Mining Pyrite 

Written by Nick Vickers & Cassandra Hard-Lawrie 

Mining Pyrite 17 June – Sunday 20 August 2017

Curated by Cassandra Hard-Lawrie and Nick Vickers Newington Armory Gallery Sydney Olympic Park

Mining Pyrite features the artworks of:
Wade Marynowsky, Mark Booth, Chris Bowman, Mark Brown, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Louisa Dawson, Gary Deirmendjian, Judith Duquemin, Allan Giddy, John Gillies, Locust Jones, Akira Kamada, Michael Keighery, Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Meredith Peach, Jane Theau, Rachel Walls, Ken and Julia Yonetani

Before Sydney Olympic Park became a world class sports and events venue, it was the town dump and its history heralded a catalogue of environmental failures. The brick works that provided the walls for industry and employment for thousands and the abattoir that fed the city but both created the hurdle that needed to be overcome to transform this tract of land and indeed the waterways nearby into “an internationally admired example of sustainable urban renewal and development”. Coal mining excavations that were undertaken by Blaxland in 1841 resulted in several unsuccessful explorations and housing speculations failed to excite the establishment of a viable a community in this district until recent times.
Mining Pyrite offers a comparison between the failure and success of the Olympic Park through the work of artists whose works are also synonymous with experimentation. The constant testing and exploration of the boundaries of what does and doesn't work is the stock and trade of creativity. Over the past 13 years Sydney Olympic Park Authority has acknowledged and supported this endeavour through its Artists at The Armory program. Mining Pyrite is an exhibition that sheds light on the activities of the studios as well as celebrating a history of the success of the residency, proving the point that if a studio exists for emerging artists, success may prevail over failure.
In many ways, as neighbours at the Olympic Park, art and sport are compatible bedfellows. The artist and the sportsperson strode hand in hand through the opening and closing ceremonies of not only the Olympics, but a host of tournaments, concerts and sponsored extravaganzas. Sponsorship was the winner with naming rights and promotional accolades but sport claimed silver and creativity claimed a distant bronze.
Mining Pyrite Curators Cassandra Hard-Lawrie and Nick Vickers have selected 19 artists who have occupied the studios and whose works exemplify a journey of exploration, a journey that demonstrates that creativity is not easy, a journey that traces the journey within the journey from failure to success. The curatorial selection highlights the works of the artists who have explored the notion that creative research and development can and sometimes must embrace failure as a stepping stone to creative discovery. During its time as an armaments store the unique building was a fortification that was purpose-built to store explosive materials. Re-purposed as an exhibition venue The Armory boasts one of the longest walls in the southern hemisphere and provides a grand scale setting for Mining Pyrite.
Wade Marynowsky has had a long association with the artist studios at Sydney Olympic Park. His interactive work “Black Casino”(2013) provides an obvious starting point for the curatorial brief for Mining Pyrite. Reference to the short term money market and its elements of chance and high risk is exemplified in a work that involves five flying V guitars mounted atop a rotating roulette wheel that frequently appears in popular game shows such as The Wheel of Fortune. The popular concept that there is a “get rich quick” element associated with the world of art and exhibitions is as fanciful as the notion that a fortune can be made by the spin of a wheel or the roll of a dice. 

Although life and chance are intertwined, fate becomes a key factor that is explored in one of the most ambitious works in Mining Pyrite, Mark Brown’s Hull Loss VH-XXW 2016 comprises a salvaged helicopter tail rotor partially burned after the crash that claimed it. There is nothing that captures the public’s imagination more than aviation disasters and nothing exemplifies failure as ubiquitously as the perceived incompetency of uniformed personnel. Hull Loss VH-XXW 2016 continues a large series of sound installation works inspired by this artist’s interest in aviation. Engraved onto the surface of the rotor blade is the aircraft serial number and the GPS location of the point where it crashed. Flickering imagery on LED screens and deep reverberations pulsating through the rotor blade add drama to Mark Brown’s interpretation of the curatorial theme.

Victory and defeat travel on similar paths to success and failure. War, in our present day psyche, is an inescapable reality that has a presence throughout the exhibition. Camouflage has been a key element in the work of Mark Booth and his work “Munitions” draws on it once more to explores the juxtaposition between the industrial waste buried beneath Blaxland Riverside Park site and the playground above. By presenting re-appropriations of camouflaged toy guns that point menacingly out from the wall at eye level, the defiant barrels of the guns become the toy’s eyes meeting the eyes of the viewer and in this encounter a toy becomes a pistol as a truth becomes a reality.

Closer to home but still in the war zone, Michael Keighery’s ceramic symbolic memories of his Great Uncle Frank Keighery who lost his life at Gallipoli are encapsulated in his work “Dead Man’s Penny”. These works are touching reminders of the futility of war. Frank Keighery was a journalist who kept a diary of his thoughts and poetry all transcribed in Pitman Shorthand. The “Dead Man’s Penny” is a medallion that was issued to the families of personnel who lost their lives in the war and was inscribed “He Died for Freedom and Honour”. Michael Keighery was the very first tenant of the Armory artists program and worked in the well-equipped ceramics studios. Over time his practice has moved from functional ceramic objects to sculptural forms. Whilst “Dead Man’s Penny” honours his Great Uncle’s life through the ceramic tradition, it also becomes a telling reminder of one of the greatest failures of WW1.

Although Gallipoli was the greatest antipodean tragedy, the holocaust was Europe’s greatest shame. How many lives, how many families, how many stories? The Jewish diaspora encompasses the world and the mass migration to escape inevitable and senseless destruction of a whole nation is a catalogue of failure that is heaped upon subsequent catalogues of failure. The Jewish museums dotted around the globe in nearly every major city commemorate those incomprehensible and inexpressible emotions as well as those innumerable stories. Ken and Julia Yonetani's video work entitled “Kristallnacht” documents the artists’ assembling of a mound of chandelier crystals (taken from original antique chandelier structures sourced in Berlin) in front of the Deportation Memorial on the Putlitzbrücke (Putlitz bridge). This site commemorates the place where many Jews were deported from Berlin to concentration camps. The video reveals how the "fate of the dispossessed crystals of remembrance was placed in the hands of the bystander”.

On a less catastrophic note, Gary Deirmendjian demonstrates how art practice that engages experimentally with public space can have outcomes that cannot be predetermined, thereby opening up the artistic process to potential failure. Deirmendjian's “roman stack” documents, through photography, his public intervention of forming a cubed stack of vernacular bitumen rubble outside the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome - and then the authorities' and general public's alterations to it. In the current climate of heightened global security, it is surprising that Deirmendjian’s “roman stack”, in such a prominent position, maintained a presence for as long as it did without being detonated. “roman stack” took pride of place as a backdrop to one of Rome’s most prestigious museums, as well as featuring in a plethora of tourist selfies, begging the question - “Is this art?”. But that’s another debate that harks back to institutional perceptions of how art is defined, how art is funded or, indeed, how art fails to be funded.

Within Judith Duquemin’s work is a magician’s sleight of hand that plays a visual trick on the viewer and that’s precisely the slip and shift that she explores in her series “Schism” - a series of cropped sections of geometric compositions that crash on a central dynamic in each of the artworks. This division symbolises the shift that is frequently apparent in religious and political dialogues that often result in profound philosophical divides. It is precisely this failure of communication that has been so prevalent in dialogues between art theoreticians, artists and curators particularly over the past thirty years. Another intersection of art and geometry can be found in the ancient Egyptian practice of Khayamiya that continues into contemporary practice in the works of both Judith Duquemin and Rachel Walls. “Pomegranate” by Rachel Walls is a video that takes its origins from eight geometric sections and examines a dynamic interplay that may result in a metaphysical construction. This construct is, as Rachel Walls suggests…” a myth and as such it cannot obtain what it seeks”.

An encased, and a now distant, piece of telephonic technology that supported an immense national communication network of pay-phones links Louisa Dawson’s “Mobile Obsolescence” to the raft of changes to our daily methods of keeping in touch. The telephone has featured in posters, artworks and films as either a conduit to urgent communication or bitter frustration. Louisa Dawson makes it mobile, makes it portable but in doing so highlights the endless debate that centres around our tele-communication systems and technologies bringing every subscriber to the point of ultimate despair when that connection fails to connect.

Allan Giddy has taken a literal approach to the theme of failure by revisiting a work “Absence and Presence Part 1” that he created in the UK in the 1990’s that aimed to extract music from the abundance of rain. He describes hours of tedious work that resulted in “a clumsy sculptural object” that he eventually abandoned. The object was kindly stored by his friend and laid buried under her house until sadly, in 2004, she died. The work in The Armory is that same sculpture that has remained unopened; it is, in effect, a time capsule that commemorates his friend’s passing but also his own project that is an acknowledged failure. The X-Ray image of this work gives an eerie forensic presence that reveals the contents of a seemingly benign object that could, at any time, spring into being in the afterlife.

There is a metaphorical rumination that connects Allan Giddy’s work to that of Chris Bowman who draws an influence from the Russian constructivist movement as well as the work of Lazlo MoholyNagy. By placing a clear plexiglass construction on a mirror, flanked by inter-related charcoal works on paper, Bowman insistently pushes the point that these works refuse to be seated within an easy categorisation of either drawing or sculpture. The question is posed that this work defies definition and therefore could be interpreted as a successful drawing, a failed sculpture, a successful sculpture or a failed drawing but in the end spatial relationships succeed in “Notation 10 - Disturbance/Stasis”.

One of the great claims that makes Sydney Olympic Park “an internationally admired example of sustainable urban renewal and development” has been acknowledged and celebrated worldwide. Its stunning location, the footprint of the former naval armaments storage base, re-purposed buildings that incorporate the artists’ studios, a theatre and a labyrinth of tunnels and railway tracks provided the inspirational backdrop for Daniel Mudie Cunningham’s “Oh Industry”. Although this work was made in 2009 as part of his residency, its relevance to the history of the site makes it an essential inclusion to Mining Pyrite. In celebrating the site, “Oh Industry” also refers to the age of mechanisation that ultimately created the industrial waste that occupied the site before its celebrated sustainable overhaul.

Meredith Peach is nationally known for her extensive research into up-cycled materials. In this case the reclaimed pet food packaging in her Distant Touch (2016) that references the pet free flora and fauna policy of Sydney Olympic Park Authority that is essential to the preservation of wild life in the park but particularly the bird sanctuary. These works were not specifically made with the success/ failure theme in mind, but the clear reference to our failure as inhabitants of this planet to dispose of our waste is an obvious inclusion in Mining Pyrite. In a similar vein, Akira Kamada’s Fragile (2017) is made from window frames containing a number of selected found-objects. Whilst this work links in up-cycled content to the work of Meredith Peach, its symbolic references to elements of life and sustainability touch directly on the effects of climate change. Interwoven within this work also is a more specific reflection on what constitutes success & failure for art and artists aiming to demonstrate the complexity and vulnerability of an artist͛’s work as they strive to hold on to what͛’s important to their individual aesthetic. 

The vacuum of the studio in Jane Theau’s “The Impossibility of Infinite Growth” echoes the sentiments of Akira Kamada, but poses the question - “What constitutes success?”. Perhaps in the creative world success can be conceived and categorised as the space to think, the space to create, the studio that may be the residency at Sydney Olympic Park. Jane Theau deliberates that …“For nations, it is all about economic growth” but artists are not nations and nations are not nations without national identities and without artists there can be no national identity. If Australia’s identity only reflects “commodity fetishism” - where is the national identity? In a climate of economic vacillation, where Australia is rated as a first world country and Sydney vaunts its claim as a global city, creativity is valued as a commodity rather than a cultural asset.

Although the work of John Gillies refers to the phenomenon of a shipwreck in 1882 and its load of coal that continues to appear mysteriously after unprecedentedly violent storms that signify the imminence of climate change. In many ways this work echoes the chasms of understanding that occur in Judith Duquemin’s works, and makes metaphorical references to climate change and the gulf that exists between failed political imagination and the public’s expectations that carbon emissions will be addressed. The inclusion of his work “In the Air” also provides uncanny links to the failed coal mining attempts in and around Newington.

The mystery proffered by John Gillies continues through to the 10 metre narrative work on paper by Blue Mountains artist Locust Jones entitled “summermurder”. Failure and success abound side by side in this work that is both spectacular and intriguing. It is a work that was produced in 2014, after a trip to South Africa where the artist saw a rhinoceros for the first time. This is the starting point for a meandering patterned meditation on this ancient, noble and endangered creature. The applied pattern from the trees above spread to other parts of the drawing that include Formula 1 racing cars, Palestinian stone throwers, the London riots, Kim Jong Un and crosswords, sourced from newspapers of the time and personal photographs. The clue to the title “summermurder” is found in a crossword that Locust Jones completed, the answer to 1 across was the word “summer” and 3 down͛ ’s answer was “͚murder”. Jones explains …”Joining these words together seemed to reflect the slaughter of the rhinoceros (and other animals) that occurred in the summer of 2014”.

A utopian setting for an artists’ studio residency at Wellington’s Te Whare Hara became the location for Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healey’s complex and intriguing series of digital reinterpretations and integrations of landscapes from Kiwi horror films that explore a Kiwi Gothic in relation to colonialism. Perhaps the convenience store with its CCTV footage, often owned and operated by second or third generation families of original migrants creates a sense of unease that is a far cry from Te Whare Hara that has been described in glowing terms as …the Russell Crowe of all residency situations: the studio enjoys a panoramic view of the harbour: by merely stepping out the studio door, breaks from working can be spent fishing or breathing in the sea air….” In present times, in the hands of Cordeiro and Healey, this vision subsequently opens out to include an amalgam of everyday items interspersed with images of masked bandits in convenience stores. These same stores, often owned and operated by first generation immigrants, are often the site of dark crimes: a harsh impression for a newcomer.

In the context of Mining Pyrite, art and pyrite have certain similarities - both crystallise and both are collectable. Pyrite is sometimes called Fools Gold because of its similarity in colour and shape to the precious metal, gold. But Mining Pyrite really refers to the crisis that we have in Australia relating to the funding and failure of support networks for creativity. The continuous exodus of artists from the city because of the lack of studio spaces emphasises the importance of the Artists at the Armory program and the role that it plays in attempting to maintain an arts community in the city that is rated eighth in the table of global cities despite the fact that the local ferry that serves commuters to and from the city never stops at The Newington Armory. In conclusion to this catalogue essay, Mining Pyrite, refers not only to the a parallel narrative of failure and success that can be drawn from the ‘artist’ story and environmental concerns, it also acknowledges the distant cries of “Gold Gold Gold” that optimistically resonated throughout those magnificent stadiums of “the best olympic games ever” and continue to echo across the desolate acres our creative landscape as “Coal Coal Coal”.  

Nick Vickers & Cassandra Hard-Lawrie
Curators