Harmonising With My Kitchen Fan - Oddaný Gallery

This is my first time writing a review for a show, thank god its someone I know! Harmonising With My Kitchen Fan is a group show curated by Iona Mackenzie, featuring herself, Madeleine Minack, and Hayley Does at Oddaný Gallery in Brunswick. I always love coming into Oddaný, I love the drapes, high ceilings and candles scattered about, it is a character in its own right. 

I grab myself a floor sheet and an a4 sheet of the shows literature read it before I look, seeking clues. Mackenzie’s writing Blue Oval, Bird Egg is a thoughtfully designed piece about subjectivity and the process of remembering who we are when we are trying to be ourselves again. Her writing pairs well with the show, as every paragraph is a collage of ideas that lead to a feeling. Out of the artists shown I know Iona best. This remembering of self and the collage of ideas informs the work heavily, and is most obvious in the process of her practice. As you enter the space you are met by Overlocked a large painting of what looks like a butterfly wing, it could even be a fairy wing, but a wing none the less. The colours are reminiscent of a little girl growing up in the early 2000’s. What draws me deeper into the work however, is the evidence of its past and materiality. Peeking through the lighter shades of the wing I see the persistence of an older painting I once knew. The pastel catches very gently on the cross brace of the canvas. 

Mackenzie's works are a medley of motifs, memories and materials that never try to disguise one another. Everything is out on the table. Speaking of which…I think I have used that as a coaster before. Ship takes these ideas and runs with them to the next level. I like to imagine that Mackenzie's Ship began as a functioning pirate ship that sailed the seven seas and eventually became the sculpture I encountered. You know, ship of Theseus style. Scrunchies, beads, newspaper, gemstones, a little silver horse, a tiny elephant, and a coaster make up this ship now. Like the process of growing up I suppose, sure the ship looks a bit different than what it started as, but it's still the same ship.

This was the first time I have encountered Madeleine Minack’s work. Suspended on the walls and from above are tiny little sculptures made of materials that don’t always get to spend much time together. The works feel very playful and friendly. Spending time with Wonky and Green and imagining the process that Minack would undergo to make them was a joy. Curling the metal, and sticking it through the plastic. Pushing what I suspect to be a biro pen lid into the green plasticine to make what my imagination tells me is the scales of a reptile.. The show’s theme of ‘remembering’ is reflected in Minack’s process of accumulation to make her work. However, it comes at the theme at a slightly different angle perhaps, one more about collecting and connecting things together as a process of remembering who we are. 

While both Mackenzie and Minack’s works speak whimsically about this process of remembering who we are, Hayley Does’ performance rounds out the exhibition with a more sombre tone. Does begins the performance by entering and exiting the space bringing back more and more scrunched up white sheets of fabric to a pile of white sandbags that sit in the centre of the exhibition space. As she sits down, she unfurls each scrunch to reveal they are squaresMeticulously she lays each square down on the ground and over the sandbags creating a patchwork. Each square retains the recent past in its chaotic wrinkles. Do you think that old people gravitate to patchworks because they can relate to them? After she runs out of patches she begins a more bodily process. She places the sandbags on her body one by one and the audience watches her once mobile form overcome by the weight. Does’ control over her body is fascinating to watch, sure she can do the narrowest downward dog I've ever seen, but I'm stuck on the way she shows the life in her body despite the sandbags immobilising her. She holds her head up strong while laying down for an extended period of time. Then she invites us to move the fabric square ourselves and place it on her.

I’m not well versed in performance art, nor am I in writing about it, so maybe I'm off the mark here when I say that this performance felt like the process of death and mourning. A life is a patchwork of experiences, and when we watch others pass we remember them in the patches of our experiences together. And when we die, others will recreate our patchwork. Placing the pieces that we once meticulously laid out back together in a new way.

Harmonising With My Kitchen Fan is on at Oddaný Gallery until the 7th of October.

Read about this week’s writer, Alex Smith’s art practice here.