Precipice: The Edges of Things

Artist Kat Shapiro Wood’s new exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery comprises twenty-four sculptural forms, paintings, and installations. Precipice: The Edges of Things delivers a comprehensive overview of her diverse practice across a variety of media and materials.

Variously defined as “a cliff, a steep or overhanging place, a hazardous situation,” being on the “precipice” may imply immediate danger or refer to a critical point where significant change is imminent. As the show’s wall label notes, these works “speak to meeting points, boundaries, transitions and the charged dynamic of the threshold, that precipice where both potential and surrender are at play.” In Precipice a focus on the “edge of things” brings us to the verge both literally and metaphorically.

Shapiro Wood’s broad practice stems from her original experience and training in sculpture and further study in ceramics. During recent years, this experience has been enhanced with teaching roles at Byron School of Art and elsewhere. The show combines her creative ability with colour and unique processes, enabling a wide variety of materials, both found and handmade, to be employed in the exhibition. Many works resist easy classification as one genre or another.

On entering the gallery, an equal number of art works are displayed on either side of what is often a bustling hallway. Mostly small-scale paintings hang beside tiny sculptural forms and assemblages on plinths, some less than fifteen centimetres in height. Despite the busy location, I was immediately struck by the soft, meditative aura that this selection naturally exudes. In shades of white, soft pastels, and muted tones the works sit silently and discreetly, as if waiting for the curious viewer. An assimilation of Shapiro Wood’s careful way of making combined with an inclination towards minimalist ideals mean these pared-down objects invite appreciation of their shape, colour, and surface as qualities in themselves. As the American minimalist Robert Morris once said “simplicity of space does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience,” which certainly applies here. Regardless of their apparent modesty, the works are complex, thoughtful, and deeply imbued with emotion.

Although the works in Precipice are untitled, the subtitle description that follows throws clues into the artist’s thinking. Untitled (this here has been forever in my ancient bones), Untitled (feel this), and Untitled (right there where we dissolve), all 2024 works, comprise wall duos on plaster, board, or linen. Employing a palette of pale pinks and browns which varies with the support, layers of encaustic—a traditional recipe often made from beeswax, damar resin, and colour pigment—shape the final surface. Used for several millennia, including by the ancient Greeks and Romans, the American Jasper Johns is perhaps the most well-known user of wax in contemporary painting. Among others, his famous 1954-1955 artwork, Flag, combined scraps of newsprint and coloured hot wax. Having experimented with encaustic in her practice for some years, Shapiro Wood has refined the process. In these works, the wax compound delivers a warm, organic mood that makes these paintings feel alive, like two bodies side by side.

Relationships between objects is also a theme in Precipice. Untitled (there is the thickening of light, in moments), 2024, is a work that seems to refuse classification—is it a painting or a sculpture? Comprising two found book covers in shades of forest and army green, the latter is bleached with random blots. While it is an unusual juxtaposition, aided by its subtitle the work suggests a wealth of romantic ideas conjuring images of nature, like emerging from a forest in the murky evening light. Further, the small-scale Untitled (still life, in motion), 2024, is composed of a piece of hand-shaped porcelain and a taller flattish segment of oil-covered steel. Both are situated on a rounded plaster wall plinth. The porcelain object sits close to the plinth’s edge and slightly in front of the steel blade behind it. As the work’s description appears to refer to an impossibility—how can something be still and moving at the same time?—the tension created by this minimal gathering leaves you wondering what is about to happen.

Other works embrace the show’s title more directly. In Untitled (rapture), 2023, a piece of natural pink alabaster rests precariously on the edge of a handmade ceramic support, while in Untitled (we contain multitudes), 2024, a white porcelain bowl balances on a lump of pigmented plaster. Untitled (con toda palabra), 2023, contrasts a sharp-edged brass plinth which supports a small fragment of glazed ceramic that feels as if it is about to drop to the floor. Con toda palabra (or in English “with every word”) a romantic song of the same name, embeds simple lyrics with complex meaning. Despite their small scale, the delicate balance of objects evident in these still life forms similarly allude to chance and possibility. As an exhibition, the works in Precipice: The Edges of Things successfully adopt a subtle yet weighty use of the word “precipice” to evoke the feeling that we are on the verge of something profound, or perhaps even transcendent.

This review was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 68

EXHIBITION 
Precipice: The Edges of Things
19 April – 13 October 2024
Tweed Regional Gallery, NSW