Art inspired by the paranormal
Warren Feeney meets an artist who has been working with people who profess to have access to another realm.
Artist Jen Bowmast has been making bronze and ceramic objects over the past two years that she says have materialised from ‘‘learning to walk in the dark’’.
It is a credible declaration. Her research has comprised ongoing interviews with psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and oracle, whose responses have ‘‘offered fruitful ground for artmaking’’. Bowmast completed her MA at the University of Canterbury School Of Fine Arts and her exhibition at The National, Artefacts of the Future, is of distinct works imagined and completed during that period.
Why the interest in the paranormal and the philosophies of those who inhabit its realms?
‘‘When you first enter Artefacts of the Future there is a work called Psychopomp. This is the most recent work and it is the result of all my research. I have been working with readers who profess to have access to another realm. They have been in Los Angeles, Vietnam, London, Christchurch and where I live in Motueka.
‘‘Sometimes those readings have been in person, but a lot of the time they are on Skype or email. I found some by searching online..’’
Before her studies at Ilam, Bowmast completed a Post Graduate Diploma at AUT in Auckland. She says that the nature of the research she was required to undertake at that time did not sit well with the interests of her art.
‘‘I was very much shepherded into positioning my practice through dead French philosophers as the language to measure my ideas against. Of course there is a long tradition of that. I respected it, but I also found it very frustrating that my more intuitive and emotional motivations in making work – that it had to be rationalised within an academic context. To me, that started to rinse the magic out of it. So I decided to include psychics as a method of research alongside philosophy and art theory.
‘‘When I began this, it was tongue-in-cheek. I started as an observer, but then, as the research progressed, I became a participant observer. I came across this way of researching called ‘transpersonal methodology’, which is about not having an expectation or a judgment about the experience you are about to have within that research.
‘‘That idea had come from psychologists working with their clients. Rather than seeing an interview as, ‘I am the healer, you are the sick one’, it became, ‘right now we are entering into an exchange together and there is no hierarchy. I am open to anything that is going to happen and I do not have an agenda’.
‘‘I started to use that when I had the meetings with the readers and it totally transformed my position. It became a far more holistic approach.
‘‘As my research continued, it was pointed out to me by the clairvoyant that I was becoming a mystic, so it has been very much a journey. It has not been as clinical or cynical as the initial intent was. It has been a vehicle for me to negotiate into areas that I did not imagine I would ever get to by having a more open mind.
‘‘Sometimes the work I make is a direct response to a psychic reading and other times it comes from layers of conversations. I might connect messages which create a catalyst for making.’’
Rather than being a sceptic, Bowmast’s research has also seen her acknowledge that academia’s commitment to ‘‘knowing’’ has led her to the unexpected comfort of not knowing.
‘‘Intuition has assumed greater priority in making the work. I do not have any judgment or allegiance or agenda. I accept what is given to me. When a clairvoyant says to me, ‘I see you working with bright yellow’, I accept that.’’
Bowmast is not just referencing a particular colour in these comments. It is the form, materials, surfaces and encounter with the work that is important.
‘‘The experience of my work is not something that I dictate to you through a wall text. I am inviting you to commune with the physicality of the work and engage in its materiality. Psychopomp has been hand-moulded from foam, lacquer and resin. The interesting thing for me is that it is so ambiguous. I can’t really understand the shape despite having made it.
‘‘The show title references a Los Angeles psychic who described my art practice, saying ‘I think that you are making ‘artefacts for the future’’. He said, I was ignoring conventional time streams, going into another realm that could be real or imagined. I was mining relics from outside of my everyday consciousness. Which, in a broader sense, you could say that all makers do.’’
Artefacts of the Future is also the title of the work in the black hut in the centre of the gallery and was Bowmast’s final submission piece for her MA. The ceramic objects on the table in the hut are painted in ‘‘singularity black’’. Invented by British company NanoSystems, it is so black that it is capable of making threedimensional objects appear flat.
‘‘I have worked with a new paint that uses carbon nanotubes and is outed as the blackest black. It was developed for space agency equipment to observe faraway stars. The original version only [British sculptor and Turner Prize winner] Anish Kapoor had access to it, but now other artists can buy
20 ml vials.
‘‘I enjoy the clandestine emails back and forth on how to use this material. It is couriered from America in small quantities, painted with 15 coats and fired at
300 degrees. The prescribed labour and exchange with the paint’s inventors are a part of the work.
‘‘I ask my materials what they can do for me. This ‘conversation’ allows the process to make the work. It is about chasing the divine through materiality.’’
❚ Jen Bowmast, Artefacts of the Future, The National, 249 Moorhouse Avenue, until May
5.
❚ This is Warren Feeney’s final regular column for The Press.
"I accept what is given to me. When a clairvoyant says to me, 'I see you working with bright yellow', I accept that."
Jen Bowmast