TarraWarra Biennial

The sixth TarraWarra Biennial, ‘From Will to Form’, harnesses the wild, intangible forces that animate behaviour. Working across sculpture, painting, performance and film, twenty-three artists and one collective explore the idea that art is 'not a matter of reproducing or inventing forms, but of capturing forces'. They consider the ways human will and anarchic energy can be phisicalised, tracing forces as they flow into form and back again. For some artists, will is drawn from a relationship to country and earth, while for others it is channeled through the psyche or the body.

Curated by Emily Cormack, the Biennial includes nineteen new commissions, performance events and works that refigure the spaces of TarraWarra Museum of Art (TWMA). Bidjara, Ghangalu and Garingbal artist Dale Harding’s site-specific 30m-long painting along the Vista Walk mixes red Ghangalu earth from his grandmother’s Bidjara country in the Carnarvon Gorge with his breath and saliva, a vast affective field of colour created into which the undulations of the Carnarvon Gorge are carved. Claire Lambe explores the concept of ‘psychic overflow’ in a diorama of objects hovering before a large tapestry depicting Francis Bacon’s London studio; while Lindy Lee’s bronze objects are created by throwing liquid bronze onto the ground after periods of meditation. A site-specific sculpture by Isadora Vaughan made of molten glass, uranium glass, and grit from the surrounding environment pierces the Museum’s North window, spilling out onto the ledge beyond, and Erub Arts in the Torres Strait are showing large sculptures drawing on the ancient stone fishing traps that have encircled their island since long before anyone can remember. Starlie Geikie presents personal architecture in the form of a large, hand-dyed and stitched wearable sculpture, while Kusum Normoyle has collaborated with Norwegian free jazz saxophonist Mette Rasmussen for a new video work that channels the raw energies of the Norwegian fjords into a musical score of improvised voice and saxophone.

The exhibition includes works overflowing with forces that are bodily, aberrant, abject and creative. Cormack states, ‘Set against a socio-political context of conservatism and restraint, where our will is constrained and our behaviour is increasingly legislated, this exhibition is a place for overflow. In this exhibition the active forces that compel activity are celebrated, with their anarchic, persistent and productive presence highlighted through sculpture, painting, installation and a diverse range of performative installations.’

Artists in ‘From Will to Form’ are: Belle Bassin (VIC); Vicki Couzens (VIC); Naomi Eller (VIC); Artists from Erub Arts (Torres Strait); Starlie Geikie (VIC); Agatha Gothe-Snape (NSW); Julie Gough (TAS); Dale Harding (QLD); Claire Lambe (VIC); Lindy Lee (NSW); Bridie Lunney (VIC); Rob McLeish (VIC); John Meade (VIC); Sanné Mestrom (VIC); Alison Murray (QLD); Michelle Nikou (SA); Kusum Normoyle (NSW); Mike Parr (NSW); Michael Snape (NSW); Hiromi Tango (NSW); Fairy Turner (WA); Michelle Ussher (NSW); Justine Varga (NSW); Isadora Vaughan (VIC).

EXHIBITION
TarraWarra Biennial 2018 | From Will to Form
3 August – 6 November 2018
TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria