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This Everything Water
Kay Lawrence, with Aubrey Tigan and Butcher Joe Nangan
South Australian School of Art Gallery
Season Closed
Any exhibition working with only one main material risks becoming monotonous or limited in its visual exploration. The use of pearl shell in 'This Everything Water' however, revels in the simple elegance of the iridescent material, forming a balanced and reflective body of work. Shells, buttons and textiles are used to explore physical and metaphorical ideas of the pearl shell, working between the cultural opulence of the pearl and the simplicity of its smooth white surfaces.
A mass of mother-of-pearl spreads across the gallery floor in a large oval formation. The usual tesserae of the mother-of-pearl mosaic is exchanged for the random shapes and sizes of the rippling shell pieces.
The installation Water Is Everything (2008), reflects the artificial lights like a pool of moonlight, and yet the cracked formation is reminiscent of a dry creek bed, sadly such a common sight across our current landscape. The work is enjoyable on a purely tactile level as audiences are invited to step around thousands of interlocking shards as they shimmer in the light. There is also an innate child-like desire to touch these beautifully iridescent objects, to study the universe of rainbow veins beneath the nacreous surface. It is amazing to think it is all natural - no chemicals or machines could come close in producing such intricate beauty. It is little wonder then that pearl shell has become such a strong symbol of affluence and wealth across most cultures.
Indeed, pearl shell has often been associated with abundance and expense, finding its place in the architecture and interior mosaics of the elite, inlaid in instrument keys and watch faces, and buttoned to shirts, skirts and coats. No Work For A White Man (2006-2008) presents a pair of white woolen pants covered by a shimmering layer of mother-of-pearl buttons. The work speaks of abundance beyond practicality, yet remains stark in its bone white simplicity. The trousers, surely as heavy as water, are flung across a chair - brittle reminders of the diving suits that caressed labourers into their watery deathbeds.
Pearls became the centre of a booming Western Australian industry in the early 20th century. For many cultures, including Aboriginal groups in northwest and central Australia, as well as in Christian beliefs, pearl shell has come to symbolise water, the precious giver of life. However, for labourers of the pearl shell industry - local Indigenous people and, later, Chinese, Japanese, Koepanger, Malay and Manilamen - the pearl shell also came to represent hardship and death. The history of the pearl diving industry is studded with disease, drowning and murder. It is strange to consider a material that exists with such a strong sense of duality - both the symbolic giver and taker of life, and of both endangering endurance and excessive opulence.
The association with death in the pearl shell industry is never more inherent than in Lawrence's mixed media Whitework (2004-08). Wool blankets, often the standard of exchange by colonists for land or labour, are adorned with intricate skulls stitched in a mosaic of mother-of-pearl buttons. The blankets lay folded, quiet and unassuming, under a beautifully manufactured school desk. We are kept from what lays hidden beneath the blanket folds, but we can almost certainly assume that there are more skulls to be found. It is interesting, too, that these blankets are so neatly tucked away under the desk - a symbol of education, that all-important step ladder into the developed world. Atop the desk lies white gloves, a white book; a glossary of whiteness.
Mother-of-pearl is also strongly associated with the cultural identity of the northeastern and central Aboriginal groups, and is indelibly connected to the landscape and areas from which it is harvested. It has been used in traditional ceremonies and holds strong cultural value for much of the population. Shell ornaments engraved by Bardi and Djawi law man Aubrey Tigan and Nyigina law man Butcher Joe Nangan attest to the importance of water as a giver of life. The shells have traditionally been used in ceremony, for personal adornment, and in trade. Using both traditional and contemporary motifs, the exhibited shells are engraved with interlocking lines of ochre that become ripples across the iridescent surface. The pearl shell is strong and resilient, once a living structure; a kind of bone. For saltwater people like the Djawi and the Bardi the ocean, too, is seen as living and sentient. As such, the pearl shell seems to encompass a sort of sacredness - a significance that is truly powerful.
In the exhibition catalogue, Diana Wood Conroy quotes Mumbadadi, a Walmajarri elder, as saying "This is for everybody - man and woman. This is rain. This everything water". This sentence, spoken in 1990 at Christmas Creek, Western Australia, attests to the importance of the pearl shell. The object, here, literally is water - we are taught how to understand and revere the object for all that it encompasses. Similarly, we are told how to read many of the works in the exhibition: This Is Rain (2007) does not get much more obvious than that. Personally, though, I think there is much more at play under the rippled surface of This Everything Water - a hidden darkness amongst its crystalline beauty, an ominous luminosity.
Lauren Sutter
Kay Lawrence, Whitework,
2004-2008
Artist's book designed by John Nowland
Left: Kay Lawrence, No Work for a White Man, 2006-2008
Suit by Adriana Loro
Photograph by Michal Kluvanek
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