualise the objects with a humorous Pacific skew.

A core concern of Sharmila Samant’s work is consumer capitalism and globalisation. Her recent work explores the homogenising effect of commodification in relation to developing economies, and the ‘use’ of these developing countries by multinationals. As part of the generation of Indians who grew up in the 1980s, Samant witnessed the rise of the powerful multinationals and their exploitation of cheap, highly skilled manufacturing labour in Mumbai for their own financial prosperity.

In her installation Handpicked Rejects (2003-05), Samant (re)presents clothing bought as rejects from the streets in Mumbai. These garments, originally made in sweatshops had been returned to their city of manufacture after becoming rejects from European fashion houses. Using local artisans to re-authenticate these designer garments, by adding subtle labels and beading, Samant mocks the fashion establishment. Her satirical take on commodity culture and globalisation exposes the truth of precious, rarefied objects by illustrating the realities of their manufacture.

Mella Jaarsma’s practice delves into the notion of cultural identity and the increasingly, rigidly enforced concept of ‘authenticity’. Born and educated in The Netherlands, Jaarsma has lived in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for the past twenty years. Her recent practice explores the ideas of identity and the notion of shelter. Through her elaborate costume installations, Jaarsma plays with the preconceived notions of cultural norms and boundaries. She emphasises issues of cultural difference and racial diversity in the context of what she sees as a waning tolerance for multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies.

One of her works presented in this exhibition, Asal (2005), comments on the possibilities of mobility and shifting cultural identities, drawing allegorically on the way words and clouds move around the globe. In daily life Jaarsma repeatedly hears “Asal dari mana”? or “Where are you from?” This common Indonesian question is posed not only to foreign-looking people but also as a means to open a conversation. The title Asal translates as 'authentic', and is used in Indonesia to question authenticity. In this way Jaarsma plays with the notion of ‘fixed’ cultures. Through the unexpected reality of slippery and shifting cultural boundaries Jaarsma identifies the ever present instability and changing nature of contemporary cultures.

The handmade nature of all the objects in Natural Selection undoubtedly heightens the sense of human experience evident in these artworks. Through the unexpected and precarious, the humorous, satirical and whimsical, these artists shift the usual understandings and use of materials. In doing this each of the participating artists seek to challenge the presupposed ideas of the audience and encourage them to see alternatives.

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