Dissonance

Opening Saturday, March 19  at  2pm.

The exhibition continues on Saturday and Sundays until April 10.
Gallery hours are 10am – 5pm
Mounted ARI is located at 80 Paterson Rd, Springwood.

Delta of Living Water

Jennifer Trezise 2022

I wanted to explore a new ‘canvas’ for Dissonance, so, intrigued by core-ten steel, I decided to make a pentaptych, using the colours evoked by Carolyn Kelshaw’s poem ‘River Tree’ and hidden systems in the form of random and chaotic barcodes, with the entire poem as ribbons of patterned text.

Halfway through the painting process I inverted my artwork to give the impact of a downward flow from the delta of living water as described in the poem.

The jacaranda pod, my female symbol, represents the earth, peeled open to reveal its vulnerable inner core.

Gouache on core-ten steel, bush sticks and a jacaranda pod

120cm (h) x 110cm

Based around a gallery space, Mounted stages exhibitions and creative arts events that provide a platform for visual artists, writers and musicians to showcase their work. Mounted aims to build community through art.

Mounted ARI is excited to announce its first creative arts initiative for 2022: “Dissonance through Poetry and Art”.

Sixteen poets were invited to create a poem on the theme of Dissonance, with those poems then given to sixteen visual artists (one poem for each artist) to create an artwork in response to the poem.

The exhibition opened on Saturday 19 March at 2pm. The opening event featured a public reading of the poems by the poets. Supporting events for the exhibition included a Poetry Writing Workshop and a Four Artists Panel Discussion in which I participated.

River Tree

The poem written by Carolyn Kelshaw which inspired my painting:

‘A river system, seen from outer space,

looks like a tree, etched deep into the earth.

The river delta spreads like feeding roots.

The downward surging river forms the trunk,

the tributaries unfurl a branching web

to form the canopy, and spring-drunk hills create a glossy crown of rampant green.

The system of a tree, seen from within,

flows like a river, rendered in reverse.

The delta fan of roots draws up cascades

of living water, back into the trunk,

to irrigate each branch and stick and twig and sprout a polished crown of leafy jade.

Will this, that’s always been, be always seen?‘

In her words: ‘The poem began with me trying unsuccessfully to capture the beauty of this bonsai my daughter gave me a few years ago. In doing so, I began to think about how a tree is like a hidden upside down river sucking water back up into itself.

I had to write something vaguely intelligent for the exhibition so I gratefully picked up a friend’s comment that the poem reminded him of fractals.

River Tree was inspired by the fractal nature of patterns within nature – infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. It was inspired by the complex mystery below the surface of the natural world that reflects harmony and integration. The poem’s final line foreshadows the potential for all this to disintegrate in the face of climate change’. Carolyn Kelshaw 2022