Installation view, Conjuring i already forgot, FELTspace, Kaurna Country, 2024. Photo: Thomas McCammon.
The first thing that struck me about Briony Galligan’s show is that, to help me write this catalogue essay, she sent me an organised PDF with information about her show. While I would normally associate gestures such as this with an increased bureaucratisation of social relations—where managerial culture has bled into every interaction—I immediately recognised a concern for the other as her motivation. She was offering me the means (a portal) to write about her work (thank you), by accumulating relevant information in a polite document. It was an enjoyable read that briefly communicated her concerns with portals, trees, and genealogy. While connecting these ideas with wider conceptual frameworks, such as capitalism.
everybodydies
As someone who has dedicated a large portion of their ‘professional time’ to writing catalogue essays, I can attest to the rarity of this exchange. For I would normally navigate through a strange assortment of test shots and collages of text. Of course, these messy insights are one of the most rewarding aspects of being an arts writer, as they reveal the artist’s mind and personality, in some way or the other. This moment showed the thoughtfulness and conciseness of Briony, the effort that she puts into the various aspects of her practice.
Her succinctness is also noticeable in the structure of Conjuring i already forgot, for it bears a friendliness that is rare in contemporary art. Indeed, she made a large scale curtain with her son, son’s grandmother, lover and friends to act as a portal in the gallery. This act reflects on genealogy and the figure of the tree as its metaphor. rotstinkanddecomposeSince we are settlers in Naarm/Melbourne, London plane trees came into the picture, which are often destined for removal due to their toxicity, as introduced species. Briony used materials to think through this idea of genealogical branches with her mother’s old multipurpose printer, which she used to scan plane tree to create a zine. coughingdirtintheafterlifeOf course, the genealogy of settlers in so called Australia is permanently marked by the colonialism of this land, as we continually inhabit this event.
The artist also made sharp tools with wood from plane trees. The use and purpose of these speculative tools remains unknown, which charges them with a menacing aura. Briony borrowed this status—an object without utility—from an ethnographic museum in Lisbon, Portugal, where she found agricultural implements from the 60s. She noticed that the museological display mixed these tools with other objects, without granting them context or separation, to a sinister effect.
mostlyassholesafewtolerablefaces
This inspired her to make ambiguous tools of undetermined meaning. In reference to her source material, these sculptures look agricultural-ish, bearing spikes (that have already injured her fingerlikedrowninginsumpoil) connected to a broom like assortment of joint sticks. While they bear the spookiness of folk horror, resembling the imaginings of the The Blair Witch Project (1999), there is a more subtle terror that codifies them. For the unknowability of these objects is a semiotic lurking, that creeps the linguistic plane with an undefinable purpose, avoiding a clearly interpretable shape. Following the logic of anxiety, they simply exist with catastrophic revenge, awaiting the timely moment for their great reveal: only when it is too late, shall we discover the extent of their intolerable threat.
The topology of a genealogical tree is soothing in this context, as it identifies the various agents from one’s past that may constitute the self. It’s better to know with certainty that there’s a horrible fuck up in the genealogical tree than to remain oblivious—a mystery waiting for the most inopportune moment to become a fact. Picture yourself hanging out with your progressive friends, as you collective oppose the fascism of the global regime by having non-committal sex with each other (you’re super duper radical), only to receive a notification from my ancestry dot com that shows you’re incredibly probo. Ouch.