Jennifer Procter: Intertidal
Jennifer Procter: Intertidal
Official opening: 6pm, Friday 16 June, 2023
Artists workshop: 11am – 12.30pm, Saturday 29 July, 2023
Exhibition showing in Gallery 1: 9 Friday June – Saturday 12 August, 2023
Exhibition Statement:
“Intertidal” is a series of animated drawings in charcoal, graphite, oil pastel, watercolour and paper cut-outs, projected in a dual-channel installation. The animated drawings bring together three threads.
Firstly, it is an exploration of the intertidal zone, an ecosystem where the ocean meets the land between high and low tides. Here you find a multitude of organisms that can adapt and thrive in the extreme changes, alternating between being exposed to the air and sun, taking refuge in tide pools or submerged in the waves. In Australia you will see diverse species such as sea anemones, golden kelp, soldier crabs and the white-bellied sea eagle. The intertidal zone exists in cyclical rhythms, emerging and receding. It’s a place where conditions are polarised and then merged. And also the beginning place of life on land.
Intertidal is also about nature as an intelligence that runs through all things; nature like a blueprint encoded into the material world, evolving within, through and all around us. It is not something that we name, but we sense through our nervous system and in the materiality of our body, going back through our evolutionary ancestry and the life-force behind that.
The final thread in Intertidal was the challenge to give life to drawings: finding ways for these simple markings and bits of paper to move in the rhythms and patterns of animals and elements. And recognising the playful ways the materials interact and find their own rhythms and meanings. The drawings are presented in large-scale so that the viewer is immersed and intimate with this hand-drawn world. There are pauses of silence or stillness, doorways into the experience beyond appearances. Intertidal is a choreography of diverse atmospheres and sensations into an ecosystem.
About the artist:
Jennifer Procter has been training in arts since childhood, first in music, then visual arts and dance. She attended CIT and the VCA and worked as a director, choreographer and teacher in Melbourne and Canberra. Jennifer took 8 years break from professional arts to practice meditation intensively in Borneo, Nepal, India and Australia. Currently she lives in Canberra, making charcoal and graphite moving art, installation and teaching art and mindfulness.
“The arts gave me confidence and a way to connect. They have been calling for me and a way to help others. I have witnessed the transformative power of the arts through sharing and teaching for the last 20 years.
Drawing on my practice of movement and stillness, my work is influenced by Indian and Buddhist philosophy. It’s important to me that art comes from the body and sensations, our most immediate and fundamental connection to reality, that is the vast and dynamic patterns of nature.”
Public Program: 4- elements workshop
When: 11am – 12.30pm, Saturday 29 July, 2023
This workshop is free but registrations are essential.
Presented in support of her exhibition “Intertidal,” join multi-disciplinary artist Jennifer Procter for an experiential workshop, 4- elements workshop: re-connecting to the elemental body.
Four-elements practice is a way to directly experience the elements of earth, air, fire and water within our body and then connect to the environment around us through our bodies. Bring a note book or visual diary with you to take notes as Jennifer leads you into guided seated meditation on the elements. Follow on with movement practice that further explores the elements including:
• Air as breath, and the fundamental movement, the dance of expansion and contraction
• Shape and gravity, the resilience and buoyancy of our bones re-joining us to the earth and the ground
• Water element as flow through the body and the flow of life
• Fire element bringing us joy, comfort, passion and the possibility of being deeply at home with change
Conclude with a cuppa and a short discussion on how body-centred practices can be a source for creativity
This workshop is suitable for people with no dance or meditation experience – people of all ages and bodies. Based in practices that ground us in body and environment, discover a fresh connection to life and experience.