Key Questions

Key Questions: Meaning and Value

6 October 2021

Detail from 'Entanglement'

Large-scale, multi-layered, abstract paintings on industrial canvas ‘fields’ are metaphorical backdrops for investigating connections between humans and the Earth.

Layers mirror stratification within limestone, and cartographic motifs such as contour lines suggest the physicality of the earth. Rhizomes and networks allude to ideas of being in the world, entanglements and human connection to the earth.

Rather than being confined to a particular site, I am researching the attraction I have to certain places. I consider them to be energy maps that call me. This may help to explain my nomadic life.

Questions are raised about a latent ‘way-finding' or a navigational sense that humans may have and a possible connection to magnetic and diamagnetic energy fields within the earth. Does the human psyche respond to these unseen energies in subtle ways?

According to scientists at Caltech and the University of Tokyo humans can unconsciously detect changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields. (eNeuro, March, 2018).

The unseen energy of geological pressure over time results in a mysterious, chalky stratification in limestone. A rich vault of memories capturing life and death over millennia can be found in its layers. Limestone is diamagnetic. This means that when it is in a magnetic field it does not interact with it at all, or it actually makes a weak negative magnetic field in response.

Green spaces in my work speak about magnetic energy. Paleomagnetism can show how the Earth’s magnetic field has changed orientation and intensity over time. What, if anything, can be inferred about diamagnetism and magnetism from the sites of interest in my research?

Philosophers Husserl and Heidegger talk about phenomenology and 'dasein' to discuss ideas about human’s lived experience on the earth. They describe consciousness as including elements of subjectivity.

Artists that explore unseen energies and their effects include Hilma af Klint who was interested in scientific as well as spiritual realms to inspire her work. Australian duo, Haines and Hinterding seek to reveal unseen energies by combining elements from science, the occult and philosophy. Julie Mehretu is an artist who uses scale and mapping to make cartographies she describes as ‘story maps of no location’.

Agnes Martin once said: “the mind knows what the eye has not seen.”

The challenge is to develop a visual language informed by art theory and history, philosophy and science to affectively convey these unseen energies within my mind’s eye.