Lea Ferris
Lea Ferris’ new series of marble sculptures explores both the magic and mortality of the reef.
The stories of reef are inscribed in Ferris’ medium, as the marbles were literally created by corals. The calcium carbonate exuded by the microscopic corals millions of years ago was heated and compressed by eons of earth processes to become marble. Every vein, every colour, every pattern tells the intimate and broad scale story of coral reefs and life on earth. ‘The pieces in this show are my tribute to corals – the true sculptors of the reef’, reflects the artist. They are glimpses of her experiences underwater, conveying Ferris’ observations of ‘a world of infinite varieties of forms; explosions of nowhere-else seen colours; endless diversities of patterns; incessant ever-changing interactions’, as well as her feelings of ‘awe, humility, joy, gratefulness, and wonder’.
For Ferris, the undersea world of coral reefs is more wondrous and spectacular than our wildest imaginings. Her sculptures convey the magic of this hallucinogenic, kaleidoscopic world, yet at the same time they hint at the fatality of reef. The ephemerality of coral in a time of climate change is paradoxically captured in the permanence of the marble, evoking a sense of fossilisation; mummification. Ferris comments, ‘For the first time ever, on our planet, we, me, you, us humans are causing and witnessing, knowingly, coral death at a rate and scale that threatens the destruction of this magical paradise … I have seen and touched a once living reef now covered in nothing but green algae.’
The works in this show are thus both celebrations and lamentations. ‘I used to think of them as the canaries of the reef. But now I think of them as sirens – not in the strict Homeric sense of singing voices luring us to our deaths, but rather calling to us for help, to save them and, in doing so, ourselves.’
EXHIBITION
Lea Ferris: Homage to the Reef
18 November – 10 December 2020
Defiance Gallery, Sydney
I met with Gary Deirmendjian in his studio, or one aspect of it at least, at a café in Sydney’s Kings Cross. He is self-described...
Adam Douglas Hill (AKA Blak Douglas) is an attention-seeking artist. Seemingly on the fringes of the art world but also something of a celebrity whose...
With the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney recently announcing the reintroduction of admission fees from February 2025, there has been a renewed...
The colonial spasm that started in the seventeenth century, that saw the world carved up to fuel capitalism and created a socio-political landscape that led...
On his visit to Australia in 1968 the American art critic Clement Greenberg encouraged young artists to “enjoy their diversity”—advice Jock Clutterbuck appreciated. As a...
Here are brief segments pulled from fieldnotes that emerged from the beginning of the first two weeks of my fieldwork in the rural town of...
Bathurst has inspired the exhibition yet it’s not an exhibition about Bathurst. My mum grew up there. My grandparents and uncle had a farm there,...
The typical arc of a mid-career retrospective exhibition is that of an artist arriving at a fully formed artistic style. But this major exhibition is...
It’s not as though the national attitude toward acts of terrorism was more permissive in the past. Thank you very much, 2006, in which footage...
