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Lyndal Osborne: Geographies and Objects of Enticement January 11 to February 24, 2002
Lyndal Osborne was born in
Newcastle (New South Wales) Australia. She
studied at the National Art School in Sydney and received her MFA from the
University of Wisconsin, USA. Since
1971, Osborne has been based in Edmonton, and is a Professor in the Department
of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. Osborne has been exhibiting
in Canada and internationally since the early 1970s.
Her work is represented in numerous Canadian collections, including: the
National Gallery of Canada; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Edmonton Art Gallery;
Art Gallery of Hamilton; University of Saskatchewan; and University of Calgary.
Internationally, her works are in the collection of the Kunstverein,
Frechen, Germany; Cracow BWA Gallery, Poland; Art Gallery of Tolbuhin, Bulgaria;
Beloit Art Centre, Wisconsin; the University of Michigan; Dickerson State
College, North Dakota; and Texas Tech, in Lubbock. Osborne established a
reputation as an innovative printmaker, and has been included in many important
invitational and juried exhibitions.1 There is, however, a link
between Osborne's print and sculptural work:
smaller pieces were source material for the development of lithographic
images, and as Osborne writes, "the sense of repetition and of layering are
also components of both print and installation ... my artistic concerns have
remained the same through the evolution of the medium change."
Her sculptural installations were first shown at the Edmonton Art Gallery
in 1990. Since then, Osborne has
continued to develop this aspect: four
major works from 1998-2001 comprise the exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery,
as well as two lithographs that show the interrelationship.
This is Osborne's first solo show of sculpture in BC.2 David Garneau wrote of
Osborne, "[she] is a collector ... a weaver, a shaper, an arranger.
During daily two-hour walks near her home in the verge between the city
and farmer's fields, she harvests local grasses, flowers, metal; any dead, dying
or discarded thing that shows promise of eventually being resuscitated into a
new being through her care."3 While the
"collector" description cannot be disputed, it is also something of an
understatement in the conventional meaning of the term. Osborne has an
inquisitive eye, but does not make the connoisseur decision - the hallmark of
the "professional" collector -- which thing is "better" than
another. Moreover, she has no fear
of continuing to accumulate, whereas even the most ambitious of object and
artifact collectors will stop when a "set" is deemed complete.
But her activity is fundamental, rather than indiscriminate: she is a
gatherer, rather than a "hunter".
Her discerning eye is directed to a total view and is, as Garneau
indicates, but the beginning of the work, a sum greater than the parts. Osborne describes the
monumental wall work Tableaux For Transformation, 1998:
"I wanted to recreate the sense of a horizon line formed by trees as
viewed from a distance (... what I see from my studio window looking south). It
is presented as a grid, which emphasizes the horizon line broken into sectioned
fragments much as one would be able to stop action in a film and view it, frame
by frame. The fact that everything can be captured within one frame and that
within the framework we see the world from outside is a way of focussing on the
specialness of the contents." The materials, collected over 35 years, have
been given meaning by association, "[they] embody my memories and
associations with past experiences and places visited."
If a metaphorical landscape, there is a transformation into a memento
mori. The work is dedicated to the
memory of her husband, Bill Emes. A
recently completed work, Tracing Tides; A Topographical Investigation, 2001,
is another landscape, bridging two sides of the world: the Murramarang National
Park on the eastern coast of N.S.W., Australia and the Gros Morne National Park
in Newfoundland. She writes,
" the rocky outcrops, sand dunes, river estuaries, rock pools, sandy and
pebbly beaches were the focus of my investigation. At each low tide I would
examine the high water tide lines and collect various debris as it was washed
ashore. Some of the material was natural to the locale but often it was peppered
with man made detritus. These had there own peculiar poignancy in Newfoundland
with the assortment of lobster bands, wooden crab traps, shotgun
cartridges and discarded plastic. All are reminders of a decimated
fishing industry." In another recently completed
work, Study Table, 2001, a steel table is packed with 425 specimen boxes.
They contain various small elements "harvested" (Osborne's
term) during daily activities over the past 18 years. She wanted to bring attention to the objects themselves,
"their ambiguity, novelty and through repetition, their power to create a
presence which is unique, but at the same time mirrors both the order and
unexpectedness that exists in nature." In addition to locality, naming is
an important aspect of her practice. In Spinners, 1997, she lists the materials
gathered and used: sage, day
lilies, rhubarb seed, dogwood, lime grass, yellow willow, cattail leaves, reeds,
wire, spear grass gaillardia and palm leaves.
Yet, as much as these work incorporate natural materials into landscape
projections -- the natural world as the canvas -- there is a strong cultural
connection in her work to the oral tradition of indigenous peoples, cultures
that have an on-going connection to the land and spirit, the creation
mythologies and stories that are part of everyday life.
In reference to Tracing Tides, Osborne also speaks of the
experience of observing Australian Aborigines in her childhood, as they sat on
the ground fashioning small objects, telling stories and laughing.
The capacity to laugh should not be disregarded as a mere reaction to
humour, but an important form of social communion. In Australian Aboriginal
Belief (cosmology), nature and culture are inseparable, a concept that is common
to the different language groups. Images ("paintings") that many of
these language groups create also serve as maps or "deeds" to that
land, but the connections include other cultural objects, in particular what the
Western World has come to regard as craft or decorative handiwork.
In Maningrida -- an area at the top end of the Northern Territories, to
the west of the Gulf of Carpentaria -- the making of fibre objects continues for
economic reasons (there is a white, southern market, and therefore a much-needed
source of income), but always with a link to the spiritual world. "The existence of such
objects is never attributed to human creativity but to the action of certain
Ancestral Beings who initially forged the connection between the spiritual and
more mundane spheres of life. It is
through the philosophy of Ancestral creation that the boundaries between what is
art and what is craft in a western sense, are rendered meaningless." Margie West 4 Osborne also makes reference
(as resonance) to the cultural tradition of the Maasai in South Africa, who keep
the hair balls coughed up by a lion in the death spasm.
They celebrate the killing, and are highly esteemed tokens of courage.
The ball belongs to the warrior who speared the lion: it is passed on from
generation to generation. What
Osborne does should not be mistaken either as cultural appropriation, nor a
purely personal, obsessive activity. In
1979-81, Robert MacPherson (Australian b. 1937) "created" a series of
detritus sculptural objects titled Relics of Boredom. Gathering materials
while working as an office cleaner, he fashioned balls of rubber bands, red tape
[sic], and mounds of bent, discarded staples and paper clips that he removed
from the office carpets.
The "boredom" is not his, but the indifference of those who
discarded these materials. Like Osborne they are given special meaning even if the
aesthetic quality is questioned by many. The spectacle of the mundane
has also entered film culture. In Michael
(1996), John Travolta plays an earth-bound, seedy Archangel Michael.
On a road trip to Chicago -- having agreed to prove his "angelness"
to a reporter (William Hurt) for a "scandal" magazine -- Michael
insists that they take a detour to visit the world's largest ball of twine off
the road, in the middle of "nowhere". Michael, the divine creature, is
in awe of the human vision and persistence, and the monumentality. Cosmology, a way of seeing
and appreciating the meaning in everything, is a term bandied about in art, but
in Osborne's work and life, it is a truth and on-going inquiry.
Curiosity is one thing, but embracing the mysteries of life is another.
It cannot end, and the works, once completed, do not invoke closure.
The viewer enters into the private world to discover something of
themselves, the world around them and underfoot. Ihor Holubizky FT.1
Canadian Contemporary Printmakers, Bronx Museum of Fine Art, 1982; World Print
IV, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1983; Norwegian International Print
Biennale, 1982, 1984, 1992; 1st
Kochi International Triennial Exhibition, Japan, 1990; International Biennale Print Exhibition, Taiwan, 1989, 1991,
1993; International Biennale of
Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1993; Sapporo
International Print Biennale, Japan, 1992 and 1994; 3rd International Biennale,
India, 1995; and Lines of Site, Galbenkian Galleries, London (England), 1999. FT.2
Osborne's printwork was shown in (un) natural histories, with Gwen Curry, at
Open Space Gallery, Victoria, in 1996. FT.3
David Garneau, Lyndal Osborne, The Poetic Structure of the World, Southern
Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, 16 October - 23 November, 1999: p.11 FT.4
Margie West, Maningrida: The Language of Weaving, Museum and Art
Gallery of the Northern Territory, Australia, 1995: p.6.
A better term than "meaningless," is indistinguishable. All quotes from the artist are from correspondence with the author, October 2001. |
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