Feature... Tangle Teaser
Stripping bark with a draw knife for the Tanglewood series, 2022. Photographer: Agnieszka Woznicka.
Peter Walker: Tanglewood, the exhibition and accompanying monograph, presented by JamFactory in partnership with the University of South Australia and Wakefield Press, documents the material poetry of a master craftsperson grounded in curiosity, dexterity, and a commitment to making the impossible, possible.
Words by Rebecca Freezer
Rebecca is Curator at JamFactory.
Peter Walker is a visual artist, furniture designer and surfboard builder. His material of choice is timber, in all of its typologies and manipulations. Walker’s creative practice is entwined with teaching and mentoring as well as developing industry-related and cultural initiatives, which highlight the importance of art and design in our society, ecology and education systems.
With a career spanning more than three decades and two continents, he has played an active role in connecting important art and design institutions between the USA and Australia. Currently he leads the University of South Australia’s Master of Design program as Program Director and 2022 marks his tenth year of tenure with the institution. This follows from a decade of teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the USA, where he became an Associate Professor and Head of Furniture and Design. In the late 1990s, Walker headed the JamFactory’s Furniture Design Studio, mentoring emerging designer/makers who have gone on to enjoy significant professional success. An esteemed educator with an extending influence, Walker is the logical choice to be the first solo exhibitor of this biennial series of exhibitions, presented by JamFactory in partnership with the University of South Australia since 2015.
Throughout Walker’s creative practice he encourages audiences to reflect on the nature of wood and its origins. In Tanglewood he draws our attention to trees and their surrounding ecology in the Australian bush. Through a series of three-dimensional works, which Walker refers to as his "drawings", he combines sculptural composition with elements of design to explore the inherent abstract qualities of timber. Each chaotic tangle of fallen eucalyptus branches is spliced together using fine furniture techniques that blur the boundary between naturally formed occurrences and human-made structures. In Gemelgum, 2022 three branches are merged, blurring the boundary of found and formed. When branches grow in proximity they touch and rub against each other, wearing away the bark and exposing a cellular plant tissue known as a cambium. This layer provides
cells for plant growth, allowing limbs to naturally graft together to become gemels.
Throughout Tanglewood Walker investigates synergies of geometry, structure and pattern found in the natural world where close observation reveals a composition of repetitious forms and angles. Bush Anatomy, 2019 utilises naturally formed curves, fused together to form a continuous gestural line composition. The painted surface of the wood creates an ambiguous reading of the materials–is it wood?
Or is it plaster; or fibre-glass; or bone? The structure possesses the sensuous organic nature of internal organs. Charcoal powder rubbed into its incised surface highlights the three-dimensional quality of the form.
Charcoal is utilised also in Gondwanablue, 2022. This work is built with completely charred and blackened Banksia limbs, collected from the fire ravaged western end of Kangaroo Island. Banksia is an ancient descendent from the Gondwana continent. Walker articulates how:
“Part of my interest in using salvaged materials lies in looking at the value inherent in everything, no matter how scarred or what condition they may be in... Whilst these trees were burnt beyond regeneration and the timber not suitable for building purposes, the twisted scarred tangled forms speak of climatic history and conditions, genetic properties, and notions of adaptation.”
Walker’s hand-crafting, the ‘marks of making’ prompts us to think about ideas of value and waste. The colour blue takes its source from the waters surrounding Kangaroo Island and signifies the relationship between fire and water, both quenching and quelling. Gondwanablue’s construction as a large-scale, infinite loop is not only suggestive of natural, evolutionary life cycles, but is also an emblem of environmental short-sightedness.
Tanglewood is the third major solo show by Walker to be presented in JamFactory’s main gallery. The first exhibition Morpheus, 2000 marked a key point in his career, as he moved from his usual metier as a furniture designer to explore recycled wood as a sculptural and metaphorical form. The second show, Making Waves, 2010 was a rumination on ecology through material choices and hand-made production methods in his series of artisanal surfboards. Making Waves would go on to tour Australia. Spaced just over a decade apart, Tanglewood is a natural conclusion to this trilogy of JamFactory exhibitions.
The drawing-like sculptures of Tanglewood are connected by genus and lit in such a way that a world of shadows form an evocative landscape. Concurrent with JamFactory’s presentation of Tanglewood, Walker has a collection of suspended sculptural works entitled Upwelling on show as part of the Invisibility exhibition at MOD. at the University of South Australia on display until late- November 2022.
In the words of former President of RISD and co-author of Peter Walker: Tanglewood, Professor Roseanne Somerson:
“Peter’s work takes us on a journey, one narrated by his clear strengths and informed by sensorial curiosity... In his generous way, he invites us to come along for the journey, one that promises transformation.”
Peter Walker: Tanglewood is showing at JamFactory Adelaide from 30 September to 27 November 2022.
Peter Walker: Tanglewood, published through Wakefield Press, is available to purchase at shop.jamfactory.com.au