Lux & Logos at Carriageworks

Jonathan Jones and Ruark Lewis
Homeland Illuminations
Performance Space at Carriageworks
until 8 Sept

Last week Le Flaneur saw the launch of this powerful and atmospheric installation, a collaboration between two artists working in (until now) seemingly quite diifferent idioms. Ruark Lewis has sometimes described himself as a poet rather than an artist, and his trademark use of stencilled texts has resulted in a distinctive body of work over the years. Jonathan Jones has developed his own equally recognisable style using flourescent tubes. The two visual languages come together successfully in this large floor installation, with a text drawn from the oral history of a senior Warudjari man – Jones' grandfather – and his accounts of working as a wool classer in Western NSW in the 1930s and 40s. The text is stencilled onto packing crate planks – quite colourfully for the often monochrome Lewis – with the illuminated flouros on the underside, and my understanding is that the configuration is variable and experimental. The work has many possible layers of meaning and repays thoughtful study, with the words, strung together without breaks, resonating in the mind as a kind of abstract poetry. There is of course a thoughtful accompanying artists statement. It's a work ripe for institutional aquisition.

Embarrassingly, LF completely missed the audio component. This addition from the artists:
Visual hierachies aside, this work(sculptural installation) was sub-narrated by developing a parallel score from the oral history. This was structured in the form of an audio-collage. We assembled this aural component with the help of vetran new music composer Rik Rue. This accompanies the work on a set of headphones.