bed by Kobie Nel
Duration 29 November 2024 - 5 January 2025
The two large format photographs presented in the exhibition ‘Bed’ were taken during fieldwork in Rainbow Valley, a sacred site for the Upper Southern Arrernte people, the traditional landowners in the Northern Territory of Australia. This place called Wurre is associated with ritual rainmaking stories. Established in 1990, the reserve was created to protect the unique ecosystem comprised of sandstone formations, Indigenous Australian art, artefacts, and other sacred natural objects that surround a striking sandstone cliff. The central cliff, layered in iron-rich shades of red and ochre, stands in stark contrast to the lighter sandstone that turns pale yellow or gold as the late afternoon light settles, mirroring the site’s namesake; a rainbow.
Nel's photographs capture more than just these grand formations. They reveal an intimate landscape, focusing on subtle tracks and impressions left in the desert sand by the movements of animals and insects. Each trace left by these creatures forms a pattern on the desert surface, sometimes disappearing into its depths, leaving marks that invite speculation about what made them. The photographic images are both instant and ancient, capturing a place where industrial interference has been paused, allowing a rare instance of regeneration. The images encourage viewers to linger on the quiet details in the sand, the faint signatures of desert life that fade as the sands shift or the light changes.
As one navigates the exhibition space, Nel invites the audience to unearth further minute details, details that contrast against the immediacy of the photographic image and the camera’s moment of exposure, drawn out, sketched within the exhibition space over time in a slow stroke.
These desert imprints are mirrored through careful interplay of sunlight, foam, and other materials. Sunlight filters in, marking large sheets of foam with subtle tonal shifts, echoing the natural rhythms of sunlight on desert sand. The foam sheets absorb and transform along with the movement of sunlight, creating an alternative, evolving archive as the space itself operates as a camera obscura, forming a layered document of exposure. This foam, flesh-like and unprotected, behaves almost as a body, vulnerable and receptive, absorbing light as it would an imprint or a memory. The foam, like a skin, is an archive of what it comes into contact with, collecting moments as if guarding against something that has already been lost. Its flesh colour gradually decays into an ochre colour throughout the exhibition period, morphing into the tone of the desert’s sand. Also present is the eggshell, made almost entirely of calcium carbonate crystals, forms a semipermeable membrane, which means that air and moisture can pass through its pores. The shell has a long history of use by humans as a container, often as a water bottle, but also for producing decorative artworks, morphing in its purpose between a utensil and a mark of mankind’s greed for harvesting natural elements.
The presence of the foam recalls protective membranes, both natural and man-made, each one a fragile barrier between the interior and the forces of erosion, extraction, and contamination. Here, PVC objects, made from fossil fuels and coloured in black and red, remind us of extracted materials (such as oil or blood) transformed into something alien and toxic. These materials, manipulated from their natural origins, masquerade as different entities, echoing the themes of appropriation, extraction, and transformation that shape our relationship to the environment, highlighting a soul blindness that mechanised interventions have fostered through their disregard.
Exhibition supported by Bergen Kommune and OCA, Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Curated by Scott Elliott
bed by Kobie Nel
Duration 29 November 2024 - 5 January 2025
The two large format photographs presented in the exhibition ‘Bed’ were taken during fieldwork in Rainbow Valley, a sacred site for the Upper Southern Arrernte people, the traditional landowners in the Northern Territory of Australia. This place called Wurre is associated with ritual rainmaking stories. Established in 1990, the reserve was created to protect the unique ecosystem comprised of sandstone formations, Indigenous Australian art, artefacts, and other sacred natural objects that surround a striking sandstone cliff. The central cliff, layered in iron-rich shades of red and ochre, stands in stark contrast to the lighter sandstone that turns pale yellow or gold as the late afternoon light settles, mirroring the site’s namesake; a rainbow.
Nel's photographs capture more than just these grand formations. They reveal an intimate landscape, focusing on subtle tracks and impressions left in the desert sand by the movements of animals and insects. Each trace left by these creatures forms a pattern on the desert surface, sometimes disappearing into its depths, leaving marks that invite speculation about what made them. The photographic images are both instant and ancient, capturing a place where industrial interference has been paused, allowing a rare instance of regeneration. The images encourage viewers to linger on the quiet details in the sand, the faint signatures of desert life that fade as the sands shift or the light changes.
As one navigates the exhibition space, Nel invites the audience to unearth further minute details, details that contrast against the immediacy of the photographic image and the camera’s moment of exposure, drawn out, sketched within the exhibition space over time in a slow stroke.
These desert imprints are mirrored through careful interplay of sunlight, foam, and other materials. Sunlight filters in, marking large sheets of foam with subtle tonal shifts, echoing the natural rhythms of sunlight on desert sand. The foam sheets absorb and transform along with the movement of sunlight, creating an alternative, evolving archive as the space itself operates as a camera obscura, forming a layered document of exposure. This foam, flesh-like and unprotected, behaves almost as a body, vulnerable and receptive, absorbing light as it would an imprint or a memory. The foam, like a skin, is an archive of what it comes into contact with, collecting moments as if guarding against something that has already been lost. Its flesh colour gradually decays into an ochre colour throughout the exhibition period, morphing into the tone of the desert’s sand. Also present is the eggshell, made almost entirely of calcium carbonate crystals, forms a semipermeable membrane, which means that air and moisture can pass through its pores. The shell has a long history of use by humans as a container, often as a water bottle, but also for producing decorative artworks, morphing in its purpose between a utensil and a mark of mankind’s greed for harvesting natural elements.
The presence of the foam recalls protective membranes, both natural and man-made, each one a fragile barrier between the interior and the forces of erosion, extraction, and contamination. Here, PVC objects, made from fossil fuels and coloured in black and red, remind us of extracted materials (such as oil or blood) transformed into something alien and toxic. These materials, manipulated from their natural origins, masquerade as different entities, echoing the themes of appropriation, extraction, and transformation that shape our relationship to the environment, highlighting a soul blindness that mechanised interventions have fostered through their disregard.
Exhibition supported by Bergen Kommune and OCA, Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Curated by Scott Elliott
About the artists:
Leah Clements’ (b. 1989, based in London) practice spans film, photography, performance, writing, installation, and other media. Her work is concerned with the relationship between the psychological, emotional, and physical, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her practice also focuses on sickness/cripness/disability in art, in critical and practical ways. Clements is currently artist in residence at Serpentine Galleries and has previously been artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre and Rupert. She has presented her work at Chisenhale Gallery, Somerset House Studios, Science Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, Jupiter Woods and Wellcome Collection, London; Baltic39, Newcastle; Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen; The National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; La Casa Encendida, Madrid. www.leahclements.com
Ιris Touliatou (b. 1981, based in Athens) engages in a conceptual practice, which transposes the political, environmental and affective, and employs various mediums necessary for each intervention. Manifesting in sculpture, photography, sound, scent and text, her work creates open forms and shared experiences, to comment on time, intimacy, transience, mortality, economies and states of being. Ιris Touliatou has exhibited work at 2021 New Museum Triennial, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The 7th Athens Biennale, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art and Radio Athènes, Athens, among others. www.iristouliatou.com
Christian Friedrich (b. 1977, based in Amsterdam and Berlin) investigates the condition, structure and manipulation of subject-object relationships through a variety of media, including video, sculpture, audio and scent. His work frequently employs elements of the sexually outré, played against formalism, aestheticism, and structural contradiction. Friedrich’s work has been shown, among others, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, PS120, Berlin; Cabinet Gallery, London; NYU, New York; Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; De Hallen, Haarlem; Goethe-Institut, De Appel, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Städtische Galerie am ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2017, Friedrich was the recipient of the Cobra Art Prize, in 2013 he was nominated for the Prix de Rome.
Aaron Ratajczyk’s (b. 1989, based in London and Berlin) practice explores modes of intimacy and dis-identification, treating the body as a malleable interface. Often expressed through non-verbal affects – mood, atmosphere and poetics – his work takes the form of video, performance, text and installation. His work has been presented at Museum of Modern Art and KEM, Warsaw; Tree Art Museum, Beijing; RCA CCA in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary; Yvonne Lambert, Berlin; Forum for Live Art Amsterdam. Forthcoming projects include group exhibitions at Goldsmiths CCA and South London Gallery (as part of New Contemporaries) and a solo commission by Institute of Contemporary Art, London. www.aaronratajczyk.com
Leah Clements has made a short film of her work Reprise/Reprieve, for anyone who is unable to attend the exhibition The way in for disability, economic, or other access reasons. Below are versions of the film including one with audio descriptions and one with captions. A note: there aren't exactly flashing images but there is a flickering in some of the shots. Proceed with caution if needed.