Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow, Author at QAGOMA Blog

‘Please traverse the space using only the rings’, William Forsythe requests as we encounter his installation of suspended gymnastic rings, The Fact of Matter 2009. To do so, we must lift ourselves into the air by stepping onto one ring, then another. Although the lower rings are hanging at a suitable height for our feet, to hold ourselves up, and move forward, we must rely heavily upon our arms and core strength. To pursue this alternative to walking, many of us will need to find new ways to move the weight of our bodies. Children might be able to do this easily; however, for adults it is a greater challenge. Forsythe says the work is ‘designed to give you an unadorned sense of three things: your weight, co-ordination and strength’.¹

Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube and step behind closed doors to experience the Gallery like never before

The Fact of Matter has two primary modes of engagement: to do, or imagine and plan how to approach the challenge. ‘You’re going to have to develop a strategy, it’s going to take a lot of concentration’, says Forsythe.²‘Choreography is a way to get things in motion, and artists are always trying to get people to move their minds in different directions.’³

This installation reminds us that once programmed into our bodies, our patterns of movement are very often taken for granted. The ‘matter’ of our body has evolved over millennia to navigate very particular conditions: moving from water to land; learning to breathe; and eventually to walk, run and dance — all the while taking advantage of new opportunities and managing risks encountered.

Forsythe is a choreographer, dancer and artist with a practice spanning more than 50 years, and he describes dance as ‘a conversation with gravity’.⁴ In addition to staging performances by highly trained dancers, Forsythe translates his enquires into how we move and relate to each other in new forms of dance and movement he refers to as ‘choreographic objects’. In such works, the audience might be ‘choreographed’ by an object or installation, or offered a challenge through which we become more aware of our own and others’ movements — discovering the choreographer within — and new ways to coordinate our energy and capacity. He invites us to play, to move with care and to find new ways to work with each other.

While The Fact of Matter was not made with an intended reference to climate change, it offers a vivid illustration of the effort that will be required to lift ourselves ‘up’ to avoid the rising waters, and the artist was open to this context. Sea-level rise has now accelerated to five millimetres a year.⁵ Rises of 40–80 centimetres are forecast by the year 2100, depending upon how we act, with a multi-metre rise predicted by 2300 if we continue on our current path.⁶ Our capacity for ‘transformational adaption’, our swiftness, dexterity and ingenuity in moving together, will be a key in determining the severity of the outcome.⁷ The Fact of Matter offers a way to think through these challenges that is physical, not abstract. Forsythe sets up a form of social choreography, speaking of movement and dance as ‘a way of thinking. The body is a thinking tool’.⁸

Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow is Curatorial Manager, International Art, QAGOMA

Endnotes
¹ William Forsythe, interview with ICA Boston, ‘William Forsythe’s “The Fact of Matter”‘, ICA Boston, 15 November 2018, <www.icaboston.org/video/william-forsythes-fact-matter>,
viewed August 2019.
² Forsythe interview with ICA Boston.
³ William Forsythe in dialogue with Louise Neri, ‘Unhoused and unsustainable: Choreography in and beyond dance’, in William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects [exhibition catalogue], Prestel, Munich, 2018, p.42.
⁴ Helen Luckett, ‘William Forsythe’, in Move: Choreographing You, ed. Stephanie Rosenthal, Hayward Publishing, London, 2010, p.104.
⁵ ‘Over the five-year period 2014–2019, the rate of global mean sea-level rise has amounted to 5 mm/year. This is substantially faster than the average rate since 1993 of 3.2 mm/year’ (The Global Climate in 2015–2019, World Meteorological Organization, 2019, p.6, <https://
library.wmo.int/doc_num.php? explnum_id=9936>, viewed
October 2019).
⁶ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, forthcoming 2019, p.25. Refer to p.8 of this draft report for a graph on the primary drivers of expected sea-level rise under RCP2.6 (swift comprehensive action) and RCP 8.8 (business as usual) conditions, <https://report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROCC_FinalDraft_FullReport.pdf>, viewed October 2019.
⁷ IPCC Special Report, p.71.
⁸ Eva Respini, ‘The body is a thinking tool’ in William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects, p.10.

Join us at GOMA until 26 April 2020

From major immersive experiences to smaller-scale treasures by Australian and international artists, the ‘Water‘ exhibition highlights this precious resource. Walk across a vast, rocky riverbed created by Olafur Eliasson; see animals from around the world gather together to drink from Cai Guo-Qiang’s brilliant blue waterhole; gaze at Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s snowman frozen in Brisbane’s summer heat; traverse a cloud of suspended gymnastic rings in a participatory artwork by William Forsythe, and reflect on the long history of our reliance on water through Megan Cope’s re-created midden. Tickets to ‘Water’ now on sale

Below the Tide Line

Kids and families can explore ocean conservation issues — particularly the impact that ghost nets have on the marine environment — via a spectacular artwork display, a drawing activity and an interactive screen-based animation. Find out more

The Noise of Waters

See films that explore our complex and contradictory relationship with water — the essence of life and an indefatigable, destructive force. Find out more

Buy the publication

An accompanying publication is available from the QAGOMA Store and online.

William Forsythe, United States, b.1949 / The Fact of Matter 2009 — William Forsythe, United States, b.1949 / *The Fact of Matter* 2009 / Polycarbonate rings, polyester belts, and steel rigging / Courtesy: The artist, Gagosian Gallery, New York, Forsythe Productions, Berlin / The development and international exhibition of Choreographic Objects by William Forsythe is made possible with the generous support of Susanne Klatten / © and image courtesy: William Forsythe / Photograph: Chloë Callistemon © QAGOMA

Subscribe to YouTube to go behind-the-scenes / Hear artists tell their stories / Read about your Collection

Feature image: William Forsythe The Fact of Matter 2009 installed at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 2019 during ‘Water’

#WaterGOMA #WilliamForsythe #QAGOMA

‘Murun’ — a Wiradjuri word meaning breath or life — and the English word ‘murmur’ — a low recurring sound, or soft voices — are two words born far from each other, one long of this land, one newly spoken here. They converge in this project by artist Jonathan Jones, the most recent in a series of collaborations with esteemed Elder and Wiradjuri language expert Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM.

This major installation, untitled (giran) 2018, is a murmuration of winged sculptures evoking birds in collective flight. The sounds of wind, bird calls and breathing susurrate through the space as Wiradjuri speakers whisper softly. Giran (wind) is a term also describing fear or apprehension. ‘Understanding wind is an important part of understanding country,’ says Jones. ‘Winds bring change, knowledge and new ideas to those prepared to listen.’¹ In his work, language is woven together with the breath over the land, the breath in and out of the body, wings in flight, and the wind through the river oaks, reeds and cumbungi (bulrush).

Watch | Jonathan Jones discusses ‘untitled (giran)’ 2018

The artwork includes roughly 2,000 separate sculptures of six types of tool, each made from a different material: bagay — an emu eggshell spoon; galigal — a stone knife; bingal — an animal bone awl; bindu-gaany — a freshwater mussel scraper; dhala-ny — a hardwood spear point; and waybarra — a rush ‘start’ (the beginning of a woven item, such as a basket). Such tools allowed our ancestors to eat, sustain, hunt, hold, prepare and protect — to live lightly and flexibly. Each tool embodies the knowledge passed down through generations and represents the potential for change. ‘Each idea, each tool, is limitless in its potential,’ Jones says.

‘untitled (giran)’ 2018 details

Jonathan Jones, Artist, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi peoples, Australia b.1978 / Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM, Cultural advisor and speaker of recorded Wiradjuri , Wiradjuri people, Australia b.1940 / untitled (giran) 2018 — Details of *(untitled) giran* (detail) 2018 / Photographs: N Harth © QAGOMA

Jones has made many of the base ‘tools’ himself, as well as working with family members, Wiradjuri community and long-time artistic collaborators — including Ngarrindjeri artist Aunty Yvonne Koolmatrie — from across the country’s south east. The process of making brings people together, and enhances connections to the land, culture and language. It also strengthens ties to generations who have passed on, a counter to the darker gaps of history and the loss of knowledge that has occurred throughout Indigenous Australia. As Jones notes, ‘Knowledge isn’t a single line’.

Bound to each tool with handmade string is a small bundle of feathers, gathered from birds from the broader community. People from all over Australia sent Jones packages of feathers, many with handwritten notes.² ‘Slow down, look around, listen to the birds,’ Jones asks of his feather-collecting collaborators, offering a quote from the late Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Michael Riley: ‘I see the feather, myself, as sort of a messenger, sending messages onto people and community and places’.³

untitled (giran) shares traditional knowledge and seeks to foster change and the exchange of ideas and skills. Uncle Stan Grant Snr speaks of this work as ‘continuing the development of Wiradjuri gulbanha (philosophy), working with language and country via the artworks for the ongoing enrichment of the community’. While Wiradjuri is a language at risk, it is also in a state of renewal, and one of many hundreds of distinct Indigenous Australian languages acutely affected by colonisation.

Tactile, kinetic learning is key to this project. Language is absorbed in many layers, learnt through walking the landscape, gathering materials and working with our hands. Learning a language is much more than a process of direct word-for-word translation — we must stretch our minds to other cultures and understandings of the world, knowledge deeply encoded over generations. In the face of globalising economies of scale, Jones and Grant advocate for this country as a place of many languages, philosophies, technologies, stories, songs and treasures — a commonwealth measured not only in gold. Passed from one generation to the next, language is a vital inheritance. As is our capacity to listen to the wind.

Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow is Curatorial Manager, International Art, QAGOMA

Endnotes
¹ Conversation with the artist, 28 May 2018, and quoted throughout.
² Many sent feathers in response to a call out from Kaldor Public Art Projects, which hosted Jones’s previous major work, barrangal dyara (skin and bones) 2016.
³ Quote from the artist’s website, Michael Riley, <www.michaelriley.com.au/cloud-2000>, viewed July 2018.

Jonathan Jones ‘untitled (giran)’ 2018

Acknowledgment of Country
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.

#QAGOMA

Author: Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

William Forsythe’s alternative to walking