SALA 2024
CLARITY: an outdoor mixed media exhibition
The seeding of my tree theme for this SALA exhibition began around a kitchen table in the Adelaide Hills. I believe the conversation amongst 9 artists went something like: so do we all agree that trees are sentient? How about rocks then? Wool? Paper? No more stepping on ants. Or feathers. Do trees have ghosts? And finally, how do we ‘art’ that?
Kitchen tables are excellent for ideas— for me, this conversation turned into two exhibitions over four months.
But wait, there’s more … another connection. My PhD research is on the fragmented histories of the Ballarat Asylum (Lakeside Psychiatric Hospital), and with a lack of stories, narratives, and diminishing memories on Lakeside, I looked towards the 150-year-old Sierra Redwoods in Central Park, Lake Gardens. Would they stand witness for me?
Will their sentience stretch to holding secrets, and to memory? And how do I interview them? After all, as members of the Exceptional Tree Register, having lived through three centuries, surely those unique Redwoods have their own way of knowing.
SALA 2024 (South Australian Living Artists festival)
– all artwork, digital, visual, and audiovisual, are original works by Kendrea Rhodes
– Sala program link here (#644)
Clarity 1 Wood & Trees
The lead image sitting atop the aloe vera in this video is the Ghost Tree. It represents the spiritual residue of the powerless. Snarling at their silent history, their invisible future. Foster Trees artworks feature in the next frame, connecting nature and nurture with a human perspective. Finally, the Mother Earth series enters, with a decidedly feminist view focusing on labour extraction, both human and environmental.
Clarity 2 Mother Earth series
The Mother Earth series of artworks depicted in this video use a feminist lens, to examine the exorbitant costs of labour extractions — from the earth and from oppressed women and girls.
Clarity 3 Birch Grove series
Beginning with two Foster Trees, connecting nurture through nature and humanity, this video celebrates the Birch Grove series — first exhibited at “Unstable Around The Table” (Norton Summit Community Centre, SA). The Birch Grove series are labelled Trees I-VII and were the first of the theme, focusing on the sentience and significance of trees as conduits of life-force and matriarchs of worlds within worlds.