Contemporary Australia: Women

62 flux, and each shade carries a range of associations, referencing the shifting moods of our emotional selves, or standing as an allegory for emotive states of being. Signalled by a small movement and the gentle ‘schloosh’ of expelled paper, Baumann realises the potential for expectation and suspense, offering a near endless palette of combinations and moods, which gather — discarded, shifting, growing — as a vast, unrepeatable, field of colour. Mixed Feelings is almost a negation and, as a kind of blanking, exudes an aesthetic and emotional calm. A near-silent chronicle of time and, by inference, life passing, its aesthetic qualities shift so gradually it does not require conscious thought to be activated. Like a pulse at rest, the work continues to function whether we’re paying attention or not. Interestingly, MixedFeelings is also informed by Baumann’s recent investigations into the physics of falling paper; virtually impossible to predict, this inexact science has been described as ‘low dimensional chaos’, 2 an apt description for Baumann’s practice more broadly. Meticulously researched and carefully calibrated, she retains conceptual control only up to a point before leaving the work to chance, or to simply letting the materials ‘do what they do’. 3 Ultimately, Rebecca Baumann sets up actions that create a moment in which change occurs. This varies in scale and effect — from a literal explosion, to the fluttering movement of gold tinsel and the unpredictable acrobatics of falling paper. She is not so interested in what happens before, or in holding a moment in stasis, in keeping it still. Instead, Baumann seeks to activate a singular moment in its fleetingness. Ranging in tone from the poignant to the hyper, her works are temporary monuments to the un-monumental, and they are always affective. Bree Richards Working drawings for Mixed Feelings 2012 Images courtesy: The artist Opposite Untitled Cascade 2011 Tinsel curtain, domestic fan, 1.2k Selecon Zoomspot Dimensions variable Installation view, ‘Rounds’, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2010 Photograph: Kristian Laemmle-Ruff Image courtesy: The artist