Contemporary Australia: Women

89 Ruth Hutchinson Australia b.1963 Incubator for cultivating realities (Past, present and future) (details) 2011 Powder-coated mild steel, mirror, perspex, ceramic, synthetic polymer paint, stainless steel, aluminium, adhesive 146 x 75 x 75cm (excluding power cord) Man is only man on the surface. Lift the skin, dissect: here the machineries begin. Then you lose yourself in an unfathomable substance, alien to everything you know and yet of the essence. Paul Valéry 1 It is a figurative vivisection — an examination of what is inside living things to gain a deeper knowledge of how we ‘work’ — that is at the heart of Ruth Hutchinson’s practice. Like many artists, she exploits herself as a test subject to investigate the ‘unfathomable substances’ of thought and how the mind works. The first works acquired for ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’ were 22 watercolours from Hutchinson’s Constellation series 2009–10. This asterism of snakes, plants, stones and body parts stem from the Greek myth of Perseus and Medusa. Perseus was sent to slay the gorgon Medusa, who, with serpents for hair, was so ugly that on gazing at her face you were petrified — literally, turned to stone. To ensure his mission was successful, Perseus acquired a brightly polished shield and a number of magical accessories. When he came upon the sleeping Medusa, shielded by the mirrored armour, he cut off her head with one stroke, placed it in his magic bag and escaped wearing winged sandals and a helmet of invisibility. 2 This Perseus–Medusa myth is filled with incredible visual allegories that, in Hutchinson’s hands, morph into stream-of-consciousness allusions. She proposes: Sometimes we hide secrets from the world and ourselves. We try to exorcise the demons in our heads, the deep dark secrets or the skeletons in the closet. How do we deal with those touchy, anxious, uptight thoughts and images that move too quickly, too slowly, or dodge around our minds? 3 Her circular canvases, like the shield that mirrored the head of Medusa, reflect the subconscious and offer protection from what one cannot face. Delicately painted on vellum — a translucent material made from finely tanned animal skin — Hutchinson’s canvases conjure thoughts of dissection and a peeling back of the dermal membrane to reveal what is inside. They resemble windows into the mind. Like portholes on submarines and spaceships — allowing views of underwater or celestial realms — Hutchinson’s canvas portholes shed light on the inner machinations of this contemplative artist, who originally trained as an occupational therapist, and is well versed in the languages of psychology, sociology and anatomy. Portholes can also offer the viewer a different perspective: the disparate stellar landscape an astronaut observes through their round window differs from our terrestrial impression, where the stars amass to form patterns — constellations. On a smaller scale, the optical frame of the porthole becomes a peephole, through which the act of observing takes on a clandestine nature and the viewer becomes voyeur. Arguably, art’s most famous peepholes belong to Marcel Duchamp and his Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas 1945–66. This extraordinary installation was conceived, in secret, over a 20-year period, and only displayed posthumously, at the artist’s request, and under strict instructions for how it should be viewed. Duchamp’s peepholes are drilled into a large wooden door, delineating the position of the viewer. Critic Rosalind Krauss described this prescriptive device as ‘a kind of optical machine through which it is impossible not to see’. 4 The viewer, or as Duchamp referred to them, the voyeur, is confronted with a shocking view of a naked woman, prostrate and spread-eagled. Hutchinson’s Incubator for cultivating realities (Past, present and future) 2011, a white box on a plinth complete with peepholes, also urges us to sneak a peek. As viewers press their eyes to the small holes, the interior of interconnected body parts, scientific apparatus and endless reflections are revealed. It is like a three‑dimensional diagram of how our Ruth Hutchinson Ruth Hutchinson Peepholes and portholes