The Strange Quiet of Things MisplacedBorn in a small town in Southern Poland, Elisa Markes-Young is a relatively new face on the contemporary art scene in Australia, yet her work sits convincingly within the broad parameters of contemporary textile practice.The artworks successfully interweave multiple investigations into the history of traditional cultural textile practice, its contemporary transpositions and the artist’s own introspective relationship with the medium itself. As with much of Elisa Markes-Young's work its genesis is very personal. At its core it documents the artist’s own position in the world. The content of the textiles opens a dialogue about the mapping of our identity through memory, our ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. The themes which chart the daily explorations into self are proof of someone’s presence in the world, a memory or a story, the smallest and seemingly insignificant details of recent and past existence which lead us to question who we are and how we relate to the world around us. This series has steadily evolved from previous works such as What I Am*, exhibited at the Breadbox Gallery in 2006 and Long Departed Landscapes* at the Kurb Gallery in 2007. While Elisa Markes-Young is openly honest about being the central character of these narratives, the work is also very open to multiple readings. The exhibition The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced, weaves a thread between the microcosmic world that informs who we are, our personal and intimate spaces, our uniqueness and inherited values, as well as the macrocosmic and sometimes foreign space in which we navigate daily. Philosophers such as Locke, Hume and Freud all generally affirmed the connection between identity and memory, adding that the role of memory is to permit us to comprehend the causal relations among events and thus our own position in the world, whether consciously or unconsciously. Elisa Markes-Young’s work can be initially understood through the Lockean view of the self, which is predominantly an empirical or observed one. In these discourses our identities are thought to be inductive, constructed from actual observation or knowable from memories of our sensory experiences, as well as our reflections on these experiences. Although now in Australia since 2002 Elisa Markes-Young still feels caught between worlds, often finding it difficult to consolidate her position between a culturally familiar past and a place that is not yet her own - that seems to lack comparative models for her to identify with. This fractured existence and feeling of displacement is what fuels the content of the exhibition. It is a response to the perceived absence of familiar models of collective consciousness that stimulates and drives her creative introspective inquiry into the realms of self-identity, perceived identity and memory. Elisa Markes-Young does not ascribe an exclusive identity to each of the works but perceives them as a collective unity, as part of a collective consciousness. “…The question is the balance between fitting in with your surroundings and cultivating your own uniqueness”; Overall the pieces document the stages of a single progressive work where one piece seamlessly flows into the next - never severing the narrative as the work is created. Each textile has its own fundamental nature but also conforms as a piece of a single puzzle that constitutes the ‘whole’. The textiles are created through a method of drawing, crocheting and sewing. There is very little preparatory sketching or design development. The development process is inherent in the physical fabrication of the piece and the design evolves from this focussed and often contemplative approach. The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced is very much a private self-portrait that mirrors the artist as much as it mirrors her personal creative process. Strongly underscored by a conceptual inquiry into the characteristics of memory and identity within a cyclic process of self-definition and re-definition, Elisa Markes-Young’s creative process is meditative and rhythmic, systematic and exact. This methodical engagement with process is an extension of the artist’s personality, particularly as the work is a direct consequence of the artist’s own search for answers. The mathematical exactness and sequential precision of the work highlights the systematic nature of how we cursorily perceive memory, yet importantly each work reveals areas of shadow, where the weaving and stitching is missing, or has disappeared. It is these areas within a structured and cohesive pattern that draw attention to the crux of human fallibility. The pencil drawing, the negative image is what is left when things have gone, the dust of a vanished memory. Memories become bleached and unclear over time. Our recollections of things past, objects, situations, feelings and people often manifest again through stimulus and association such as listening to a song or seeing something on a television program, yet often they are merely fragments which lead to question how, when and why did we forget. Memories shift over time, they can be damaged, they are vulnerable and susceptible to the impact of other events, images and narratives. We often question if that which is remembered is accurate or in some way filtered though other more recent recollections. Two people who shared the same experience will remember things differently, different aspects of the same memory will be more or less important to each. The changeable and unpredictable nature of memory is often filled with nostalgia, which can bear greatly on how we remember. We rarely spend time analysing these concerns and it is only when something is forgotten that we may question ourselves. The works in the exhibition are filled with hints of memories lost and frayed as well as memories that are deep-seated, reassuring and comforting. This dialogue between presence and absence and the constant shift between the certainty and ambiguity of who we are is skilfully addressed throughout the exhibition by way of recurrent subtle shifts in the design, colour and composition of each work. There are sensitive variations in sections of the works, areas where only a few threads are missing or present. The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced #02 is reminiscent of brain waves, metrical yet unstable and impermanent. In The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced #03 some of the circular elements are of varying sizes, loose threads have been left as a reminder that as much as there is continuity between memory and ideas, there can also be an abrupt finality to memory loss and remembrance, as in the decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease. Much in the same way that we think of memory as a carefully organised archive in sequential order, tidy and accessible, the patterns in the works are very much linked to this misconception. Elisa Markes-Young also relates the linkages between patterns and structure to the idea of collective consciousness, a collective experience, a sense of interconnectedness. Understanding that each of us might be linked to a greater whole, in much the same way ripples radiating out from a pebble thrown into water can be a metaphor to represent our sense of ever widening identity. Linking memory and identity is a logical step in the process of evaluating who we are and how we have developed our idea of self. Elisa Markes-Young uses the traditional technique of crocheting, a technique that most Western children of Elisa’s generation were taught. It was one of the first creative tools used by girls in particular, to make decorative borders for linens. It was common, anyone could do it in its simplest form, and as such it is often frowned upon because of its perceived lack of exclusivity and its domesticity. The use of this method links the artist back to one of her fundamental memories, it is about a place, a history, it’s a symbol of her past and has ultimately become an autobiographical tool. By using this technique, simple as it seems, Elisa has successfully addressed a series of key issues: the commonality of the subject matter, the misleading notion of perceived simplicity and effortlessness in the ordinary acts of storing and retrieving memories and the fallibility of conscious control over much of what we remember and forget. The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced is strongly linked to place and time, to family and history. Crocheting is a tribute to self, a willingness to acknowledge past histories and reminders of who the artist is. It is a fragment of reassurance in a new world, a comforting memory and an important thread that has woven her personality thus far. For Elisa this technique is a hook into the past, as a memory it is a defining one and is very firmly about a sense of ‘home’. Elisa Markes-Young’s work evolves out of a myopic search for her place in the world. While she begins this artistic journey as the central character whose Polish origins, German influences and Australian surroundings come together to shape the final visual dialogue, she has also been able to generate a dialogue that will ensure a much broader context for these works. |
paola anselmiPaola Anselmi is a Perth-based freelance curator, arts writer and consultant. A contributor to Australian arts publications such as Object, Artlink, Eyeline and Broadsheet, magazines and numerous exhibition catalogue texts. She has held curatorial and research roles at the Art Gallery of WA, Royal Perth Hospital Art Collection, Centre for Contemporary Art, Luigi Pecci, Prato, Fondazione Mazzotta, Milan, and undertaken numerous public and private collection development projects. * Links open in a new window.
The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced #02
The Strange Quiet of Things Misplaced #03 |
