29th September - 8th October 2023

Kate Goodrich. Gunneraceae

Whilst getting to know Kate's practice more closely, over the process of helping her put this exhibition together, a relationship developed with something within the work that reveals itself but cannot be placed. I don’t mean a graphic Pareidolia. Not a figure in the moon. Or even an apophenic construct. Not an illusion of any kind but rather a presence both intangible and real.

The works employ a photographic process, cyanotype, however, Kate’s practice is as close to the painterly as that of the photographer. The responsive building of an image rather than the immediate capture of a moment. Yet the marks that Kate makes are rarely with a brush. Her most crucial tools and media are expansive and in flux. The movements of the moon and the schedule of the plants she works with are specific knowledge resources which she implements to achieve her results.

These are not photographs (images which now exist mostly digitised as binary code) but are objects, made by hands working with contingent, analogue, planetary forces.

Kate tells me that she has found that plants picked on the day after a full moon will hold their colour with greater intensity and for a longer lasting and better preservation. This experience is reinforced by the knowledge held within biodynamic gardening practices. It is as if the increased gravity of the moon, closer to earth during a supermoon event, pulls more of the lifeforce of the plant to its upper extremities - to its organs.

The hand-made glazing employed in the work aims not only to protect and conserve the more fragile materials within the frame but more intentionally to colour the light in which they are seen. Light which also reflects back into the room. Drawing our seeing, with it, back into this space in which our bodies touch the ground. The beauty of this glass is its distortion. The small scale of its pre-industrial production methods mean it is prohibitively difficult to fabricate today but this ensures its unique character. This encounter of intimacy with the mirror-window enlivens the otherwise quotidian with a restorative joy. For the ripples of the glass to bend the light in this way suggests a rare subtle tactility, an effervescent friction, an ever so delicate touch within. The amorphous body of the glass is always patiently waiting.

At first appearances these are scenes. Small landscapes made up of elements of life still. Individual plants function as marks on the surface producing a field within the picture plane. At a second look perhaps they are portraits. Characteristic recordings of these living plants and the unique circumstances of their capturing.

However over multiple viewings I begin to recognise, more readily each time, this presence within the work that is not reducible to any combination of its material qualities.

The presence is between the moon and its reflection. The moon and the Gunnera leaf reflect each other in objective outcomes here just as they have during the creative process. The presence is between the work and the viewer. The Gunnera as image is now the moon and we are as plants leaning into its attraction.The presence is the very gravity that holds our attention to the material. Drawing us, nearer. It is the shape of seeing and being seen telling of the total of forces that enable this orb to perceive the other.

Gravity bearing witness. 

Describing the weight of responsibility which comes with being one who sees. 

Seeing is ever more politicised these days, under these recent moons. Through the easy sharing of visual media we collectively witness the human experience and the gravity between us thickens and we pull closer together. The tangible screen is the atmosphere between our experiences. A barrier, both window and mirror. The moon reflected in the dark water. We witness the same events. 

Under this glowing cultural object we gaze. Without its blue light we see uniquely what is present with us. In the darkness of this room these works reveal a familiarity which is increasingly difficult to know. 

A used phone bears little trace of its history. Screen replaced virgin waters unrippled by any breath. The data records of one’s passing-through held deep in cool earth at great cost and little worth. The movements of activity leave no trail to track as it travels across land by moving back and forth, up and down, in and out untouched through atmospheric layers to satellites of a different poetry.

The anonymity of this intangible presence here reveals familiarity

Have we met?

Liam Newnham

🌕

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Gondwanan Moon (reflections on Gunneraceae)

by Mellany Robinson

The super blue moon of August 2023 is waning gibbous, hazy now and diminished. It has passed its perigee and its borrowed light is fading. But traces of its brief visit remain. It is fixed on paper and canvas.

The moon is still, here.

Over millennia, humans have developed a relationship with the moon, using it as a cornerstone to map the domain of space, a luminous guide to the inky heavens. It is: Abuk, Chang Xi, Hecate, Luna, Mawu, Metzli, Selene,...these names are used to conjure up gods, goddesses and myths the world over. And Chang'e and the rabbit live there, and it is made of cheese, and the sun and moon were driven from the earth to inhabit the firmament, and the moon was buried. In magical practice, the power of the moon is often harnessed to increase the potency of a spell.

More prosaically, it is used as a tool to chart the ocean: if you draw an imaginary line between the points on a crescent moon it will mark North or South (depending on which hemisphere you are floating in). What a perfect, simple act to situate ourselves in the here and now: Just follow your eye to the horizon and you can find yourself.

The moon orbits the Earth in just over every twenty-nine days. Yet continuity is not without its variables. Our menstrual cycles used to closely synchronise with the lunar phases, but since the constant use of artificial light, this timeless connection has been ruptured.

The moon is still, here.

This cold, impenetrable rock seems inert, yet the relationship is not one-sided. Earth’s long-term satellite has lit the night through deep time. A constant companion whose phases regulate our own tides. Cool. Solid. Quiet. A binary to the intense, gaseous ball of the sun held together by its own gravity.

It is also our daily reminder of interdependence - without the sun we wouldn’t see the moon. What would become of the dreamers then?

The subjects of these works are also ancient. The gunnera plant, from the family Gunneraceae has been traced to Gondwana, a land mass formed around 540 million years ago, composed of what is now East Africa, India, Madagascar, South America, Australia and Antarctica.

Year after year, the gunnera have unfolded under the same sun and moon, growing large, shading the land, their huge umbrella leaves spreading ever wider, casting the same shapes, impressions of their ancestors.

In Gunneraceae, the moon itself can be traced in the veins of the leaves, and the streaky wisps of light- painting left by its cast across the canvas. It has drawn its own topography: fine lines radiate like the rilles visible on its surface. The impression is delicate, a ghostly after-image of its passing and a document of time. This strange mirror of the moon is magic painting, created by forces bigger than a human hand.

The moon is still, here.

Mellany Robinson - 1st September 2023 🌕