reflection of the reeds, route through the park

Gallery 9, Sydney
March 2021

Photographs: Andrew Curtis, Simon Hewson

For reflection of the reeds/route through the park, Angus Gardner has created a suite of large ceramics sculptures and works on paper that teeter on the edge of control—always threatening but never quite actually deviating from a certain restraint. This body of work was produced in mid-2020 as Narrm/Melbourne residents entered stage four lockdown, and it was catalysed by a chance discovery of a pond in Royal Park, situated only a short walk from Gardner’s North Melbourne home. The park is enormous and almost labyrinthine in layout: sporadically dense vegetation and extreme variations in elevation contribute to the sense that it is impossible to ever fully know it. All of these factors lent to the more or less secluded nature of the pond Gardner encountered. He soon adopted the habit of visiting it most days; when there, Gardner would draw what he observed before translating his sketches to create the pieces now on display at Gallery 9.

Upon initial contact with Gardner’s pieces, the viewer is bombarded by intense colours and melting forms that seemingly fuse into a schizophrenic flurry. It is in fact quite challenging to describe the works which, despite their literal titles, largely refuse to represent the visual experience. The sculpture path home (reeds at sunset), for example, is a highly abstracted amalgamation of curved, pocked and jagged elements in saffron, bottle green, fuchsia and royal blue. But despite this apparent disarray, the path home (reeds at sunset)—and indeed all works in the exhibition—is surprisingly balanced. Upon closer inspection, a kind of order reveals itself through the logic of reflection. The matte-green, concave edge of the sculpture, which meets as two arches at an apex—is closely mirrored, but inverted, by a glossy, convex fuchsia ribbon that follows the same path. In this sense, this mirroring operates as the ordering system of a more unhinged, intuitive aesthetic model; matte/gloss, green/pink, concave/convex. The tensions, it would appear, are also part of a balancing dialectic.

Gardner’s visits to the Royal Park pond were a reminder of the very visceral, rhythmic cycle that natural sites operate within—a cycle marked by sunrise and sunset and the various phases in-between. But by inserting himself into the space, Gardner created an inter-play between the predictable rhythm of day and his fluctuating emotional responses to it. The pieces seem to grapple with the question: if it is impossible to translate somebody else’s subjectivity, then what is the best way to at least approximate it? As a result, Gardner turned to colour and amorphous forms in an attempt to overcome the barriers of representation. In a work on paper titled ride at dusk, the viewer practically feels the stillness of the early evening air moments before the sun slips under the horizon, a sensation that is created by Gardner’s choice of purple, saffron and blue to represent the reeds and their reflection in the pond’s water.

If the reflections that Gardner viewed in the pond catalysed this body of works, then the logic of reflection doubles down between works. This is because the abstracted “images” in the works on paper directly correspond to a clay sculpture. Therefore, there is a kind of fluidity at play between the pieces, just as we might say there is a mutability between a physical object and its reflection. When considering the reed and its image in the water, we should also consider the variables—sunlight, angle, time of day—that will change the reflection. There is, in other words, no one route between the object and its mirror image: and there is no clear route between the paper and clay work. The outcome is different in each instance, and Gardner has set himself the task of controlling, as best as possible, a number of very fluid factors—such as the way in which elements will fit into one another after firing, or the degree to which a glaze will run.  

Indeed, the physicality of the pieces in reflection of the reeds/route through the park operate on a sliding scale that, again, contributes to the overwhelming sense of fluidity in the exhibition. The works on paper, flattened behind glass and within a frame, occupy a space of visuality with just a glimpse of tactility created by a contrast of textures between the gouache, pastel and pencil. By contrast, the large-scale ceramics, dripping with glaze and approaching the size of trophies, tempt the viewer not to touch them. And yet, the question remains, if the image represented in the flat image is the “same” image in the clay sculpture and vice-versa, then which is the “origin” image and which is its reflection?

The pieces in reflection of the reeds/route through the park operate like a complex set of knots, simultaneously presenting a puzzle and the puzzle’s own solution. With gentle teasing, the knots slowly become increasingly decipherable but, at the same time, the risk of further complicating the knots is ever-present. If Gardner’s practice always seems to teeter on the edge of control, then it is a teetering that locks the physical, visual and psychological in a constant balancing act.

Amelia Winata, Naarm/Melbourne, 2021