Mélange was an IOTA24 exhibition at Mundaring Arts Centre opening in July 2024 created by the Underfoot, a companionship of artists who work with places and craft-inspired practices in the face of catastrophic ecological change. The exhibition was a ‘feast’ infused with parallel meanings and rich metaphorical associations between disciplines. Inspired by the encounter and exchange of deep time, geological forces, and the Furies with the Anthropocene, our collaborative and individual works draw on divergent and convergent threads in Underfoot’s multifaceted practices. Mélange includes traditional and modified craft genres that incorporate the languages of fibre, earth, stitch and dye, interspersed with ephemeral layers of voice, video and performance.
In geology, a mélange consists of fragments of rocks (up to kilometre-scale) within a deformed sedimentary matrix. A mélange forms during tectonic convergence that forms mountain belts, such as India colliding with Asia to create the Himalayas. In textiles, melange refers to yarns with more than one colour, and a melange fabric involves the inconsistent use of dyed and undyed fibres, resulting in a vibrant pattern.
Mélange featured custom-designed tables on a collision course. One table laden with handcrafted crockery, tableware and napery alluding to a flourishing feast, or a midden. Throughout the exhibition creative works featured hidden (coded) ecological allusions and messages. Experiences were altered by geological factors. Cultural knowledge codes ran parallel, intersected at points, but failed to converge. Parallel codes of the ecological world (nests, flowering) ran in parallel, or at odds, with the narrative of material growth – footprints of humans and more-than-humans imprinting code – art making as absorbing codes and producing bespoke new ones. You were invited to spend time in a grotto. Mélange, a kind of Alice in Wonderland meets the Anthropocene, challenged us as makers and viewers, weaving multivarious languages in unexpected ways.
Not-so-round table discussions
Over the years the underFOOT group has often met and shared meals. Taking breaks from our hectic lives, these have been special times to meet, discuss and share experiences. The not-so-round tables created in this exhibition were a space to share some of these experiences. Three special events during the exhibition featured artists, creators, critics, curators and activists discussing the craft of making in the context of interdisciplinary and multicultural practices, and the ecological polycrises. Designed to echo geological collisions—from the scale of sand grains to faulted breccia—to the collision of plate tectonics tables are colliding and coalescing—concordia and discordia—the Terrane Tables were accompanied by sculptural seats and other earth-bound references, all housed in a room-sized 1:1 scale grotto. This was the structural grotto (exchange) installation by Perdita Phillips, with participants sitting around the Terrane Tables.
not-so-round table 1: underfoot 20 July 2024
Held on 20 July just before the opening, it included five special guests (Sharmila Wood, Lee Kinsella, Jude Van Der Merwe, Colin Story and Kath Broderick) and three underFOOT artists present (Nandi Chinna, Nien Schwarz and Perdita Phillips).
The 71 minute discussion includes recent poetry read by Nandi Chinna as well as conversation that covered how underFOOT operates as a loose ‘companionship’, the influence of professional retreats with their shared meals, shared skills and shared knowledge, the importance of places, the Darling Fault and WA79 Atlas given to school children (in 1979) and different ways of bringing the voices of more-than-humans to the fore.
We thank the members of the underFOOT collective unable to attend on the day: Holly Story, Annette Nykiel, Sharyn Egan and Jane Donlin.
not-so-round table 2: codes in parallel 7 September 2024
not-so-round table 2: codes in parallel was a 63-minute discussion that featured Annette Nykiel, Sharyn Egan, Perdita Phillips and Nien Schwarz from the underFOOT collective in discussion with invited guests Michael T Wingate and Susan Hauri-Downing.
Joined by an intimate audience of seven, geologist and geochronologist Michael T Wingate gave us an insight into the deep time landscape of Mundaring and the Swan Coastal Plain. Michael’s work involved finding out the ages of different events in the Australian continent’s geological formation, including the dikes that traverse the Darling Range forest outside the gallery. Sharyn Egan described her work in the show and the importance of totems for people and country. Here she draws from her lived experiences as one of the stolen generation. The Balga (grass tree) has become a life-sustaining companion and component in her art and life. Describing herself as an artist and eco-social worker, Susan Hauri-Downing blends these approaches as a way of addressing trauma, grief and loss, drawing from nature and eco-literacy. The tricky ethics of rock collection as a hobby and as art materials was discussed, as was a question from the audience about how settler people might approach places with respect.
not-so-round table 3: Protest and Dissent in Creative Practice: Seen and Unseen
The third and final not-so-round table was on on 28 September (the day before the exhibition closed) and focussed on protest and dissent, going for a slow wander through what it means to move between life practices and art and craft making. Over 75 minutes we heard the experiences of Susie Vickery and Liana Joy Christensen who work in craft and writing respectively, but who move beyond these boundaries in multidisciplinary ways. Zooming in from Santa Fe was ecoartspace founder and curator Patricia Watts who gave us some perspective on international trends in the space between art and activism. Holly Story and Perdita Phillips brought their experiences to the table and in the audience was fellow underFOOTers Annette Nykiel and Jane Donlin and Carola Akindele-Obe (Co-Curator & Festival Director of IOTA24).
Common themes included the role of joy as a tactical manoeuvre and the importance of redistributing curatorial power to First Nations groups. Unanswered questions remained around the ‘localness’ of action—literally (in this place, Whadjuk Nyoongar Boodjar)—and because of the privilege of creative practice in a peaceful, first world country.
“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.” Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power.
Sadly on the day, Susan Flavell was unable to join us. She was also involved in the Roe 8 protests, and in January 2024 (as part of the exhibition Horn of the Moon – 13 Goddesses) she staged an online auction to redistribute the artworks: the end.of.the.world.auction — because there are no museums at the end of the world.
Support
Mélange, a IOTA24 exhibition, was hosted by the Mundaring Arts Centre and received financial support from the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industries.