DOWN THE DRAIN – a SALA review

SALA is the annual art event in South Australia involving hundreds of exhibitions and thousands of artists

One of the theoretical divisions of modern and contemporary art recognises that the object can assert its own meaning and exist as a purely aesthetic statement or conversely reflect an ethic standpoint which refers to a socially motivated desire to change or affect the social order. Taken to its extreme, the aesthetic approach tends towards an expressionistic, abstract formalism whereas the ethical is often directed towards the viewer producing objects for contemplation. While there is some truth in this divisive approach, three exhibitions I have seen this week combine elements of both. The works of Amanda Seacombe, Ian Hamilton and Fran Cullen as part of SALA take a similar approach to art making in enlisting the help of nature. Seacombe used chemicals and other substances that pass down kitchen drains to create surfaces while Cullen employed rain to disperse a variety of materials on paper. Hamilton immersed steel plates in the Bremer River and allowed them to erode around minimal areas of painted resistance creating surfaces etched by water. Moving water as a catalyst would seem to be a logical approach to the problems of the driest state on the driest continent, but I don’t recall artists using this approach in numbers before this year’s SALA.

Each work had its own beginnings.  Amanda Seacombe with Kitchen Sink, avoided potential cliches or overt references to domestic violence using an oblique conceptual approach. Pulped paper drainpipes combine with photographs of the effects of caustic chemicals and oils poured down the sink. The metaphors are obvious. Dealing with domestic violence issues in art is fraught with difficulties, not least of which is the depth of personal connection to the subject matter or theme and holding that at arm’s length. The emotional content can easily overwhelm the art and become little more than propaganda as it did with a great deal of work which derived its impetus from radical war and feminist issues. Once the anger and vitriol has dissipated what is left is often little more than a shell. Hamilton’s metal plates in Drawing from the river Bremer on the other hand, are not concerned with domestic violence but the results of humanity’s indifference to a river system. The violence of a river is often beneath the surface while its erosive nature scars the landscape and the channels followed. To slowly rust away the surface of metal matches the natural processes at work with any river but human interference in the form of chemicals accelerates the process. The plates themselves were shaped like clerestory windows and organised on the wall much like alternating religious icons – perhaps a subtle allusion to corrosive religion. Less concerned with ethical considerations, Cullen’s sheets of paper in Drawing Groundwater were subjected to months of reservoir, creek and gutter downpipe water flow with materials such as graphite, eucalyptus sap, coffee, tea, smoke and plaster leeching and staining the surface. The freely mounted results have a savage untamed quality to them. What the three artists have in common is a symbiosis with an active natural process wherein nature is encouraged to take the upper hand.

On one level the works draw the audience into a dialogue of empathy, history and transformation encouraging reflection, engagement and connection beyond themselves. On another is the object itself. There is an aesthetic at play in the works of all three artists which can be appreciated beyond or outside ethical considerations.  The tactile comes into play with all three. The pulped and compressed paper of Seacombe, the rusted and gritted surfaces of Hamilton’s plates and the encrusted paper of Cullen are at once testament to encapsulated physical experiences and the sheer pleasure of natural, or not so natural processes, when nature and the artist intersect. Seacombe’s paper drainpipes exist both as ethic and aesthetic arranged on a wall or piled up on the floor as recovered detritus. The paper apparently came from old bank statements. Cullen’s overlapped paper sheets grow almost organically from the wall seemingly mirroring unhampered natural processes while the linear organisation of Hamilton’s framed and unframed plates provide a quasi-religious experience in a white walled gallery.

It is coincidence that these three exhibitions are occurring simultaneously as part of SALA 2025. The artists have no connection with each other and yet the similarity in their approaches suggests a wider ethical/aesthetic that bridges both realms. Unlike examples from the past such as the propogandist extremes of nuclear age and the expressionist excesses of abstract painters, the more subtle combination of ethic and object perhaps suggests a more considered and less hysterical viewpoint regarding matters of social concern to artists. Certainly, the work is individualistic and deriving from singular visions, but whether it represents an artistic direction or just an individual response to the times in which we live is open to debate. The overwhelming, wide-scale social and moral trauma that characterises 2025 presents the artist with an impossible ethical task which is why so many retreat into themselves. Art can only ever be a personal response and the quiet subtlety of all three exhibitions in dealing with underlying violence is refreshing.