By Rebecca O’Shea
Artist in situ, Royal National Park, Photographer Sarah Miller, Courtesy of Jenny Tubby 2012
Jenny Tubby is the 2012 Artist in Residence at the Wollongong City Gallery, a residency that will cumulate in the exhibition Octagonal Rooms (26 May -26 August 2012). This opportunity provided Tubby the space and resources to see out an idea that was born in her final year of university. The genesis of this exhibition, now retitled the Original Room, was produced in 2009. It was first seen in the Wollongong University’s graduating exhibition of the same year, Grad Wrap, and in 2010 travelled to Perth for the National Graduate Show Hatched. Now executed in 2012, the original room is seen with many intriguing extensions.
Octagonal Rooms describes multiple facets of personal and cultural histories. Being enclosed in these spaces is an experience that stipulates a blend of narratives and references, each open to their own interpretation and further connection. Four octagonal rooms conjoined by four smaller square hall-like spaces tessellate around a central octagonal space. Each room stages a separate curiosity. The installation, largely constructed from hand-made, recycled and collected materials, forms a duel between the systematic and seemingly random. The multiple layers of materials are, in their new home, reconceptualised. In many cases the meaning or significance of an object or material has been inverted, challenging the audience with what’s real and what’s constructed, blurring the line between reality and fiction. To uncover this time capsule is like walking into the dwelling of a fictional explorer, their findings mapped out in fragments on the walls. Within these fragments are clues to interpreting and analysing the systems of knowledge that construct both our own and the fictional explorer’s understanding of the world.
Tubby’s practice is a process that is methodical and experimental, letting the journey of creativity take her in an intuitive direction. The catalyst for the octagonal form is an object of personal significance to Tubby, a small eight-sided cardboard cotton holder, a family heirloom. [1] This item was uncovered in her great aunt’s sewing cabinet, in a family home in Ballarat, previously owned by her great grandfather, a tailor. This small, unique object offers a majestic quality; a red, octagonal, cog-shaped piece of cardboard, with golden thread wound between the points, coded fragments of printed text peek through the gaps. Tubby discusses the cotton holder as a metaphor for where we come from. The threads can be seen as a representation of the way family is bound together.[2] Many synonyms of the original object are present throughout the installation, both in the octagonal form of the rooms and curios they contain.
The cotton holder has also informed previous work of Tubby’s from 2004 to 2008, including a series of paintings and works on paper. This keepsake has offered her a flow of associations that has allowed her practice to have both a departure point and probable continuum. The Model Room, part of the octagonal installation, fosters this idea. As Barbara Campbell suggests in the catalogue essay, the growth of the installation seems only to be contained by the constraints of the gallery walls and it could extend through ‘any number of additional rooms’. The miniatures in the Model Room recall the scale models of an architect alluding to plans of an octagonal city, each form having an individual mood and aesthetic.
The important marker for this progressive tangent is the Original Room, created in 2009. The rest of this interlocking octagonal series extend on this foundation, which informed the ideas for them. The new editions to the work are aptly named the Pattern Room, the Film Room, the Model Room and, the Internal Room. These titles, like the names of areas in a home, designate the purpose of the rooms. Although drawing on the structure of a dwelling, the installation can also be compared to the internal space of the mind. It reduces the systems of knowledge that form the domains of personal and social identity into a visual space, a space that can be explored, and considered emotionally and intellectually.[3]
The Octagonal Rooms are an amalgam of references to aspects that construct the self. In discussing her choices of materials Tubby explains that she is systematic in her approach. For example, the books used ‘need to have a certain quality about them, like the feel and texture of the paper, its age and colour, or aesthetic, but also its content.’[4] The multitude of pages that make the interior and exterior wallpaper of the rooms are like an inverted library. Amongst the collaged wallpaper are mathematical and scientific textbooks, dictionaries, maps, language translation guides, a shorthand guide and a Chinese bible. The collection of pages and their relationship to other elements within the space encourage an interpretation of language as well as the variety of doctrines we use, essentially, to explain, interpret or understand our existence.
Detail of Octagonal Rooms, Jenny Tubby, Photographer Derek Kreckler, 2012
These wallpapered pages are juxtaposed with handwritten text-like symbols, scrawled on the walls, in a language that is yet to be defined. The fragments of a shorthand guide and guides to language translations perhaps offer a key to its interpretation; but the question is, is it able to be read? A sense of meaning can potentially be deduced by the gesture and form of the symbols, or their association to signs and languages that are more familiar. As a text, these symbols are possibly indecipherable, commenting on the fact that just because you cannot read something, does not mean it is devoid of meaning. Being a work that links to identity, this code, if decipherable, may reveal any number of secrets. For now, its message is understood only in the subjective interpretation of the viewer.
In the Film Room, there is a similar air of secrecy to the handwritten scrawls as well as an exploration of language and its meaning. Hidden behind cardboard vents, reminiscent of the metal grills in Federation houses, are films of the artist as a fictional character. She speaks and sings in tongue within the Royal National Park. This tongue is reminiscent of a number of languages; a feeling of its content only appreciated through the conviction of her voice. This, and the character’s stance, suggests an urgency or importance to what is being said. A decipherable moment in the dialogue is ‘Captain Cook’ being shouted. She is absorbed in her communication and absorbed in the landscape, perhaps she is engaged in a prayer to the spiritual keeper of the place who may understand her implied frustrations.
Vent detail, Octagonal Rooms, Jenny Tubby, 2012
As this character speaks in a tongue that is seemingly multilingual, it evokes a sense of the many cultures that compose Australia, cultures whose presence can be found both literally and metaphorically throughout the installation. As Campbell notes, a bird’s eye view of the installation identifies with Islamic architecture, and angled cross-braces on the walls exterior are reminiscent of European building techniques, which are centuries old and were introduced to Australia during colonisation.[5] The Royal National Park was established in 1879, being the second oldest national park in the world. Although it suffered with introduced species and logging of native trees, it is now National Heritage listed, a classification that protects this picturesque place.[6] A discussion on different attitudes toward the landscape is perhaps contained inside the talking walls, an evocative post-colonial narrative engulfed within the Octagonal Rooms.
Following colonisation there have been continuous waves of immigration to Australia as a result of politics, warfare or other occurrences, such as the gold rush, and each has played its role in developing Australian identity. Due to the gold rush, towns like Ballarat in Victoria were established; a town where Tubby’s great grandparents’ house resided and from where many of the curios originate. The hoarding by members of her family is a preliminary aspect of this work both in its conception and execution. These objects, passed down through her family, now inform the ideas and concepts in the work, as well as becoming part of it, in a similar manner to a cabinet of curiosity.
Tubby’s acquiring of materials is a central to her process, some collected by her, others gifted, having attachment to the individuals that make up her ancestry. The importance of these items are questioned, re-contextualised and in some cases devalued. Amongst found materials that cover surfaces throughout the work are things that would make some specialised interest historians or collectors squirm, including colonial stamps, antique oddities and a catalogue of household receipts dating from 1895-1995. The receipts, detailing general living expenses such as water, sewerage and electricity, originate from Tubby’s great grandparents house in Ballarat and have become a part of the collaged wallpaper. Amongst the earlier handwritten receipts are typewritten and computer generated receipts, showing the progression of technology and how the way we live has changed. If this peculiar construction can be seen as a home, these receipts also draw attention to the facilities it lacks as a habitual environment. Although, there are hints toward an occupant, whose story it is is for the viewer to determine.
The studio-work in progress, Jenny Tubby, Photographer Derek Kreckler, 2012
The studio became the workplace and second home for Tubby during her residency. Noting the importance of working to a deadline, she explains that there were probably only five days in the past eleven months that she had not paid the studio a visit. The materials for the work were sometimes set up in the style of a production line as each wall gradually neared completion. In the progression of the work, Tubby has made an effort to limit the amount of waste and make use of everything that was cut up or pulled apart. Scraps from cut out holes become new objects and book covers with pages ripped out land in a box for the next project.
Octagonal Rooms is a multidisciplinary work where Tubby intends to ‘blur the lines between fiction and reality.’[7] In its realisation Tubby has used a variety of mediums and practices including sculpture, printmaking and drawing, as well as contemporary notions of installation and performance. The Octagonal Rooms are both sculptural and architectural. The installation imitates a home, allowing the viewer to feel comfortable within the space whilst investigating its contents like a voyeur. It is layered with small and large-scale objects, and collages that interrelate. Drawing is explored as a plan, a symbol and an aesthetic. The presence of draft work and plans become part of the work, being pasted on the walls, and becoming ornamental, making the physical space, and the ideas of its creation intertwine. The viewer is presented with a space that they can explore and contemplate, which engages curiosity and evokes personal narratives. As Tubby explains, ‘when people walk in I want them to lose track of where they are and what they’re doing because they become so absorbed by the space,’ much like being engaged by a good book.[8]
Jenny Tubby, 2012 Artist in Residence, Octagonal Rooms, Wollongong City Gallery, 26 May- 26 August.
[1] Jenny Tubby, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hatched 2010
[2] Jenny Tubby, personal interview with Rebecca O’Shea, April 2012
[3] Jenny Tubby, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hatched 2010
[4] Jenny Tubby, personal interview with Rebecca O’Shea, April 2012
[5] Campbell, B 2012, Jenny Tubby Octagonal Rooms, Wollongong City Gallery.
[6] NSW Government, Office of Environment & Heritage NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service
[7] Jenny Tubby, personal interview with Rebecca O’Shea, April 2012
[8] Jenny Tubby, personal interview with Rebecca O’Shea, April 2012
References and further reading
Campbell, B 2012, Jenny Tubby Octagonal Rooms, Wollongong City Gallery.
Jenny Tubby, personal interview with Rebecca O’Shea, April 2012
NSW Government, Office of Environment & Heritage NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hatched 2010, Jenny Tubby
Tags: 2012 Artist in Residence, Barbara Campbell, contemporary art, Derek Kreckler, installation, Jenny Tubby, Octagonal Rooms, Rebecca O’Shea, Sarah Miller, University of Wollongong, Wollongong City Gallery