PRESENTATION: Susan Jacobs-The ants are in the idiom
Susan Jacobs works across drawing, sculpture, recorded action, installation as well as ephemeral site-responsive intervention. She utilises material and site as a means to express conceptual concerns in her complex, multi-layered art practice. Jacobs is not necessarily concerned with conclusions, and her work might be seen as a series of exercises in problem-solving and resourcefulness that inevitably develop their own sense of logic; the sum of her work adding up to a common line of inquiry rather than a signature aesthetic. Often employing readily available prosaic materials, she investigates broad ideas like time, history, physics, psychology and philosophy.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Buxton Contemporary Archive
The exhibition “The ants are in the idiom” is a presentation of newly commissioned work by Susan Jacobs. A meditation on the relationship between language and matter, the exhibition is an expansive sculptural environment that draws the viewer into a web of visual riddles. Jacobs’ poetic approach to materials is underpinned by research into systems of thought that have shaped – and misshaped – human knowledge. Playful allusions to science, psychology and mythology jostle with visual puns and word games. Enlivened by the imaginative potential of misinterpretation, the exhibition is a sculptural network that stimulates a process of associative looking in the viewer. The artist has developed this work over several years, experimenting with materials in her studio to articulate a sculptural language informed by cumulative layers of environmental observation and historical research. The ants are in the idiom could be read as an allegory for a way of working as an artist or, on a more universal level, for the human drive to make meaning of our surroundings. The exhibition title “The ants are in the idiom” is a play upon the linguistically slippery ‘garden path sentence’, in which ambiguous syntax leads to misinterpretation. This work is based upon a method of mending fissures in brick walls with mortar that is inscribed with the dates of repair. Imagining a tracery of repairs without the bricks, the artist has created, “We Fill the World with Cracks (A Garden Path Sentence)” (2022) a mortar wall drawing that functions as an etymological diagram. A reference to the exhibition title, this tree-like map charts the journey of the word Answer from its Old English origin to its contemporary meaning, beginning with Andswaru (Ant ‘front, forehead’, Swaru, Swerian ‘to swear’, ‘sworn statement’) and ending with ‘solution to a problem’. For the artist, the answer to sculptural, material problems often lies in language, in its idioms and layered significations. Tracing the origins of language reveals hidden pathways to root words where the physical and linguistic meet. In art and in life, language and matter are inextricably linked.
“Hindsight 20/20” (2022): The word ‘hindsight’ suggests the action of looking back or behind. It denotes a clearer understanding with the benefit of time, as in the saying ‘hindsight is 20/20’. The gypsum tablets in this work have been cast from a rear vision mirror, found lying on the ground during a walk in the London streets. The play of light on the mirror’s smashed surface caught the eye of the artist and her friend, creating a shared optical illusion, a reflected apparition of the Virgin Mary. The artist has cast this found object again and again, gilding the replicas in lustrous metallic leaf in a futile attempt to repeat her momentary vision. Reminiscent of mosaics or Byzantine icons, the glistening surfaces invoke the illusions that sometimes appear in our peripheral vision. The work prompts a consideration of the way sensory perceptions are mediated by the mind and refracted by preconceived systems of belief and knowledge. The installation “A Recipe for Scorpions” (2021) is based upon a recipe for scorpions proposed by Belgian physician and chemist Jean Baptiste Van Helmont (1577–1644) to demonstrate the theory of spontaneous generation. Dating back to ancient Greece, the erroneous notion that living organisms could arise from decaying matter, without parents or seed, persisted throughout the Enlightenment until it was finally disproven in the mid-19th century.The emphasis in this work is on psychology as much as science; on the cognitive errors that lead to fantastically wrong conclusions. In order to make sense of its surroundings, the human brain employs mental shortcuts, called ‘heuristics’, to screen out excess stimuli and process information efficiently. The resulting perceptual biases can lead us to see patterns and relationships where none exist. For the artist, these misinterpretations are generative. Mistaken connections lead to new and fruitful possibilities, making a case for the imaginative potential of getting things wrong. A companion piece to “A Recipe for Scorpions”, in the work “A Recipe for Mice” (2022) recreates another of Jean Baptiste van Helmont’s spontaneous generation theories. A vessel is stuffed with vintage underwear and tiny grains of clay ‘wheat’ in a futile endeavour to spark a germ of life. Slightly larger clay pellets resemble mouse poison or excrement, an abject touch that speaks to the artist’s interest in hierarchies of value and arbitrary distinctions between noble and debased materials. The work draws parallels to 17th century still life painting traditions, specifically the sottobosco (forest floor) genre, which featured lowly or maligned creatures associated with otherworldly darkness and the recesses of the human psyche. Multiple allusions to the word ‘bloom’ evoke the sprouting of new vegetation, the growth of mould, the yeasty loaves of bread known as ‘bloomers’ and the capacious underwear of the same name, which in this work, fortunately, fails to generate baby mice despite its fertile nomenclature.
Photo: Installation view, Susan Jacobs: The Ants are in the Idiom, Buxton Contemporary, The University of Melbourne, 2022, Courtesy of Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photo: Christian Capurro
Info: Curator: Jacqueline Doughty, Buxton Contemporary, Cnr Southbank Boulevard and Dodds Street, Melbourne, Australia, Duration: 3/7-6/11/2022, Days & Ho/urs: Wed-Sun 1:00-17:00, https://buxtoncontemporary.com/
