A sense of timelessness, of slow-moving waters and a world beyond the human one ... Jan Learmonth at the opening of her recent exhibition Passages, at the Gippsland Art Gallery. By Louisa Waters
VISITING Jan Learmonth’s studio and home at Inverloch, the phrase “salt of the earth” is befitting of the experience; quite sensorially as you take in sweeping views to the south-east of Andersons Bay, inhale the salty yet delectably clean air, which instantly calms one’s fraught inner self. But then also, less tangibly, when you are greeted by Jan’s warmth and humble disposition.
It is the first sense you get of her practice, which is almost completely of the land. While humanly and humanely constructed, it feels devoid of an anthropocentric view. While Jan’s work rarely seeks to directly represent the unique landscape around her, the view from the studio is not one that can be ignored. The ocean is an ever-present force and so it seems to make itself present in the work in subtle if not overt ways.
VISITING Jan Learmonth’s studio and home at Inverloch, the phrase “salt of the earth” is befitting of the experience; quite sensorially as you take in sweeping views to the south-east of Andersons Bay, inhale the salty yet delectably clean air, which instantly calms one’s fraught inner self. But then also, less tangibly, when you are greeted by Jan’s warmth and humble disposition.
It is the first sense you get of her practice, which is almost completely of the land. While humanly and humanely constructed, it feels devoid of an anthropocentric view. While Jan’s work rarely seeks to directly represent the unique landscape around her, the view from the studio is not one that can be ignored. The ocean is an ever-present force and so it seems to make itself present in the work in subtle if not overt ways.
There is a sense also, of the slow-moving waters, of rivers or aquifers running, of the timeless work of the more-than-human world. This temporal quality of the land found in her objects, speaks more to deep time, it resists the speed of the present age, the great acceleration of the human species and ever “expanding, non-stop life-world of twenty-first-century capitalism”.1 Instead, Jan sits with the subversive, the slow movement, which privileges continuity and care for the environment and others, while it belies the individualism and consumption of the modern age. That this concept of slow movement is a privilege afforded only to certain people does not elude her work either, because there is knowledge that “while we may face the same storm, we are not necessarily in the same boat”.
Jan is a maker of boats. Her boats all occupy their own unique materiality and structure, though they are designed and built from the same matter they have always been. From time immemorial the basic configuration of boats has been universal. Their great yonic shape, so sagely designed to slice into the womb of the world, have carried all manner of fictional and factual hero. They transport us to the epic and mythic adventures of characters like Moby Dick, Odysseus and Charon. They also speak to times and place without such written word, where bark canoes and stretch-hide rafts supported life and culture for millennia.
Jan is a maker of boats. Her boats all occupy their own unique materiality and structure, though they are designed and built from the same matter they have always been. From time immemorial the basic configuration of boats has been universal. Their great yonic shape, so sagely designed to slice into the womb of the world, have carried all manner of fictional and factual hero. They transport us to the epic and mythic adventures of characters like Moby Dick, Odysseus and Charon. They also speak to times and place without such written word, where bark canoes and stretch-hide rafts supported life and culture for millennia.
Such stories and poetic symbolism are resonant in Jan’s boats. In situ, many hover above ground, aloft and adrift. In isolation they speak to a lonely journey, and in some instances the precariousness of the soul’s journey through this life and on to the River Styx to the next. En masse, however, they speak to global flows of people, knowledges, plant and animal, further how people and place were raided, traded and colonised. Yet while fraught with friction and disquiet, there is something serene about her boats as they hover almost like blithe spirits of otherworldliness.
"Travelling Before the Wind". Sculpture by Jan Larmonth Jan is drawn to the activity of the canoe and has spent her life travelling episodically down and up rivers via the vessel. She says “The visual perspective when on the water is always rewarding, stimulating and so different from standing and looking from the bank; a feeling of being part of another world that can be moved through quietly. Along the river, eons of weather sculpt the fragile limestone cliffs which are home to birds and plants. Amongst reflections and shadowed reeds are places for hunters with long legs and javelin beaks. Creatures below are swirls with flashing scales.” Her immense appreciation for this other world becomes clear, as does her concern for the health and vitality of the rivers, lakes and wetlands. As such her boats are constructed from the natural detritus of these environs. They tread softly and echo the fragility of these ecologies.
Just as the waters have been conduit for her muses, so too has the land. Much of her work is a response to place, as she has immersed herself in the particularities of places and in turn brings those places in part to us – granules of Tanami Desert sands or desert casuarina leaves, for example. Like a bower bird she collects the discarded remains of human industry from such places – found copper from a water tank, found fishing line, and found toy factory pulley wheels.
Just as the waters have been conduit for her muses, so too has the land. Much of her work is a response to place, as she has immersed herself in the particularities of places and in turn brings those places in part to us – granules of Tanami Desert sands or desert casuarina leaves, for example. Like a bower bird she collects the discarded remains of human industry from such places – found copper from a water tank, found fishing line, and found toy factory pulley wheels.
This lexicon of found materials tells us stories beyond the story of the artefact she makes. There are layers of touch before she reimagines them and those layers are never discarded during her own process. Her idiosyncratic constructions, sculpted from weathered wood, metal and stone, are cast, welded, woven and carved, each with a mastery of hand. They continue a dialogue which comments further on the environment and the human condition within it. Some forms joyously speak to whimsical and absurd. In some instances, so clever and understated they feel like they come from the court jester, who through sheer wit undermines the hubris of it all. While other works speak to a certain melancholia directed at the status quo.
Her shelters, for example, small humpies made from what ever might be available, in some instances speak to the vagabond, providing a humble abode for a lost soul. Other shelters demonstrate that despite the circumstances, we might all find community and the space in which we can meet and greet, then discuss and perhaps even action ways of being and sustaining. These shelters are never grand halls nor monuments of memory, rather they are small, humble, organic builds, and low to the ground. They are complete subversions of the concrete megastructures so desired and common to the patriarchal age of modern architecture. Instead, they are warm, inviting, and the viewer is almost coerced to shrink down in order to enter and sit humbly within.
Her shelters, for example, small humpies made from what ever might be available, in some instances speak to the vagabond, providing a humble abode for a lost soul. Other shelters demonstrate that despite the circumstances, we might all find community and the space in which we can meet and greet, then discuss and perhaps even action ways of being and sustaining. These shelters are never grand halls nor monuments of memory, rather they are small, humble, organic builds, and low to the ground. They are complete subversions of the concrete megastructures so desired and common to the patriarchal age of modern architecture. Instead, they are warm, inviting, and the viewer is almost coerced to shrink down in order to enter and sit humbly within.
Her whimsical creatures bring humour, whether a bunch of skeletal bird heads positioned as jury, or more post-apocalyptic creatures of a Mad Max aesthetic. We are immediately brought to the story they might be telling. One ponders the potential series of injustices committed by a nameless institution, to then be held to account by an eclectic group of angry birds. We delight in miniature scale models of fantastical war craft that appear to be en route to their mysterious ends, at a sluggish pace which is dictated by their raw materials. Her animals of this country, however, bring sadness. The remnants of an echidna, roadkill, recomposed in its skeletal form; its spikes beautifully composed against its tail and skull. We are alerted immediately to the stain of the human and its impact on their soft lives.
Her land-based works are also a response to the way she moves through the environment she lives in, in regional Australia. Familiar motifs – a windmill, bridge, wagon – suggest nostalgically simpler and slower times past. So too do the means with which she sculpts them. Her maps further allude to the spaces she has traversed, they capture a moment in time and in stasis, on an everchanging landscape, and speak further to their mutable borders and boundaries, which are subject to those who claim to possess it.
Yet, with all this said, what is evident in her work is a lack of dogmatism. The desire to make the right critical judgement or that strange imperative to conceive and surround the works with meaning does not particularly belong here, even though this author seeks to do so. These works do not dictate to us, nor do they force themselves to be heard. The danger in this, however, is that her work can be seen or muted as simply beautiful. There is indeed a poetic quality to her work, where each object expresses quietly, dignified sentiments by means of understatement and suggestion. Like the artist herself, who says on writing about her work, “the less words the better” and on displaying her work “less is better than more”.
The same could not be said of her practice however. While her materiality touches lightly on the earth, as an artist she has been prolific. There has been an impulse to make. Her training at the National Gallery School in the 1960s would only provide a rudimentary introduction to sculpture, but it has been a self-determined life dedicated to the practice of sculpture which has made her a master.
Dr Louisa Waters curated Jan Learmonth’s recent exhibition at the Gippsland Art Gallery. This essay was first published in the gallery’s magazine.
Her land-based works are also a response to the way she moves through the environment she lives in, in regional Australia. Familiar motifs – a windmill, bridge, wagon – suggest nostalgically simpler and slower times past. So too do the means with which she sculpts them. Her maps further allude to the spaces she has traversed, they capture a moment in time and in stasis, on an everchanging landscape, and speak further to their mutable borders and boundaries, which are subject to those who claim to possess it.
Yet, with all this said, what is evident in her work is a lack of dogmatism. The desire to make the right critical judgement or that strange imperative to conceive and surround the works with meaning does not particularly belong here, even though this author seeks to do so. These works do not dictate to us, nor do they force themselves to be heard. The danger in this, however, is that her work can be seen or muted as simply beautiful. There is indeed a poetic quality to her work, where each object expresses quietly, dignified sentiments by means of understatement and suggestion. Like the artist herself, who says on writing about her work, “the less words the better” and on displaying her work “less is better than more”.
The same could not be said of her practice however. While her materiality touches lightly on the earth, as an artist she has been prolific. There has been an impulse to make. Her training at the National Gallery School in the 1960s would only provide a rudimentary introduction to sculpture, but it has been a self-determined life dedicated to the practice of sculpture which has made her a master.
Dr Louisa Waters curated Jan Learmonth’s recent exhibition at the Gippsland Art Gallery. This essay was first published in the gallery’s magazine.
