Cells

Nets project

These samples were experimenting with the use of ‘solvy’. The theme is the environment and how it is quickly degrading and being destroyed around us. The use of net like structures to hold the leaves was to link in the samples with the nets, but it could also be nodding towards the use of illegal fishing nets in our oceans that catch innocent sea-life and subsequently kill off members of the species that don’t need to be. It also hints towards the destroying of forests, which then leads into the loss of rare animals that no longer have a home because their habitat has been destroyed. The animals, in both cases, are now trapped, like the leaves in the middle sample. Their homes are no longer solid, like the leaves in the third sample.

Architectural Nets Piece

In this piece I wanted to use the clear plastic to create some sort of a grid, or net. I really like how the plastic captures and refracts light and casts shadows even though the light passes through it. The plastic was originally a case for a product, so I wanted to use it as a template for an architectural structure. But in order to do that, I needed to deconstruct the plastic, by cutting away pieces, and then reconstructing it by weaving the pieces into place. From that point, it really became about the process of putting it together, as it really demanded that it be done strategically, or it just kept falling apart and flopping over.

Waterlog

Thought I’d share a wonderful book with you all -  ‘Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain‘, by Roger Deakin,1999.

It is a travel book by a swimmer who swims his way across Britain-in moats, lochs, ponds, streams, the sea,fens, swimming pools and canals. He looks at history, ecology, natural science, native swimmers’ rights and more, with great humanity and wit. An uplifting book that will appeal to all swimmers (Annie and Valerie take note). Available through the public library system. Connection with ‘Nets’? The other side of being “netted”- swimming freely with a wild spirit!

The Canberra Fisherman

The use of “The Canberra Fisherman” by Bryan Pratt (a well known Canberra identity) was deliberate. I liked the fact that the book was published by ANU Press, adding to the local references of the project. I also enjoyed the 1970s book cover design, and over the top image of a fish caught in a net.
My concern is with the health and future life of our local rivers and waterways. Will the native fish species survive? Will there be enough water flow in the rivers to ensure a healthy environment for people and water creatures? How will the growing population of Canberra affect the rivers?

detail of work

This is a black and white image of my work.

Net Curtain

A Sort of Sieve

I have been interested in the notion of sieves for some time – the separating of good from bad, coarse from fine, liquid from solids. It also has connotations with mining the land, what’s left? A pile of waste, waterless creeks and huge dislocation of landscape and of people trying to farm the land – Liz Jeneid

Pangasianodon Gigas

Sketchbook - ideas development

The giant Mekong Catfish is under threat of extinction due to over-fishing and loss of habitat. It is beleived that the fish used to reach sizes over 3 metres, but the largest recorded catch to date is 2.7 metres – a monster fish caught in Thailand in 2005. As its fame and the mythology surrounding it increases, so does the number of game fishermen keen to land a record catch or earn a sizeable amount of money in the exotic food marketplace.

However, the water flow of the river is increasingly more controlled by China, changing the natural habitat of the river. It seems that survival of the great catfish is being left to chance and the fish’s ability to avoid nets, lines and traps in the murky green waters of the Mekong.

My exhibition piece will be a giant, woven Pangasianodon Gigas – made as a shaped tapestry which will hang the way a fisherman would hold up his catch to display or be photographed as his trophy. The drawing was made from photographs of very large fish I observed in Laos and the detail on the body of the fish is deliberately ambiguous scales/nets.  The piece will be woven on cotton seine twine (which was originally made as a string for fish netting) with mixed weft yarns.

Detail of digital print enlargement of original drawing which will be used to make a cartoon for the tapestry.

Valerie Kirk

Nets – geometry and the encoding of nature

My interest in the Nets project relates to the potential for geometric nets – a term for 2D figures which folded along their vertices to form a 3D forms – to be seen as a form of scientific encoding of the natural world. An example I have been working with is the description of the ideal structure of minerals and other elements as geometric nets: as polyhedra and correlated mathematical formulas.
My PhD project within the Textiles Workshop at ANU investigates processes of inscription and translation in relation to scientific representations of the natural world and how these might contain potential for new ways to ‘read’ nature outside those intended by science. I am interested in instances where nature is represented as a code, pattern, numeral and formula as the starting point for both my studio and written research to explore what James Elkins has described as the ‘cascade of successive abstractions that propel scientific images away from the chaos of phenomena and into and interminable sequence of quantified ‘traces’’, such as diagrams, samples, graphs and notations.’ My research focuses on trying to understand how these processes of scientific visualisation might mediate, and even shape, our contemporary understanding of the natural world.
I have been particularly drawn to cases where science has attempted to understand natural phenomena by reducing it to its smallest units – the protein signifiers C, A, G and T of DNA, molecules, atoms, elements and so on. From these fundamental units, larger entities are formed; like a code, they can be configured and reconfigured to represent larger ‘things’ and an infinite number of variations. This has also included instances where natural phenomena has been described as mathematical patterns – formulae, algorithms, geometry – such as those used in crystallography.
In my art practice I have looked for visual analogies to explore these process and ideas and have made use of repeatable elements such as editioned prints, stencils, photocopies and, more recently, textiles ‘units’ such as the knitted or embroidered stitch.
Current work uses as its starting point scientific visualisations of various micro’ and macro-level geological forms: from mathematical analyses of mineral and other crystal structures to the colour and pattern codes of geological survey maps.
I have been exploring these forms via knitting, needlepoint and a series of drawings using a drawn mark based on the knitted stitch, again employing these repeatable single units as an analogy for scientific/mathematical codes of replication. Both the actual knits and, to a certain extent, the ‘drawn knits’ have a fantastic stretchiness; this allows the form described to have, or to allude to, a mutable, elastic quality, creating a form with uncertain boundaries, which seems to defy mathematical attempts to identify and pin down a predictable formulas.