making beds inside post anchors
I very rarely understand art (including the art produced by Nat Penney). And in fact, one of the things I like about Nat Penney’s work is that it can seem inexplicable. What is this construction of converging steel bars? Why is there a slot in the middle? It looks a bit to me like the frame of a helmet, viewed from inside. And why is a duster dusting the slot, over and over and over again? Nat Penney’s work often seems absurd, and always makes me laugh. It is quite unexpected to see a disembodied household object performing the same repetitive motion again and again and again, especially when it appears somewhere or does something you don’t anticipate. It’s funny, familiar, in a way fantastic.
I’ve always loved Penney’s fixation on everyday objects. Taking a certain view, one might describe life as the act of arranging things around you. Trying to control your environment. Failing to control your environment. Going around in circles like a brush on a motor for as long you have the energy to continue.
The table also intrigues me. There are words embossed that I can’t make sense of. Briefing me, Penney recounts a childhood incident where a tv table, the exact colour of the table in this exhibition, was unexpectedly painted white. She describes “feeling so thrown by what now seems a very insignificant change…that hadn’t been within my control”. The words are suddenly legible but I like that they didn’t make sense (and maybe couldn’t) without this memory being recounted.
The object resting on the table feels more organic than many of the works in the show. It is made of wood, not metal, and has an undulating, almost soothing quality in addition to a cute lil beak. Penney describes the sculpture as a dolphin (www.homework.study.com tells me it is therefore not a beak but a “rostrum”). Is the dolphin a calming counterpoint to the disruption that change presents? I’m not sure, but either way it looks very handsome perched where it is.
Many of the works seem to reference the ocean: “the spikey, wavy steel, leaf/boat/canoe” (Penney’s description, too beautiful+funny not to quote directly), the dolphin and the wave-y table, the shell tile, and even the steel standing sculpture (is the immensity of a view through a slot akin to staring into the endless ocean?) There’s a tension of sorts in the ocean (and life) for those of us who struggle with change. Uncertain, endless, and beyond our capacity to control. Also soothing. The horizon is flat and calm, the tides come and go and come and go, and the beach is right where you left it (unlike your home or your furniture, Port Willunga can’t move). It’s full of possibilities, and possibilities are at least partly about change.
— Christopher Arblaster
Christopher Arblaster takes a lot of photos, occasionally arranges words, also struggles with change.