Marmalade Issue 5, 2017

Beginnings are especially important when working with
others. How you unfold your stories to each other can
underpin the collaboration. Gray Street has opened me up
to being both a mentor and a mentee on a daily basis. But
the workshop is home territory and a certain amount of
comfort and ease comes with that. I do know that travelling
out of my comfort zone is critical for my practice, my brain
and my body.
Working in scientific and medical environments can
sometimes feel alienating and I’ve found it’s always the
human connections that melt these barriers. Over time I’ve
learned to step back a little and slow down the judgement
that can get in the way of learning something new.
You have collaborated with Ian Gibbins for many years
now. What do you feel he has brought to your practice
and can you comment on what you have possibly brought
to his understanding of the body and seeing through
your artworks?
My practice has been enriched through working with Ian
and his colleagues over the course of a decade. Ian has
commented that he became more aware of his teaching
methods because of our discussions. As a result he would
utilise his own body as a primary living resource in his
teaching and encourage his students to do the same. He
asked them to consider the generic nature of the body
they were learning in medical school: ‘Whose body are
you learning about? Is it yours?’
Generally there’s never enough time during the courses
to ask such philosophical questions like this about the
subject matter. But these questions are crucial. So, yes,
we have both been affected in really positive ways by
working together.
The title of the exhibition is no surface holds, expresses a
slippage, an inability to create a solid, firm or definitive view
or idea. Why is this expression so essential to your work?
No surface holds is a line by the French feminist Luce
Irigaray, from her book This Sex Which Is Not One written
in 1977. Melinda Rackham used it as a chapter heading in
her book on my practice. It’s a potent piece of writing to be
sure. It’s about the dissolving of boundaries between two
people. I’ve chosen it as an exhibition title and the title of an
installation in the show.
I think I’m illusionist at best and when I make an image or
an object, the catalyst is usually a very transient impression,
something fleeting, perhaps just a sensation. I become
deliciously absorbed in the quest to make something
tangible of that sensation and yet I know its actually
impossible. I work with the notion that all knowledge is
fluid and can be altered by something as simple as the
shifting light.
You are currently a visiting scholar at the Flinders Centre
for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research, School of
Medicine, Flinders University, undertaking a project titled
The nexus between vision, the eye and perception. The
works of art you have produced in response to this include
ocular plants, 2017 and ocular trees, 2017. What are the
similarities you are expressing between plants and the way
the eye works or looks?
When I started this latest residency I had no idea how broad
the subject of eyes, perception and vision could be and
the diversity of disciplines involved. Over the past year I’ve
watched many eye surgeries, pretended to be a patient in
the waiting rooms, had my eyes imaged with every machine
available at the clinic, and visited the research labs and there
is still so much to investigate.
This residency is proving to be a little different from my
previous experiences at Flinders. I often describe my role
in these environments as being a kind of thinking two-way
mirror and that’s the way I’ve worked with Ian in the past.
I observe broadly to begin with and ask questions, share
my observations and over time we may generate questions
together and that’s a really wonderful experience.
The work that has evolved so far reflects a quite personal
response to the structure of the eye and an inquiry into the
sensation of sight. I’m beginning to understand that eyes
are small miracles.
I’m intrigued by the intricate networks, which connect
the eye to the whole body. Also how we process light
into thought; it seems light is a key ingredient for vision
and perception.
The collections called Ocular Plants and Ocular Trees in
the exhibition have evolved organically from serendipitous
connections. Recently I asked Angela Chappell, the
ophthalmic photographer to take images of my retinas and
we spent some time studying them on screen together. It
was like gazing through a science fiction-like portal into what
looked like a glowing planet covered with an arterial lattice
of rivers and streams.
Seeing is a great way for us to finish, as the works of art in
this exhibition definitely reward those that take the time
to engage. What would you hope people take away from
this exhibition?
I hope that people sense something of the engagement I
experience when I research and reflect and make. There
are some tricks of the eye and a smattering of humour in
the work. I hope they become absorbed in wonder, feel a
little puzzled occasionally and even have a good laugh or
two along the way. Andy Warhol once said, ‘I don’t know
where the real starts and the artificial stops’. Sometimes,
uncertainty is delicious.
JamFactory Icon 2017, Catherine Truman: no surface holds,
opened in Adelaide as part of the South Australian Living
Artists (SALA) Festival before touring to eight venues
nationally. The exhibition tour has been assisted by the
Australian Government’s Contemporary Touring Initiative,
a program of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Previous page: Ongoing Being (detail), 2010 - ongoing
multi media, dimensions variable. Photographer: Grant Hancock.
Top right: In Preparation for Seeing: SEM Glove, Installation – objects, 2015
black cotton glove encrusted with black glass spheres, microscope slides, steel
forceps, petri dishes, light pad, dimensions variable. Photographer: Grant Hancock.
Right: no surface holds: Crab Claw Installation, 2015 - 17, found crab claws encrusted
with glass spheres. Dimensions variable. Photographer: Grant Hancock.
22 / ISSUE 05