The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

An architect of imaginary landscapes and dream-like environments, Joanna Langford is known for her fantastical installations. Made from discarded mass-produced materials, including bamboo skewer scaffolding, billowing cloud formations made of plastic bags and computer keyboard skyscrapers, she brings these worlds to life using a sequenced series of LED lights and a hot-glue gun. For Crawl space 2012, Langford considers the politics of building sites, against the backdrop of nature. Using locally sourced materials, Langford creates narrative landscapes. Although her works are constructed fantasies, they are often derived from personal experiences of locations and research into their geological histories. Previous works have been made in response to the environment and geographical terrain, such as down from the nightlands 2007, inspired by the dizzying experience of looking down from a viewing platform in Whanganui, on New Zealand’s North Island. A multitude of bamboo skewer staircases, intersecting with Langford’s signature plastic cumulus clouds, contributed to the sense of height — and vertigo — associated with reaching the optimal viewing point to survey the expansive landscape. For Honey in the rock 2011, another landscape citation, Langford drew inspiration from a volcanic landmark at Mt Cargill, near Dunedin. A fluorescent mass of polystyrene balls formed into organic shapes, the work refers to a natural attraction known as the ‘Organ Pipes’, formed many centuries ago from molten lava flows, which cooled rapidly into column-like structures. Stories associated with the formation of the land continue to influence Langford, with works such as The high country , alluding to New Zealand’s South Island plateaus in the shadows of the Southern Alps mountain range. 1 Conceiving a floating city constructed from plastic milk bottle towers atop silage-wrapped platforms, Langford’s recycling of industrial supplies from New Zealand’s dairy and agricultural sector explores ideas of capital growth and progress. At the time of writing, due to the recent seismic activity in the region, The high country awaits exhibition in Christchurch, a city undergoing geological and urban transformation. 2 In her contemporary investigations, Langford exposes the vulnerabilities of our relationship to nature in all its beauty and darkness. For the Romantic artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the epic scope of the natural world was an expression of the sublime — the psychological effect of the natural world on the human psyche, particularly in relation to the simultaneous sense of fear and attraction experienced in the presence of natural wonders. Mountainous vistas were regarded in this vein due to their overwhelmingly grand scale and diminutive effect on the viewer. Crawl space inverts this notion by presenting a landscape in miniature. While Langford’s artistic predecessors pictured the natural world as a moment in eternal time, her incarnation applies to transitional landscapes undergoing industrial construction, whereby ‘the actual construction process is its own landscape’. 3 Following an interest in man-made structures, Langford uses resources derived from the land to create ‘a new synthetic landscape (the city)’. 4 Langford’s Crawl space considers the influence of engineering against the personal subjectivities of landscape. The work is a skyward construction of suspended cranes, complete with hoists and carry cages. In it, she uses fluorescent safety paint, green plastic silage wrap, metal, wire, reinforcing rods, scaffolding, ladders and girders. Although static, movement is implied — lifting and lowering, ascending and descending. In the past, Langford has described herself as an ‘anti-engineer’, however, her construction process is both spontaneous and carefully measured, and she relies on a practice she calls ‘simultaneous strengthening’ as a method for assessing and reinforcing her structures. 5 The suspended scaffolding draws down from the Gallery ceiling, as if it has pulled itself out from the mountain-like formations below. There is a visible tension in the stressed plastic and in the way that the landforms appear to be contorting. Erected at the base are a number of plywood barriers, modelled on the roughly-clad fences that typically secure building sites, and marking the boundary between art work and audience. Construction is considered a symbol of growth and represents a state of transition. It coincides with economic development, industrial progress and reflects a city’s vision for the future. Joanna Langford’s Crawl space considers the politics of construction, our use of natural resources and the resulting influence on the landscape. 6 Although her anti-engineered constructions stem from a world of imagination, they compel us to reflect on the fragile balance between nature and the built environment. Andrea Bell 1 Blair French, ‘Joanna Langford: The high country’, Art & Australia , vol.49, no.2, December 2011 – February 2012, p.31. 2 The high country was commissioned for the ‘6th SCAPE Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space’, twice postponed due to major earthquakes in the region. 3 Joanna Langford, email to the author, 17 June 2012. 4 Langford, email to the author. 5 Langford, email to the author. 6 Langford, email to the author. JOANNA LANGFORD Imagined worlds JOANNA LANGFORD New Zealand b.1978 down from the nightlands (installation view) 2007 Image courtesy: Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua, Whanganui / Photograph: Richard Wotton 145