Strings of Harmony
Katie West
We hold you close: A song of material intimacy
PICA | Free exhibition
20 February – 24 April 2022 | 10am-5pm, Tuesday-Sunday
For tens of thousands of years, string has been an integral yet highly underrated technology tightly bound to human survival, development, and culture. String has been used to create fire, fishing lines, nets, clothing, construction materials, bow strings, sutures, traps, cordage, and a multitude of other essential tools. As York-based artist Katie West said during a recent artist talk at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), “All human things are connected to string-making, and that’s not an overgeneralisation”. West’s latest exhibition, We Hold You Close: A Song of Material Intimacy, only touches lightly on the utility of string, and instead contemplates the ways in which string-making has the capacity to intertwine and harmonise human connection and culture.
For the past two years, West, curator Eloise Sweetman, and composer Simon Charles have worked on bringing the We Hold You Close exhibition to life. The exhibition brings together West’s practices of natural dyeing, handmaking string, tea making, and facilitating collective participation in these creative activities. West’s exhibition invites people into a welcoming environment to share in an immersive creative, cultural and community experience. Today, West and Charles, another York-based artist who created the soundscape for the exhibition, talked about their inspirations, collaborative process, artistic techniques, and the intricate and complex relationships these processes have to nature, community, family, and identity.
West welcomes the audience, about half of them listening intently from the comfort of large cushions covered in West’s natural dyed fabric. She offers us some lemongrass tea, gesturing to a table holding rows of perfectly curated cups, and then invites us to try string making for ourselves. West passes a bag containing six inch strips of assorted coloured fabric to an audience member, and asks us all to take a piece. West starts to wind her own piece of fabric idly between her practiced fingers, and begins to instruct us on the finer points of string making technique. She says that while her technique is not traditional, she has been using it for her own works for quite some time. West recalls that she was first shown the technique while on a primary school excursion to New Norcia.
“A Noongar man doing a tour taught us how to process a piece of reed to make a really strong rope. This technique has been a part of my life ever since then, and I find it really useful around the house if I need a bit of rope. But now it’s entered my art practice.”
We all manage to make cruder versions of the tightly woven cord West now holds between her practiced fingers. After the talk, we will add our pieces of handmade string to the wall hangings featured around the gallery, fulfilling our dual roles of audience members and artwork collaborators.
While we are working on our string creations, West tells us that string making has in recent times become increasingly important to her, due to her family’s long history with crafts. This is especially true of West’s mother and grandmother, Yindjibarndi people from the Pilbara, who are connected to a fibre and weaving practice West wasn’t aware of until 2017.
Artist Katie West and the masked composer Simon Charles
Growing up on a farm north of Perth, West and her brother represented two out of four Aboriginal children from the local town. In 2016, West wrote in a Guardian Australia article that while she was part of a close-knit community, where her adoptive grandparents were heavily involved in community activities, she felt alienated from her heritage.
“In the small town my mother and I grew up in, we were isolated from Aboriginal world views, philosophies and culture. Government policies synonymous with the Stolen Generations denied us the right to directly inherit this knowledge and identity,” West wrote in the Guardian. “This, of course, impacted my sense of self and I became anxious about where my place was.”
It was during 2017 that West first met artist Fiona Gavino (currently exhibiting at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe), while they were both attending a residency at Juluwarlu Aboriginal Corporation, Roebourne, and where West was sharing her natural dyeing techniques. Gavino, who has a strong weaving background and had been working at the Berndt Museum (UWA), mentioned to West the existence of a basket and fishing net of Yindjibarndi origin.
“Finding out about that basket and what it represents – weaving and fibre practice many thousands of years old – had a big impact on me,” West explains. “It felt like I had just that bit more information about my family. But I also found another way to connect with other first nations people in Australia, and across the globe.”
Fibre and weaving are of course defining features of West’s exhibitions, and so baskets are represented prominently in various creative ways. On entering the We Hold You Close exhibition, you are immediately struck by a gorgeous canopy of banners hung from PICA’s yawning ceiling, created with a fusion of found fabric textiles of soft complementary tones and hues. Each banner has the emblem of a basket stitched onto them, where West approached each basket depiction “as an individual”. West explained the tendency for cultures to be viewed through a very narrow lens, the fixation on idealising objects and concepts, using as an example the basket that has contributed to her current artistic journey.
“I have been thinking about how even the basket that is at the Berndt Museum; you have one object that represents a whole history of a craft. It can make that history static, like this is the one example. With these works I’ve tried to think about all the potential variation in that craft over many thousands of years. And also all the induvial personalities of all the people who were involved in that craft as well.”
West’s observation is incisive. We have a tendency to cast specific objects as representative of and iconic to a culture, which can lead to two-dimensional stereotyping of otherwise diverse populations. In her essay, The Gendered Sea: Iconography, Gender, and Mediterranean Prehistory (2005), Lauren E. Talalay, Research Associate and Curator Emerita, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, describes how in the field of archaeology objects can have an instability of meaning. Talalay says that in her field “it is difficult to escape the conclusion that objects have complex ‘biographies’,” which can “shift over time and, as repositories of multiple meanings, they are open to divergent readings”. Referencing Maureen McKenzie’s book, Androgynous Objects (1991), Talalay explains how objects among the Telefol of Papua New Guinea are the product of multiple creators, relationships, uses, and genders, and are in turn imbued with multiple meaning by definition.
“The Telefol bags are ‘multi-authored,’ produced by both men and women, and move through different social contexts and transactions throughout their lifetimes. They successfully acquire and negotiate different meanings, serving as powerful metaphors for gender difference and gender relationships. [Just] as gender is open to negotiation and reproduction, so too is the relationship between objects and gender construction. Both are dynamic and discursive parts of daily life.”
Collective community collaboration feeds into much of West’s work, and during her PICA talk she discusses how that process came about. In 2016, West mounted an exhibition called Decolonist for Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival, which channelled her artistic and cultural focus for the eighteen months leading up to the exhibition. It was here that she met and befriended artist and writer Fayen d’Evie, who invited West and a number of other artists and families to her bush property near Castlemaine, Victoria. West was invited to share and facilitate the natural dyeing process with the group.
As a teenager, West’s grandmother gave her a book by textile artist and dye developer, India Flint, which outlined the natural dyeing process West uses in her creative work. As West initially started to plan her installation work, she saw natural dyeing, also known as eco-dyeing, as a good way to infuse the fabrics she was using. The process itself involves extracting the natural dyes from plant materials, which are transferred to another object, such as paper or fabric, by binding and steaming or boiling all of the elements together. The technique results in a striking effect, leaving facsimiled-like imagery produced by the naturally occurring pigments within the objects themselves.
Once at d’Evie’s bushland property, West and the other fifteen or so members of the group started searching for materials to use for the natural dyeing process. West recalls how it was very windy during the days they collected materials, so fortuitously there were a lot of fresh leaves on the ground to gather up.
“What was interesting to me was that the people in the group, particularly the kids, were pretty adventurous in what they would find on the ground,” recalls West. “We had rocks and random flowers that I wouldn’t have thought would have any dye in them.”
Once the group had enough materials, they laid them all out on a seven metre long piece of silk fabric, then rolled and tied it all up into a tight bundle. The bundle was then dropped into a vat of boiling water and left to do its magic, while the group went off to attend an event by artist Cecilia Vicuña. Vicuna, who West considers “an incredible artist”, was staging a vocal performance near a dam, where she was tuning her voice to the frogs inhabiting the space, and inviting others to join in. The following day, West, Fayen, and Fayen’s son, unfurled the large piece of dyed fabric.
“As we were unravelling it, and noticed all of the colours, and patterns, and textures, it really felt like this piece of fabric was a record of that time and place, and Cecilia’s performance as well. That really highlighted for me what can happen when you involve other people in the making process.”
For West, the line between performance and audience, gallery and observer are blurred. Participation and collaboration of the audience are a crucial part of her exhibitions, which stems from her own experiences drifting in and out of artist spaces and workshops. She describes how she feels a switch in energy once people sit together during, say, a weaving workshop, and conversation starts up between the participants.
“It seems to come from shared activity, where everyone’s doing the same thing. There’s something about the connection between your hands and your mind, when you’ve got a repetitive making process that you only have to half think about. I’ve been really interested in that moment.”
West’s collaborative and participatory exhibitions, comprised of her own delicately and intricately made pieces, have in part emerged from her experience with art galleries in her youth. She wants to shake up the traditional white gallery spaces, where as a child she was nervous about all of the rules, formality, and lack of interaction with the works. “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed in there,” says West. West adds that galleries could be more comfortable and welcoming for visitors, to no objection from the audience, who have since entirely merged with their naturally dyed cushions.
“You should be able to make yourself feel comfortable,” remarks West. “Walking around and standing isn’t always okay, and some artworks deserve the time to really sit with them”
Pieces of string made by gallery visitors
The focus of the artist talk shifts to a forty minute film of West making string, looped on a screen positioned behind Charles and West. The video is synchronised with Charles’ soundscape, and visitors can settle in and absorb the installation from the cushions and benches provided. The video is framed within an oval shape that West says mirrors the shape of the baskets represented elsewhere in the exhibition.
“I’m trying to mirror the basket forms of the textile works. These sorts of vessels feel like they are vessels that hold knowledge. There’s so much knowledge held in the process of making them, and then there’s the metaphor of this is a vessel to hold things as well.”
West adds that the oval shape of the video work also represents a portal, where “portals are a way to connect with ancestors past and future”. West adds that the idea of the portal came to her as she was installing the exhibition components and seeing the works as a whole, what they represent in their entirety.
West turns to Charles and realises he has been holding the microphone for her the whole time, while she was busy weaving and talking. We all snap out of our collective state of captivation and laugh. Simon keeps the mic and begins to explain the process of composing a soundscape for West’s work.
“The score for the piece is for mandocello, which is like a big mandolin, a double bass, and some field recordings were taken when we dyed the fabric of the cushions,” explains Charles. “In those field recordings you hear people’s voices and birds. Some of them had been manipulated, so it’s not so clear what the voices are saying. We decided to do that for privacy, really, but it also creates a nice filtering effect.”
The soundscape is a composition of layered patterns delivered through six speakers encircling the main installation area. Each instrument and sound was recorded separately, then mapped and configured in a way so that each speaker was related contextually, but also “doing its own thing,” says Charles.
“The mapping out is reflecting ideas about weaving, layering. Things that are similar but not exactly the same, slight variations. Like the accumulation of many materials with slightly different characteristics.”
West says that her interest in incorporating sound into her exhibitions is in part for reasons around accessibility. She explains that her friend d’Evie has low vision and so includes a sonic element in her own practice, providing multiple ways in which to experience d’Evie’s work. West says her own artistic motive for including sound is to capture the sound of making string, “a sound that captures the twisting motion, the tension building”.
Art is a two-way interaction, in the sense that observers project some part of themselves onto an artwork, even when an artist has very fixed ideas about what their work represents. Charles says that while there are definite themes running all through the exhibition, he chooses not to put too much of his own spin on the works. He would prefer audiences explore and draw some of their own conclusions and meaning around the intended themes of the exhibition.
“The sound work is a way to explore those themes through a compositional process, and through a process of listening,” says Charles. “It’s a way of exploring slow process and duration, and reflection. Even in a different space, a space with the phenomenal experience of listening. The way sound conveys an experience of time passing through a compositional framework.”
Reflection, exploration, aesthetic, collaboration, and connection with community are inherent values of West’s work. But string also has a very long history of value as a utility, and the process of string making itself considered an act of labour. A question from the audience raises questions on the relationship between labour and productivity versus ritual and community, between string production and string craft. West reflects deeply on the question, clearly having given these relationships some thought herself.
West says that while the ideals around natural dyeing processes and human connection are obviously primary drivers underpinning her work, she concedes that there are times when tight deadlines make it hard to settle into a meditative process of collaboration and creation.
“The labour thing is interesting, and a huge conversation in itself,” says West. “I have been thinking about opportunities for intimacy, and the way human beings maintain a kinship connection through making together. I have been thinking about how outsourcing the making of the objects we need, that we might not have as many opportunities for sitting alongside each other, making, and checking in with each other.”
Found fabric is a feature of West’s work, but in today’s world of fast fashion, natural fibres are no longer easy to come by in op shops. “There’s so much polyester stuff out there now,” West laments. “When it came to the dye workshop I’d have to buy fabric for that, to get a big enough amount of natural fibres.”
As the artist talk wraps up, the audience disperses to drink tea and engage in post exhibition chat. We hang our pieces of handmade string on the gallery walls, creating string rainbows of diversity, community, and harmony.
We Hold You Close: A Song of Material Intimacy runs at PICA until 24 April 2022. Another exhibition by West, titled Tracks We Share, is scheduled to open at AGWA on 11 March. Charles has again provided the soundscape for this next exhibition.