On The Ground

Perth Museum & Art Gallery exhibition guest curated by Su Grierson 2017.

‘On the ground ‘ suggests a place where practical work is done a place based in reality. And yet the very real actions of the artists and performers in these land based videos all lead us into more complex and abstract notions of the places they inhabit.

The artists selected were: Adam Chienjo, Kenya. Henry Coombes, Scotland. Ruth Levene, England. Sam Spreckley, Scotland. Christopher Macinnes, Scotland. Emma Weisland, Sweden. Kyra Clegg & Su Grierson, Scotland.

Emma Wieslander’s simple but ironic ‘Dirty Dirty Trees’ watches as a young woman in apron and rubber gloves scrubs up the local birch trees to make the forest ‘more beautiful’ for the coming tourists. While Sam Spreckley’s mesmerising incendiary dandelions in ‘Time’ speak of beauty and destruction. Henry Coombes’ psychosynthetic experiment with Ned Kelly filmed in the Tabernas desert in Spain is both visually beautiful but with an outlandish narrative. Adam Chienjo’s work ‘Limbo’ was filmed in Kenya. A dancer, Adam’s work is a direct and personal response to the windmills and the earth of his native land. In contrast Christopher MacInnes works with computer constructed landscape. In ‘Small gate, Infinite Field’ the real and the invented, the present and the future come together. Ruth Levene’s ‘Depth of Field’ is a study in simplicity as she paces out a real snow covered field. The concept of perspective reduced to a simple walking exercise.
One installation ‘Forest is…’ a work by Kyra Clegg and Su Grierson. completed the exhibition. As the forest slides by across 5 linked screens a sound track plays reflecting, events, memories, histories and experiences of that generic place we know as Forest.