Dedications:

4 - 20 November 2016

Remedies

Anna Cocks

Breathe, (detail) 2016. Collograph, monoprint, chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper, 114x77cm.

Cover: Digestzen, (detail) 2016. Drypoint etching, collograph, chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper, 77x 114cm.

Yielding to the unfolding

Claire Kroužeckỳ

Life is consciousness of life itself.1

I only wish you could spend just five minutes beneath my skin and feel what it’s like.

Feel the savage swarming magic I feel.2

Uterine Tonic, (detail) 2016. Monoprint, collograph,

chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper, 57 x 154cm.

The term ‘ecology’ refers to the branch of

biology that deals with organisms’ relations

to one another and to their physical

surroundings. It stems from the Greek

oikos, meaning house. The body’s ecology

is the site that houses the effects of every

one of these relations, and thanks to

evolution its preordination towards healing

is coded into our DNA. In all encounters it

is our personalised barometer for sensing

and making sense.

Like all of life, then, art begins with

sensing. In the more compelling examples,

art enacts the sensing of one’s own sensing.

Driven by a profound curiosity and

respect for the body’s ecology, Anna

Cocks, in life and in art, sets herself the task

of sensing her own sensing. Summoning

the bountiful healing powers of nature,

and listening acutely to her own internal

language, she watches with intrigue the

extraordinary capacity of the body to

restore itself to balance. Positing herself as

both diligent receiver and active participant

within this ecology, Cocks nourishes and

then divines the invisible forces at work in

the most intimate of environments – her

own organs.

Witnessing the powerful medicinal

effects of plant-based remedies, aroma-

therapies and tinctures, as well as through

her practice of fermenting herbs and

foods, Cocks’ findings have manifested in

Dedications: Remedies – a series of draw-

ings that are translated into prints, which

operate like atlases of these mysterious

functions so viscerally connected to her,

to the point of becoming hauntingly other-

worldy, alien.

Noting, perhaps, their sensitive and

unreserved visual beauty, we encounter

these prints here at Paper Mountain – at the

same time being offered a hand-sculpted

earthen vessel. With it we are asked to sip the

fermented elixirs Cocks has made using the

same herbs as depicted in the prints. Potent

molecules of plant distillations are vaporised

throughout the room. A full spectrum of

voluntary and involuntary sensation takes

place in our bodies – everything corresponds

and everything is relevant.

In the micro-ecology of the gallery,

our body-houses are held in resonant

suspension between the visible and the

invisible, the tacit and the tactile. If the

body is indeed a temple, Cocks invites us

to follow her lead and visit our own, attend

to its complexities, and pay homage to the

experience of sensing ourselves sensing.

I

Sensing

Joseph Beuys proposed, “Sculpture as an

evolutionary process; everyone an artist.”3

Taking heed, the chef Massimo Bottura

refers to Beuys’ explanation – “The nature

of my sculpture is never fixed or finished.

The natural process continues: chemical

reactions, fermentations, colour changes,

decay, drying up. Everything is in a state

of change,”4 – by way of describing his

own creative process: observing and

manifesting such evolutions in the kitchen,

and providing a full-spectrum sensory-

digestive experience to his diners.5

Bottura questions the potential for art to

render enchanted our quotidian existence.

His conclusions centre often on paying

attention to the small – reducing complex

sensations to their most distilled form, or

amplifying subtle details to a high intensity.

Likewise, in Dedications Cocks exhibits

an exquisite attention to the states of change

that our bodies live in and by, magnified or

distilled to the point of abstraction. Here

we bear witness to her own dedication,

reaching beyond the comprehensible self

in order to know the incomprehensible.

The body of work conjures an imaginary

space via which we might explore a highly

integrated metabolic process that is as

mundane as eating cereal every morning,

and yet utterly abstract to us.

The term ‘abstract’ now has a broad

stroke of uses – most simply denoting the

non-figurative. However, as Catherine de

Zegher suggests in grouping the drawing

practices of Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and

Agnes Martin, it might be more accurately

understood as a thing in flux, oscillating

between the imagined and the concrete.

Its root, the Latin abstrahere, has the

plural meaning of both to draw from and

to draw form. Between from and form de

Zegher writes, “There is a small gap of pure

perception as if nothing exists behind it or

before it.”6

Taken thus, we can understand Cocks’

fascination with the “continual interchange

of condition”7 as a certain strain of

abstraction, in pursuit of a moment of pure

perception – of sensing ones own sensing

– alongside such artists as af Klint, Kunz

and Martin.8 Each artist envisages thought

and sensation as two components bound

inextricably in the embodied experience. A

highly attuned balancing of the two modes

is for all of them at the core of life, and of

creative expression.

Submitting to this flux in the artistic

process is for Cocks a means of relinquishing

rationality and order. Through collograph

and monoprinting techniques she obscures

otherwise conscious drawing processes,

eliciting a looser, more dynamic response

in the marks and lines. It is for reasons of

chance in particular she is drawn to the

printmaking and fermentation processes –

alike in their systems of ordered knowledge

and material formulas, and crucially: the

alchemic, often unpredictable nature of

their results.

II

Abstracting

A remedy means a medicine or gesture

that restores equilibrium and returns to

health. To respond means, in the literal

Latin translation, to re-dedicate. With their

mirrored compositions and recurring use

of circular forms, Cocks’ prints meditatively

turn the gaze inward, and re-turn it

outward. Like ancient Tibetan mandalas

her works contain the seeds of their own

unfolding. They invite us to share in a

common intuitive knowledge, reminding us

that any understanding we may glean from

the physical world, we know through being

centred in our bodies.

At the nexus of the installation, we

commune with our own internal sense-

processes, with each other, and with the

milieu in which we are gathered. Cocks’

Dedications mark, therefore, a fluctuating

symmetry – between the individual and the

infinite, weaving together the internal and

external patterns of life.

Hers (and by extension ours) is a

devotion not exactly to the remedy itself,

but to the affective remedial action.

Dedications: Remedies facilitates an

opportunity to sense ourselves sensing;

to recognise in ourselves an osmotic,

ecological accord. Our scope of awareness

thus widened, instead of visiting, with

Cocks as our guide we are in fact yielding

a return to the one and only site of devotion

we can truly know.

Claire Kroužeckỳ (b. Perth, WA) is a Brooklyn-based artist

and writer, concerned with the practice of paying attention.

She received an MFA from Tasmanian College of the Arts

in 2013 and is currently undertaking a residency at the

Fremantle Arts Centre.

1. Agnes Martin, Writings/Schriften, edited by Dieter Schwarz,

Editions Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2005, p. 136

2. Claire Louise-Bennet, Pond, Fitzcarraldo Editions, London,

2015, pp. 61-62

3. Joseph Beuys, in conversation with Caroline Tisdall in

Joseph Beuys (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum, 1979, “Guggenheim Museum”). p. 44

4. Ibid.

5. Massimo Bottura, Never Trust A Skinny Italian Chef, Phaidon,

London, 2014, p. 102

6. Catherine de Zegher, ‘Abstract,’ in, 3 x Abstraction: New

Methods of Drawing: Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Agnes

Martin, edited by Cathering de Zegher and Hendel Teicher,

The Drawing Center, New York & Yale University Press, New

Haven and London, 2005, p. 23

7. Ibid.

8. The connections between Cocks’ project and those of

Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin bear strongly

on ideas not only of abstraction, but also of the artist as

shamanic healer, or intermediary between the physical and

metaphysical worlds.

III

Returning

Past Tense, (detail) 2016. Drypoint etching, collograph, chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper, 77 x 114cm.

Zendocrine, 2016. Monoprint, drypoint etching, collograph,

chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper, 114 x 77cm.

Upstairs, 267 William St, Northbridge

info@papermountain.org.au

papermountain.org.au

The Operations Team:

Alex Tate (Marketing Officer)

Emily Hornum (Photographer)

Indi Ranson (Marketing Officer)

Johnson Doan (General Manager)

Kelsey Cross (Front of House Assistant)

Kimberley Pace (Gallery Manager)

Krista Tanuwibawa (Communications Manager)

Leah Robbie (Front of House Manager)

Mark Robertson (Graphic Designer)

Mark Wahlsten (Graphic Designer)

Steven James Finch (Special Projects)

Paper Mountain is an artist run

initiative co-directed by:

Claire Bushby

Desmond Tan

Johnson Doan

Leah Robbie

Steven J Finch

Printed by

Catalogue design by Mark Robertson

All images courtesy of the artist.

Paper Mountain is on Noongar land.

Anna Cocks was born in Perth, Western Australia.

She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the

University of Western Australia in 2008 and

Honours at the Tasmanian School of Art in 2010.

Her art practice encompasses a broad range of

mediums including drawing, printmaking, video

and performance, often culminating in installation-

based outcomes.

From 2009-2012 Anna collaborated with

Laura Hindmarsh and Claire Kroužeckỳ as Inter

Collective, creating participatory ‘live’ installations

for events in Perth, Melbourne and Hobart.

Anna has had solo exhibitions in Hobart and

Perth, has participated in a number of group shows,

and has created work for the City of Fremantle and

Beehive Montessori School. She has also worked

at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), and

as part of the education team at Sculpture by the

Sea. In 2015, Anna undertook an Artist in Residence

at the Fremantle Art Centre and illustrated a book

for a local author.

Currently based in Fremantle, Anna is a

member of the Printmakers Association of WA and

has participated in various print-based exhibitions

and the City of Busselton Art Award..

Paper Mountain would like to thank their

magnificent Gallery Attendants:

Alex Lombardi, Alisha Versteegen, Aya Jones,

Belinda Birchall, Ben Yaxley, Carolina Koszelski,

Caroline Forsberg, Claudia Minutillo, Emeline

McGrath, Daniel O’Connor, Djuna Hallsworth,

Gabby Loo, Grace Le Fanu, Jessica Kavanagh,

Jessica Scallan, Jordanna Armstrong, Karl

Halliday, Kayla MacGillivray, Kate Thresher,

Keely Sheahan, Laura Vermeulen, Lizzie Bruk,

Nathan Tang, Nathan Viney, Shannon Harbron,

Sharon Smith, Sinead Duane, Stephanie de Biasi,

Stephanie Gilhooley, Tatiane Van Den Akker

The artist would like to thank:

Especially, Vittorio Marelli, Milton Cocks and Claire

Kroužeckỳ for your generous contributions to the

exhibition.

Jo Darvall and the printmaking class, Lily,

Ruby, Elena, Fabio, Paper Mountain, Little

Sister Delicatessen, Victory Point Wines, and all

those those who have helped, supported and

encouraged me along the way. Many thanks.