Yang, Haegue. 2020. Sonic Intermediates – Three Differential Equations: Sonic Intermediate-Parameters and Unknowns After Hepworth 2020/After Gabo 2020/After Li 2020. Sculptures. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of Hague Yan's three sculptures that comprise Sonic Intermediates - Three Differential Equations, 2023.
Positioned off-centre in a large hall clad with another work by Yang (Non-Linear and Non-Periodic Dynamics 2020), in a mimetic world created by the artist, these three shamanistic (Thompson 2023) sculptures pay homage to artists Haegue Yang admires, being Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth and Li Yuan-chia.
Yang has abstracted the essence of their artistic practice and migratory life stories to create sculptural portraits for each, using iconic identifiers as signs of identity (for example a hole for Hepworth, a ceiling vent for Gabo and a broom for Li). I would not have realised the purpose of these icons without the benefit of the exhibition catalogue.
I had understood that these sculptures would be activated and had assumed that audience participation would be encouraged. However in my visit to Yang’s exhibition Changing From From to From on Thursday 31 August I was told by gallery staff that the activation was scheduled for Saturdays only, and I was repeatedly chided for getting too close to the sculptures. This was not the type of audience engagement I had envisaged.
The sculptures are composites of percept and affect (Hickey-Moody 2013, 85-86). The percept is their physical presentation as human sized, anthropomorphic forms, due to the suggestion of heads, arms and bodies. However the affect of their construction from synthetic materials was one of surprise and disappointment. The sculptures were clad in a multitude of small ritualistic bells and plastic twine, as an intentional replacement for traditional materials such as straw (Thompson 2023). In a form of reverse indexicality, I had expected shamanistic materials to be more natural and organic.
My learnings from these works are to consider the percept and affect of artworks, from the materials used, as well as to be mindful of artificially constraining the performative aspect of works, if in fact they have been designed to be interactive.
Bibliography:
Hickey-Moody, Anna. 2013. "Chapter 4 Affect as Method: Feelings, Aesthetics ad Affective Pedagogy." In Deleuze and research methodologies edited by Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose, 79-95. Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, United Kingdom).
Thompson, Russell Storrer and Beatrice. 2023. Haegue Yang: Changing From From to From Parkes, ACT.: National Gallery of Australia.
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