A Tremble, A Tug, A Telling by Gail Hocking & Inner mirror, inverted space by Emilija Kasumović.
Gail Hocking
Born and raised in Aotearoa’s Mountain terrain Gail Hocking has a strong connection to the land and natural environments. Hocking’s research and artistic output centres on the relationship between human and nature or non-human beings, emphasising environmental concerns through a lens of empathy, intimacy, and vulnerability. Utilising a multi-disciplinary practice Hocking explores the concept of an emotive future uncertainty, grief and time embodied by human uncomfortableness. Recent research investigates the invisibilities that lie between humans and environmental (nonhuman) phenomena both physically and emotionally.
Hocking graduated with a Master of Visual Arts (Research) from the University of South Australia in 2017. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 2014 at the same institution and a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Curtin University in 2007. Hocking has exhibited widely, including; 2024 Drava Biennale Croatia, touring three cities Koprivnica Art Museum, Osijek Museum of Fine Art, Art Gallery of Slavonski. Exhibition at Gallery CEKAO Zagreb, Croatia. Depot Artspace, Auckland; Gallery-Smith, Melbourne; Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery of Lisbon, Portugal; Museu Municipal de Penafiel, Sao Luis, Portugal; SASA Gallery Adelaide, Flinders Art Museum Adelaide and the Fremantle Arts Centre in Western Australia. Hocking’s projects have been supported by numerous grants from Create SA. Hocking is the recent recipient of Breaking Ground Award and has undertaken residencies at Hafnarborg Art Museum Iceland, Cultivamos Cultura, in São Luis, Portugal; Vancouver Arts Centre, Western Australia; Kangaroo Island Palace of Production and Central Art Studios, South Australia. Academic Papers peer reviewed include Disturbing a Silent Voice -InASA Conference, Curtin University WA and FACTT, Lisbon Portugal.
A Tremble, A Tug, A Telling mirrors Gail Hocking’s understanding of being with the world. Hocking grew up in the vicinity of Aotearoa’s (New Zealand’s) most sublime features, the Ka Riomata o Hine Hukatere (Franz Josef Glacier). Whereas most spent their youth at the local park, Hocking explored the glacier. She describes the experience as part of her DNA and laments that within this generation, “It will go.” Hocking’s research and artistic output centers on the relationship between humans, non humans, and nature, emphasising environmental concerns through a lens of empathy, intimacy, and vulnerability.
The Sublime in art refers to the intense awe and fear associated with nature’s grandeur. Something beyond our capacity to fully comprehend or contain, evokes one’s sense of insignificance. The Anthropocene, the current epoch defined by human impact on the Earth’s geology, climate, and ecosystems, has caused a psychological schism. Humans, once subject to the self-organising forces of nature, are now the dominant force in shaping the planet. Precipitating events with the inability to fully contain them. Hence, we now create our own fears.
To encounter glacial decline elsewhere, Hocking undertook the Hafnarborg Art Residency, Iceland, 2023, to research the melting Vatnajokull and Solheimajokull glaciers, to ice cave dive, to create video/sound and document bodily interventions for the investigation of bodily grief and the geological unmaking of time. During the residency, the Fagradalsfjall volcano unexpectedly created a lava tunnel under the town of Grindavik near the residency. Melting glaciers, scientists surmise, cause earthquakes by disturbing the geological equilibrium. Hocking’s focus shifted from the glaciers to the volcanic quakes. Re awakening experience, residents were weighed down with feelings of anxiety and vulnerability. Some people can feel P waves seconds before an earthquake hits.
P Waves (Primary Waves) are seismic acoustic waves that hit faster than S waves (Secondary Waves), which are ground movement. Extremely low in frequency, not everyone hears or feels them. Certain people’s senses are more conducive, especially those who have experienced a quake before. Like when someone whispers your name, you have become attuned to hear it. P waves echo through bones and rock. They can wake you in fright.
Interested in unearthing ways of being vulnerable in the world, opening interior rooms of experience and diverse ways of listening, Hocking, through non-linear visual narrative and deep resonate sound, challenges preconceived notions of world making, tugging at our sensibilities to move us to be better caretakers.
Niki Sperou
Niki Sperou is an Australian artist and writer working in the nexus of art and science for over twenty-five years.
Emilija Kasumović
Emilija Kasumović is an emerging Adelaide based artist working within drawing, sculpture and installation practice. She is fascinated by areas of study in which science and sprirituality converge. Emilija explores notions of the invisible space we live within, where our feelings, ideas and thoughts reside; and the external space we occupy. Through her experimental sculpture and installation, Kasumović exposes materials and forms to alchemical processes, attempting to bridge the distance between physical and spiritual being, between solidity and ephemerality, allowing the audience to look within themselves and question the boundaries and limits of their own inner space. After graduating with a Bachelor of Creative Art in Honours, Emilija has exhibited in various local galleries, including PICA’s Hatched National Graduate Exhibition in 2019.
The Love of Queer Quandongs
Emilija Kasumovic is a deep thinker. Fuelled by a fascination of physics and philosophy, her research based arts practice transports audiences to that illusive intersection between innate feeling and scientific discourse. Here, Kasumovic investigates some of ontology’s[1] most complex ideas and hypothesises about the lesser-known dimensions of human existence.
Inner Mirror, Inverted Space explores the hypothetical boundary between our internal and external worlds. The exhibition is anchored by its central installation, Outer Edges of Inner Space, which expands across POP’s vestibule like a cloudy web. This is not just one artwork but an interconnected network; a hazy matrix which could seemingly go on for infinity or just as easily dissolve. It comprises thousands of metres of thread which Kasumovic has repetitively unravelled, brushed, pulled and stretched to create fluffy foam-like forms. Hundreds of droplets of glue permeate these forms which are then suspended by a black metal grid, evoking an atmospheric quality in the work. Like so much in science - and in life- Kasumovic’s work starts micro and evolves slowly into macro.
This physical act of making inserts the artist’s presence into the work, alluding to how our bodies are conduits between our inner self and the external environment. Outer Edges of Inner Space extends these ideas by inviting viewers to physically enter the work and become catalysts of the installation. From within the work, our perceived surroundings become distorted and things that were previously ‘known’ seem uncertain. Here, we are embedded in the grid like atoms are embedded in the fabric of space and time.
Kasumovic uses mirrors to further test these ideas. Ordinarily a mirror shows us what our mind chooses to see. They observe us observing. Good or bad, our reflection is a combination of our inner and outer selves. In Kasumovic’s mirrors, the already inverted image is intentionally fogged up forcing the observer to construct the remaining view. By doing so, they question how our minds come to ‘know’ about the space around us and form connections between our inner and outer realities.
Inner Mirror Inverted Space marks an expansive and experimental shift in Kasumovic’s practice. Whilst her past artworks have invited audiences to engage through sight or touch, this exhibition compels viewers to actively experience the work by being an essential part of it. Together, the works manifest an ethereal sense of feeling – as if our bodies intuitively know they are part of something bigger. They offer a poignant opportunity to consider the involuntary ways our mind and bodies interact with our environment and how this fundamentally connects us to the universe.
Steph Cibich
Curator and Arts Writer working on Kaurna Land.
1. Ontology is the philosophical study of being and what it means to exist