Weight of the World

TO READ: REVIEW OF EXHIBITION

Kim Anderson’s work focuses on the widely-felt experience of grief and anxiety associated with climate change, and our complicated relationship with our planet. Her drawings depict solitary figures immersed in challenging yet wildly beautiful landscapes, and are based on photographs she takes of herself physically interacting with these rugged, isolated terrains. 

Kim Anderson Weight of the World Artist Statement 2021 I am fascinated by the physical manifestation of a psyche in turmoil, as we navigate our complicated relationship with the natural world. Through intricately detailed drawing, I focus on how powerful internal emotions can be embodied, often using elements of the landscape as metaphors for these intense psychological states.

In 2019 I was awarded a three-month residency on the Isle of Skye, part of the Inner Hebrides off the northwest coast of Scotland.  There, I was constantly aware of the monumental presence of this wild landscape, the bleak and desolate beauty, and a sparse population at the mercy of the elements.  On every horizon were mountains and ridges shaped by fire, ice, wind, water and time.  A few short miles in any direction was a coastline strewn with extraordinary rock formations carved by sea and wind.

Inspired by a long background in dance and theatre, I photographed myself immersed in this rugged, isolated terrain, undertaking a solitary performance that oscillated between awe, anxiety, melancholy and solace.  This was like a private meditation, witnessed only by a camera lens activated by remote control.  As I lay my face against the rocks, wedged my body into impossible spaces, and sought comfort and shelter from the hard stone surfaces, I imagined I was closer to that landscape than any other human has been before me.

Back in the studio, these photographs are translated into drawings through a process of meticulous, emotionally-laden mark-making.  I get to know every rock and crevice intimately as I bring the landscape into being with charcoal and ink - first loosely, building up and erasing to create tonal values, before refining the intricate details with very fine ink pens.

In Skye I felt vulnerable, humbled and insignificant in comparison to the vastness of my surroundings, yet also a deep and uneasy love for this challenging yet wildly beautiful place.  By going outwards into the landscape, I was also going inwards to an internal ‘landscape’ and a state of deep introspection.

Catalogue essay by Phe Luxford

Hidden within the heart of most colloquial adages, those quick turns of phrase said almost without thinking, rich seams of cultural wisdom can be found. Full of timeless truths and allegorical puzzles these curious lexical units are capable of transforming the literal into the metaphoric, their contemplation leading to deeper understandings and encapsulating the real rub of the human condition. Kim Anderson’s new series Weight of the World conceptually interrogates ideas of obligation and agency, finding footholds and slippages within the idea this phrase implies.

Meditating on notions of ecological loss, reverence and responsibility, Anderson’s series of large scale graphite images bring the bodily in direct contact with the tactile reality of nature. Intricately detailed and sharply focused, her images function as documentations of her own physical engagement with the landscape.

Anderson’s practice has always worked to communicate complex emotional states and to illustrate the inextricable link between humanity and the ecosystem. Recently she has been focused more intently on investigating the emotional distress caused by observing ecological degradation. For Anderson this concern is palpable: “There is great emotional heaviness in these works about the direction that we are collectively heading, and the uncertain future of the planet. In placing myself within the work, it is as though I am acting out a collective grief, taking on the role of the keener from old Gaelic funerary customs, and keeping vigil for a dying planet.”

With her body operating as a kind of emotional conduit, negotiating its engagement with the precarious surfaces of these ancient, monolithic coastal rock formations, the artist is forced into complex positions that bring her into intimate contact with the material truth of the environment. Wedged within the crevices of rock, her body conforms to the hard contours, seeking comfort within discomfort. Like the toss and turn of a restless sleeper seeking release from their worries, these restless physical configurations enact visual and experiential cues that reflect the fundamental powerlessness many feel in the face of climate change. 

Faced with such vastness, Anderson’s figures appear utterly overwhelmed by the mass of rock that surrounds them, and illustrates the humble truth of our real place within the course of geological time. This physical enactment of emotional burden calls to mind the story behind the exhibition’s title. Punished by Zeus for his godly ambitions, Atlas was ordered to hold the weight of the cosmos on his back, his body transformed into a pillar tasked with forever more holding the earth and sky apart.

Contemplating this adage and the curious story that comes with it, Anderson’s images begin to invert the human/nature transactional encounter. Her figure, pressing down on the material world, aided by the forces of gravity, has a weight that is insignificant when compared to that of the rocks that support her. In her lightness perhaps she can sense the true magnitude of the earth’s weight, the ineffable power and magnificence of its being. If humanity could only feel the true weight of the world, perhaps we would value it more dearly and see our relationship as one of support rather than of conquest.Kim Anderson completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of Ballarat in 2003 and was awarded a scholarship to study a Master of Fine Art at the University of Dundee in Scotland in 2007. Over the course of her career she has created and curated a number of projects facilitated via funding support from the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, City of Melbourne, and Regional Arts Victoria. She has undertaken numerous residencies around the world including an Australia Council Studio Residency at theBritish School in Rome, Australia House in Echigo-Tsumari, Japan, Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, Scotland, Murray’s Cottage in Hill End, the University of Tasmania, Scotch Oakburn College in Launceston, The Art Vault in Mildura, and DRAWinternational in Caylus, France, supported by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, the Copyright Agency Creative Industries Career Fund, and Creative Partnerships Australia. Most recently Anderson was the recipient of a three-month Jon Schueler Scholarship Artist-in-Residence at the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, National Centre for Gaelic Language, Culture and the Arts, Isle of Skye, Scotland (2019).  

She has been a finalist in numerous national awards including the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize(2021), ​National Works on Paper Award(2020), Wyndham Art Prize(2020), the Swan Hill Drawing Prize (2020), the Kedumba Drawing Award (2020), the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (2020), Lyn McCrea Memorial Drawing Prize (Winner of the Peoples Choice Award 2019), Paul Guest Award(2018, 2016), and the Rick Amor Drawing Prize (2016).  Along with more traditional works on paper, Anderson also creates ephemeral installation projects involving site-specific drawing and projection. Projects includeThe Space Between, a visual/sound installation at the inaugural White Night Ballarat in March 2017 which subsequently travelled to the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart. In 2018 Anderson held a major solo exhibition To Live Alone in a World of Wounds at the Art Gallery of Ballaratand in 2021 exhibited in the group exhibition Mutual Realities: Finding Common Ground in Uncertain Times also at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

She has exhibited both in Australia and abroad with solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Mildura, Bendigo, Bathurst, Ballarat, Launceston, Hobart and Japan. Her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Damascus College, Ballarat, Loretto College, Ballarat and the Ballarat Arts Foundation.