Exhibited in Elegy for Winter, 2019, curated by Annika Harding at M16 Artspace, Canberra and the online exhibition Self as subject, for M16 Artspace, curated by Jas Hugonnet in March 2020.

Lake polish, Parilanjärvi, January 2016

The weather has been warming up – from -20°C to -10°C to just below zero. In a few days it will be warm enough that the ice will develop a slick of moisture on the surface and the snow will become heavy and wet. Today it is still cold enough that the snow is light and powdery, as I push the new shovel with the sharp blade on its edge, I can make straight channels in the snow. Working my way up and down I create a clear, clean space on the surface of the lake, a black shiny floor, a stage, a window into the frozen world beneath.

For a few hours this is my world, the lake, the ice, the reeds and water-plants becoming visible beneath my feet, suspended in black. It feels good to work; the effort keeps me warm and the results are satisfying. Tomorrow my arms and back and legs will be sore, I’ll move slowly and stiffly, the window into the lake will remain for a few days then disappear.

The lake is opposite a collection of former school buildings in rural Finland where I spent two months undertaking an artist residency at the Arteles Creative Centre.

While walking the country roads in far below freezing temperatures I asked myself how do we make ourselves ‘at home’? How do we make a place for ourselves when we are far from home?

This effort may seem absurd, clearing a space on a frozen lake that will ultimately melt. But I’ve always been reassured by certain kinds of repetitive labour. If I feel unsettled, weeding the garden, knitting; making something that requires repeating a process is a way to be a body in the world, with a simple focus.

Domestic labour has been a recurring subject in my work since I first started making performances in the 1990s. I employ processes such as cleaning, sewing, sleeping, building and pulling apart to consider what it means to ‘inhabit’ and how this ‘inhabiting’ is done. I’m curious about what labour is and who engages in the work of making our worlds, and the different ways we have of perceiving and valuing work.

How we act in the world is a form of making ourselves as well as making spaces inhabitable for ourselves. Self is expressed through action – the crux for me is contradictory – I set up performances to appear in some way anonymous – a figure, a person who could be anyone – but by being the body in the frame, I am presenting a body of a certain age, experience and cultural background, enacting processes that locate me.

A working body has a particular relationship with the surrounding environment, different from a body at rest or a body in another mode of active being. While this process of actively engaging in making place through work has been a longstanding aspect of my performance practice, it has only been recently that I’ve come to think of the action as a kind of expression of self and a transformation in to a particular kind of body – I’m not only working the space, I’m working myself.

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This work was originally exhibited in the exhibition Elegy for Winter, 2019, curated by Annika Harding at M16 Artspace, Canberra. It was then exhibited in the online exhibition Self as subject, for M16 Artspace, curated by Jas Hugonnet in March 2020.

https://www.m16artspace.com.au/onlinegallery