IONA MACKENZIE
wild apple tree / emotional fertility
2024

❦

Anna Dunnill & Chelsea Farquhar, Weaving Lessons
Gallery One, 13 Jul 2024—11 Aug 2024

Sometime in May, I paid a visit to Anna Dunnill’s home. I went back to my calendar a few
moments ago to find the exact day before realising that it doesn't matter. I almost searched her
address in Google Maps to ensure my description of her front garden was accurate. But like the
date, it doesn’t matter. Feelings have longevity—maybe not eternity, but longevity—and
specificities fall away. The most important part of an experience is the impression that it leaves.


So, I remember that I felt cold as I got out of the Uber. I noted a faint feeling of tenderness
toward the tired iron gate. I’m taller than average and it was shorter than average, so I felt
strangely disproportionate as I opened it. Phew, I thought, as I clocked their normal-sized door.
Warm light bled onto the dusk blue porch as it swung open. Tenderness, again. Anna! We
smiled and small-talked—a form of discussion I’ve grown to enjoy. I used to scoff at frivolous
topics such as the weather, but I’m older now and less proud. In truth, I think it’s beautiful that
the quality of the skies makes its way into our daily dialogue. They are ever changing and so am
I.



Anna ushered me into a tall room with armchairs and a framed picture that I was moved by. I
can’t remember what it depicted, but once more, it’s the feeling that counts. Chelsea was sitting
on the floor by the heater. My sister always does that. I sipped an Earl Grey.
In the best way, Anna and Chelsea took turns rambling about what they’d been working on.
They spoke from the heart and followed each thought. I’ve always hated the fact that I ramble,
but I’m beginning to realise that it’s a charming way to communicate. There’s no promise of a
neat conclusion, no obligation to explain yourself completely or perfectly. Maybe the most
natural way to express your thoughts is to meander through them. Like, don’t get to the
point…please tarry, please linger.


Our conversation, fluent and leisured, flowed like a stream. We allowed for undulations and
detours, as most streams do. I learned that Anna and Chelsea had been casting objects in the
backyard, and the shiny fruits of their labour had been laid out carefully on the coffee table. As I
examined them, I was told of the duo’s autumn evenings; two puffer jackets hunched around a
little blue table, melting recycled pewter in a cooking pot on a camping stove. There is
something about huddling around a source of warmth that bonds people. Maybe it’s primal or
maybe it's unbridled romanticism, but again (and again), it doesn’t really matter which…


It’s the water’s ripple, not the thrown stone.


Chelsea AirDropped me some photos of their sessions. It was obvious that the purpose of these
images was to document the process. They were taken quickly and spontaneously with little
regard for framing or composition. For that, I find them especially interesting and beautiful.
There is one photo in particular that I’m drawn to; it shows already-cast objects melting in the
cooking pot. Their objecthood seems to collapse as their de-forming bodies, almost aglow, melt
into one another. I adore this state they’re in but am deeply saddened by it. They are
themselves for one last time and in a few moments they’ll be utterly unrecognisable; just a pool
of silver in a cooking pot in a backyard at dusk.



A feeling like familiarity rises now. I am reminded of the times that I’d make so-called perfumes
in the garden, with knots in my hair and possum poo on my feet. The recipe was ever-changing
and unsuccessful by a perfumist’s standards, but always came straight from the heart. I
remember the smell on my hands as I’d rip leaves of the golden diosma from its strands and
plop them into the muddy water. The wattlebirds would get to the grevillea flowers before I ever
could, so I’d collect some of its twigs and learn to see their beauty too. A few granite pebbles
would make their way into the mix where they’d sink to the bottom of the bowl, offering no
perceptible benefit to the overall accord. But they were necessary to include. Some things are
valuable for their intangible impact, rather than any tangible one. They say a lesson will repeat
itself until you learn it. Here it is again.


Oh, to be a stick soaking in flowered water! I long to absorb my environment and let my
environment absorb me. When I made perfumes, I threw everything in one bowl. Each leaf or
flower or twig or rock became an interdependent part of something bigger. Everything mattered!
And all ingredients were equalised…floating and coalescing, staining and scenting one another
in a muddy, made-up ecosystem.


I take this memory as a reminder to let life rub off on me. Just as my hair absorbs the smell of
firewood on my walk home, just as my shoulders are freckled by the sun. I let the shy smile of a
child heal me and the pain of a stranger change me, compel me. I allow myself to be influenced
by my surroundings in this muddy, made-up ecosystem.


Anna and Chelsea’s cast objects are particularly interesting because of the way they’ve come to
be. The pewter they are made of has formed many objects before them. Similarly, the people
who came before us form us. There is a thought that has been returning to me often lately: it is
the process behind an aesthetic that makes it interesting…


A strenuous climb (usually) leads to a better view.


That’s not to say that the process behind artmaking must be demanding, but I find myself more
compelled by the materiality of an artwork when the process behind its creation is particularly
meaningful. Anna and Chelsea could’ve bought pewter from a hardware store, but they chose to
collect it from op shops in the form of second-hand homewares. This pewter once took up space
in the homes of strangers. Its past is now infused into Anna and Chelsea’s work.



No object exists in a vacuum. Despite the persistent attempts of the White Cube, context cannot
be removed. There is an urge, I sense, in some contemporary art—an undoubtedly futile
desire—to render objects as contextless, individual masses with no palpable past. They can’t
wither in the wind. Their surfaces are clean and hard and won’t leave traces or residue.


I wonder if this move toward heavy fabrication comes from a devaluing of the hand and its
association with craft (and by proxy, poverty, and women, and Indigeneity). The more obvious
the impact of the hand, the more closely the work aligns with historically undervalued
communities (or at the least, invokes discourse involving them). With plastic or steel or timber,
the hand is often rendered invisible. Not absent, but invisible. I can’t help but notice masculinity
in such cutting-edge, impenetrable materials. Perhaps their socially assumed, unquestioned
value in exhibition spaces stems from this association.


The hand brings with it a past; it imbues material with history. As viewers with hands of our own,
we too are implicated when the hand’s impact is visible. On the contrary, we can’t physically
relate to sleek surfaces and sharp edges. For some, it may be more comfortable this way—not
relating, viewing art from afar. When our bodies aren’t implicated, we can sit back and detach.
But as the distance between ourselves and the work grows, we learn to accept (and expect) the
passive consumption of art.


A visible association with the hand is just one way that objects are imbued with substance. That
is, the hand isn’t crucial in the formation of an object’s depth. For example, seashells often
sweep from sandbed to sandbed without ever encountering anyone, and yet, they wash ashore
already eloquent. I’d argue that if you were to 3D-print a seashell, it would lose much of its
language. There are valid reasons why we recreate objects, but I think it’s only necessary to do
so when the iteration will say something more than, or different from, the original. What is the
point of a thing stripped bare? Where can meaning be found in something gutted?



So, substance over structure! Maybe that’s what I’m getting at. It’s less about the heart and
more about the feeling that flows through it; less about the fruit and more about the taste. There
is an emotionality to materiality. I’m enamored by that intangible value.


My, my, my…the depth of things! What earth made the bricks in the walls of my bedroom?
Whose calloused hands arranged them? I see a pigeon and wonder how far it’s flown that day.
Am I rambling? I wash my face with water that once burgeoned in the sky. Yes. There is a depth
to everything and what a tragedy it is to flatten. I inadvertently take on the mannerisms of my
mum and my friend tells me she wears a silk scarf after hers. There is a reason they tell you
where the grapes that forge wine were grown—it matters.


The vase on my mantle was handblown by a man in Malta.

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