Air

The sculptures of Jamie North hold growth and collapse in dynamic tension. Born into Newcastle, New South Wales’s coal economy of the 1970s, North is captivated by industrial ruins and native plant communities. The twin concrete towers of his work Portal 2022 harbour a garden of species indigenous to Brisbane. Orchids and maidenhair shelter on the inner slopes, and a hoya wends its way towards the light above. The spreading branches and deep green leaves of Ficus rubiginosa (rusty fig) cap each column. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out — together, these plants are like lungs, working in inverse rhythm to our every breath. We are rarely called to visualise the air we breathe, as we might with a glass of water that slakes our thirst. Air can seem an inexhaustible resource, but Rosslynd Piggott reveals each breath as precious, and creates a diary of the intangible in her work Collection of air 2.12.1992 - 28.2.1993 1992–93. Travelling from Melbourne to Paris and on to Rome via Milan, she captured, sealed and labelled a sample of air once a day. This is the air of 65 different moments, held with gentle care. The walls of each glass vial separate their invisible cargo from the air we breathe: its gaseous mix, temperature and particle load are in constant flux, separated from the earlier sample by only millimetres. Piggott has long been interested in giving form to the ethereal, precious and fugitive, exploring the space where we might breathe deeply and be renewed by the mysterious beauty of the natural world. Her expansive painting Night and mirrors 1999–2000 traces the shadowy silhouette of a pine tree against the night sky in which a small pearl gleams bright. Panels of silver and palladium leaf flank this spirit window, like an altar. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art holds a large group of tree studies by Brisbane-born Lloyd Rees. Each intimately scaled drawing records a moment of connection between two living beings sustained by air: artist and tree. Rees’s works bear witness to the artistic processes of observation and composition, the feedback between his pencil and paper enabling contemplation and learning. In Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree c.1912–17 the twin trunks of the fig reach upwards, supporting a canopy beautifully articulated in highlights and shadows. A small figure sheltering below looks into the distance. Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira loosened the fine particles of watercolour pigment in water before laying them on paper to capture the time-moulded ochre earth and bright clear skies of his traditional Country. We remember him for the blue mauve of the shadowed crags and distant ranges, and above all the ghost gums — Corymbia aparrerinja — he so celebrated. Namatjira lays the pigment down with the lightest touch, almost invisible, the white of the paper shining through, each tree a living body within the landscape. In an act of suspected arson, some of the most iconic trees Namatjira painted were burnt to the ground in 2013, but his descendants continue this form of expression. Culture continues, changes and is passed on. Jamie North / Flume with Ficus rubiginosa (detail) 2013 Lloyd Rees / Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree (detail) c.1912–17 29 28 Do we all breathe the same air? Do we all breathe the same air?