“Out of Bounds”, Tom Blake, Pascale Giorgi, Luisa Hansal & Tamara Marrington, Imogen Kotsoglo, Pip Lewi, Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge, Joana Partyka, Tyrown Waigana ·
“To companion a companion”, Fernando do Campo ·
PICA Galleries, Perth Cultural Centre ·

We’ve heard a lot about the “hard border” in recent times and what impact that invisible barrier erected around our State had on the people contained within it. 

Artists are often outward-focused, trying to make sense of the world around them and then expressing it in their creative work.

The border being shut for the best part of two years brought to a halt any thoughts of travelling for inspiration, and it forced local artists – like the rest of us – to adopt a stronger focus on their immediate surroundings.

This is the premise of “Out of Bounds”. Curated by PICA’s Sarah Wall and Miranda Johnson, the exhibition contains new works by nine artists responding to these most unusual of circumstances.

Many of us might remember this period of restricted movement in negative terms but a quick glance at the work in the ground floor galleries at PICA suggests many of the “Out of Bounds” artists found humour and lightness amid the pandemic gloom and doom. As a result there is plenty to enjoy and much that we can all relate to.

A prime example is Pascale Giorgi’s ode to the Leaning Tower of Pisa – no, not that one, we couldn’t travel, remember. This tower is a small recreation in a suburban front yard in Albany – a place we actually could travel to (except when we had those regional borders). And Giorgi does the local landmark justice with a quirky collection of works, including a scale model of the tower in cement, sand and bamboo, and a video work putting the tower in a wider context.

And Pip Lewi’s What’s In Store (detail pictured top), a brilliant collection of giclee prints of roughly drawn scenes from supermarket shelves, recalls our intense focus on shopping etiquette. Lewi’s images of oddly juxtaposed products are at once amusing and a wry comment on the human psyche. What possesses someone to move items around the store and, say, leave a bunch of broccolini in the snack foods aisle? 

Luisa Hansal and Tamara Marrington capture the real challenges of the time with a long-distance collaboration producing 12 small oil paintings for “Out of Bounds”. With Hansal in Perth and Marrington in Melbourne, the friends adopted a process of sending the paintings back and forth between their cities, each adding to the canvases according to a strict set of rules.

The result is a quite lovely collection of vibrant abstract paintings, the colours and design of each building on the previous in the series. Together they work as a perceptive record of 12 months in their lives – working together but apart.

Tom Blake offers some deceptively simple works in cyanotype prints and etched de-silvered mirror glass which challenge the nature of what drawing can be, using light and reflections to produce beautifully pared-back images which at once suggest human closeness and the infinite limits of space.

There is also a strong sense of humour in the exhibition upstairs at PICA where Argentinian-Australian artist Fernando do Campo explores the relationship between humans and birds in “To companion a companion”. Do Campo focuses on two species, the kookaburra and sparrow, in a wide collection of works, including textiles, costumes, painting, video, typography and archival material, with an emphasis on sound and the potential for communication between our species. 

In Colours of Federation (WHOSLAUGHINGJACKASS) he examines the place of the kookaburra in Australian history, including the way it was introduced to parts of the country where it didn’t exist before European colonisation (specifically WA and Tasmania) and poses the question of what our environment would sound like without that ubiquitous laugh.

It’s an absorbing collection that has accumulated over time to become a record of an alternative history and a reminder of where we might have gone wrong in our approach to the natural world.

In Pishing in the Archives, do Campo presents a video of his attempts at cross-species chatter, “pishing” being a sound some bird watchers use to attract birds into view. It’s good fun, if a little long, and it leaves the viewer with plenty to reflect on, in terms of the way we relate to these most constant of our companions.

“Out of Bounds” and “To Companion a Companion” continue until 2 October 2022. Most of the “Out of Bounds” artists will talk about their works at a free event on 10 September 2022.

Pictured top is a detail from Pip Lewi’s ‘What’s In Store’. Photo: Miles Noel Photography