SIMONE DARCY – FLESH EXHIBITION
by Andrew Harper
The photographic process has a long history with many permutations. Its malleable nature encourages artists to push at its edges and conduct experiments. All there has to be is light, from some source, and a surface that has some sensitivity to whatever that light source might be. Cameras are not always necessary. An artist may themselves take the place of the camera, choosing which light to work with. There’s always agency.
The process can be wet and it can involve the simple, standard chemical sets of developing, but it can also involve naturally occurring substances and plant-based chemistry; it can just be allowed to occur or it can be guided and manipulated with physical interactions: an artist who wants to, may make marks, may disrupt, may coax and tweak what occurs when the light plays and the chemicals do their work of transformation. The potentials spread out, and subtle changes can produce dramatic differences.
The parameters of working without a camera are far less rigid than you might assume. The process is not so inflexible that it must be followed with unyielding rigour; the bold may introduce some carefully selected anarchy.
This takes knowledge and confidence, of course.
Simone Darcy’s work demonstrates this; her body of work, Flesh, is a culmination of a long investigative interaction with multiple processes of creating imagery outside the camera. Simone has developed a deep and personal understanding of how these processes – Lumen prints and Chemigrams - function and occur; she directly (and somewhat fearlessly) marks an image as it is undergoing the reactive process.
Simone makes marks; she makes them as the chemical work of the Chemigram is happening, working directly into the chemicals, making her marks onto the paper as the reaction manifests. The marks become the image: these are works that are born of the process. They are the direct results of activity found at a borderland of knowledge of process and expressive intervention. New work that stems from long garnered knowledge of the medium.
These processes are more traditionally set in motion and to some extent allowed to follow a course. Over the relatively brief interaction through time something is allowed to emerge; an hour in the sun and a bath in fixative and there, there is an image.
In this new body of work, Flesh, Simone merges dual techniques into the production of Chemilumen imagery. The chemical process of Silver Gelatin, the earliest one used for classic black and white photographic image creation is merged with the Lumen exposure to sunlight; with this process begun, the artist adds in herself as an extra element; marking and sketching expressive forms directly into the work.
She goes to the work, and her work is her expression, both in the actual labour of marking, and in the end result. It is borne of experience and knowledge, the complex weights of life, marked into the image as the human experience of time marks a life.
The marks suggest presence of the artist’s body: active and filled with agency. The markings are partly statements: I am here, I am alive, active, interacting, making, being. This is not simply happening; something is being shown; etched and drawn alongside the inexorable process of chemistry, of light. That will not slow down, but Simone chooses to work within it, and you can see the determined urgency: the marks are definite, real, they suggest, hint and state.
The body of the artist works, does the work of a woman and inscribes the knowledge and experience of life, of having a body that experiences time and everything a woman goes through and more, all coded and felt and communicated. The images, marks and subtle coloured tones that emerge from the process echo and suggest the body, and here is the logic of the title: flesh. Flesh is alive, active and in motion. It is the body, and Simone’s images are both of the body and created by a body, marked into an intimate interaction of light and chemistry.
Andrew Harper is a writer, artist and speaker based in Southern Tasmania. His work has been seen in Artist Profile, Un magazine, RealTime and eyeline. He writes a regular column on visual art for Tas Weekend
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Q&A SHOWCASE - GOLD CIRCLE
Abstraction in art serves as a powerful vehicle for expression. Liberated from the constraints of traditional representation, it evokes a visual reality that transcends the ordinary, embodying virtues such as simplicity, resilience, purity, and wonder.
This Showcase features the remarkable work of Simone Darcy, an artist born in Bedgerabong (NSW) on Wiradjuri land, who now resides in lutruwita/Tasmania. With the use of bold, expressive gestural marks, Darcy crafts abstract compositions that delve into themes of place, identity, and embodiment, deeply informed by her experiences as a woman, artist, and mother.
Gold Circle is excited to present these works, old and new, accompanied by an in-depth interview with the artist that reveals the stories behind her concepts, creative processes, and the presentation of her art.
Tell us about yourself and how your career as an artist began?
I grew up in a small rural farming community in Australia, and from an early age art was my escapism. The influence of this landscape and its colours has always stayed with me. I then left and went to the city to study at Sydney College of the Arts. From the beginning motherhood was a major part of my work, my daughter Taliah was a baby when I started at SCA in my early 20’s and then my son Jasper came along during my studies. My children have always been a presence in my work in body and spirit. I was a young mum, we didn’t have much money so my studio was always a home studio, this has always been my normal.
Photography has always been my passion, and from the first moment I stepped into a darkroom I was hooked, these were pre-digital days so experimenting with alternative photographic processes was embraced and nurtured. I spent many hours alone each week in the university darkroom. This way of working has stayed with me, it stills my busy mind, and the darkroom is somewhat of a healing space.
Have there been any primary influences in your work, either from the art world or beyond?
Early on, I was introduced to the textural black-and-white work of Minor White, along with the assemblage work by Man Ray and Lazlo Maholy-Nagy.
A reoccurring theme from my early 20s has been to draw on shared stories of women from the past and present as healers, mothers, and alchemists. These conversations are more present in the photogram work that I do.
More and more I find myself turning to the work of painters I have long admired, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Cy Twombly and Julie Mehretu.
How did the fascination with camera-less, alternative photography begin for you?
A few years back I started returning home to Central West NSW. I would set up my processing equipment in the back of my car, allowing me the freedom to create work in the field whilst being mindful not to leave any footprint behind. This became a conversation with places from my past, the banks of the Lachlan River and the land out around Bedgerabong near my family farm. I felt the presence of my father here, he had died in an accident just near our farm when he was 28.
Through exploring the chemigram process came a major shift in my practice, a new excitement with challenges. Through intuitive mark-making and experimenting with combining multiple techniques, I started to create work that was equal parts abstract and mysterious. Through the materiality of the weighted paper, these works often act more like sculptural objects.
Can you describe the process of creating these works and what has led you to develop this practice?
My practice involves combining two or three processes to create works that directly respond to the physical and psychological body, with the final works often formed somewhere between direct representation and abstraction. Of late, I have been making this work on the studio floor, allowing me to use painter’s tools to fully express what is felt and also expose them to the winter sunlight.
Within my latest work ‘Flesh’ it’s hard not to think of the body, especially with their recurring earthy pink tones giving them a feminine interpretation. Of late I have been reading the work of Remica Bingham where she writes ‘In this elegy for women’s broken bodies, flesh becomes the site for longing and sin, desire and destruction’. I started making this work while being based in Queenstown during my residency at Q Bank Gallery. Queenstown is a town in the West Coast region of Tasmania. The landscape and town show strong evidence of its mining history impacting the surrounding mountains, making it resemble a cratered moonscape. The slow regeneration of plant life. To me, this comes through as being in the presence of strong female healing energy
What is the most challenging aspect of creating these works in the studio?
I often work alone in my home studio and darkroom which can be challenging when processing large sheets of photosensitive paper, recently I have managed to create a few new working methods outside of the darkroom and giving me the freedom to take my gear to new locations.
How do you see your work evolving in future?
Changing my approach to photographic materials has been increasingly on my mind. As an experimental photo-based artist I spend a great deal of time working in the darkroom. I’m looking more and more at new methods to produce environmentally friendly work. This has involved a lot of research and experimenting with alternative solutions to limit the harm of darkroom chemicals to waterways, and my body and pass on to the students I teach. At this time, it’s still important to me to print and hand-build all the layers in my work, this may change in the future. The physical side of making is what holds me to the work, often highlighting the beautiful mistakes and my limitations, something I have come to embrace.
Last year I moved to Tasmania, an island at the bottom of Australia, this has had a significant impact on my work and the direction I’m going in. Being immersed in nature, this island’s beauty and vastness is helping me to slow down and make work that is fulfilling and holds a connection. I’ve also started to see the landscape more as a visual spectacle.
Marina Syrmakezi
Founder & Curator
https://www.gold-circle.co.uk/showcase.html
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8 September - 2 October, 2022
‘Created using cameraless techniques within the darkroom, Darcy’s imagery features glowing forms floating in darkness. Here, light and the human figure collaborate on photo-sensitive paper, constructing, unfolding, and recomposing the depiction of self. Composed of multiple panels of unique, imprinted, material portraits, each embodies a different real or imagined female persona across time - the Harlot, Warrior, Goddess, Wife, Mother, Widow, Mystic and Crone. Darcy defines embodiment in these works as “to give form to, incarnate, contain, and make concrete, in reference to a soul of a spirit”. Alongside these panels are a sequence of full-body photograms, showing luminescence feminine forms. In these, the artist’s body is employed as both a material and agent void of immediate classification, forging portraits that deny the viewer any sense of familiarity. Enveloping the space, these photographs act as a skin, embodying the stories, personas and scars that construct our ideas of the self’.
Anna May Kirk (Co-Director, Cement Fondu 2022)