Jessye Wdowin-McGregor

 EKPHRASIS

ekphrasis /ˈɛkfrəsɪs/ noun - the use of vivid language to describe or respond to a work of visual art.

A three-month collaborative artist residency project, public program and exhibition with esteemed poet, novelist, scholar, editor and translator, Ouyang Yu / 欧阳昱, curated by Emma Thomson of correspondences.

As Emma writes, the inspiration for the project stemmed from exploring ‘the time-honoured correlations between text and image’. It featured the words of Ouyang and the images of Jessye, who share a mutual love of nature and landscape, of finding the poetic in the everyday, the spontaneity of the creative act, and the overlaps between humans and the natural world.

A key collaborative work developed as part of the residency is the video poem, An ode to tree-writing / 树木写作颂, which reflects upon Ouyang’s long-held daily practice of writing poems on the trunks and leaves of the trees at Bundoora Park, which is in close proximity to his home. Over three months, the artist and poet met at the park, Jessye filming as Ouyang wrote; the film records these encounters in a way that gestures to the spirit of Ouyang’s poetry, generated spontaneously and highly experimentally. The sonic and visual presence of flora and fauna inhabiting the park is woven throughout the film, and often comes to the forefront. Ouyang’s poems, spoken and written in both Chinese and English, are informed by the natural world, changes in the seasons (the film was made in the transition from winter to spring), slippages between cultures and language, ‘self-found poetry’, political events, ancient and contemporary poetic practice, and the conversations had between poet and artist during filming. Read a beautiful long-form reflection on the film by Emma and view the work in full at the end of her text.

The residency commenced with an exhibition of four existing collage works by Jessye, drawn from an exhibition held earlier in 2023, The Surface Ripples, and to which Ouyang wrote four new poems in response – an early evocation of the Ekphrasis theme. A work-in-progress version of the collaborative film was also displayed in the gallery, along with a collection of Ouyang’s leaf poems, using found leaves gathered from Bundoora Park. These starting points inspired the development of new individual works by Jessye, including three photocollages, which drew on Bundoora Park as a site and incorporated fragments of plant matter collected there.

The residency also afforded the opportunity for experimentation, such as the casting of Jessye’s hands in bronze and beeswax – prompted by the artist’s interests in metamorphosis and shifting forms, particularly in relation to the myth of Daphne and the nymph’s transformation into a tree, as well as the recurring use of the artist’s own hands in her photographic and moving image work (a performative gesture that places the self into the landscape, a little akin to Ouyang’s tree-writing). As well as being standalone objects, the bronze hands found their way into one of the artist’s photocollages as a type of still-life composition, photographed in situ at Bundoora Park. Read more about new works developed by Jessye, as written by Emma.

In addition to the residency work and research, a number of public engagement events took place, including Writer in Conversation sessions with Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston and Merlinda Bobis, a master poetry workshop led by Ouyang, two multilingual poetry reading circles, and a sonic improvisation session by internationally acclaimed performer/composer Mindy Meng Wang / 王萌.

Explore a Viewing Room featuring individual works developed by Jessye and Ouyang during their residency that are currently for sale through correspondences.

Ekphrasis took place from 6 September —2 December 2023.

This residency project took place on the country of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. All involved in the project respectfully acknowledge them as the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work. The artists wish to pay their respect to their Elders, past and present, and extend this respect to all First Peoples.