Inga Fillary’s unrealised contribution to the 2020 Projects section “Space as Substance,” a per-formative installation designed to evolve over the course of the fair, was intended to offer an experience of dirt as deliberated mayhem, to undermine and question systems of social order. By bringing mud and dirt into the gallery space, it becomes displaced and traverses the divide between form, order and the materially anarchic. Dirt falls between the gaps in the social framework, it is formless, outside categorisation and as such has the power to destabilise social structures. Fillary’s recent works represent attempts to operationalise the highly abstract theories found in modern philosophy. Low hierarchy substances, and materials disturbed from their former authority are the cornerstone of Fillary’s practice. When utility is removed, objects are freed to become something other, images can be drawn away from fine art media to subtly reposition the way ‘messages’ can be transmitted, the material is very important. Deeper realities that lie beneath the per-ceivable surfaces emerge and a material ‘life’ is uncovered. The medium is the message. Fillary experiments with the onslaught of time on material, she addresses the burden of humankind upon the earth and the possibility of aesthetic experience to provide an oblique approach to a veiled reality.
“Fillary explores speculative realism and the darkly weird in her sculpture, painting and per-formance practices. Materially oriented, her work examines abjection, the periphery of social codes of normativity and the exhilaration of destruction. She holds a PGDipFA (Distinction) from Elam School of Fine Arts.”
– Micheal Do, Curator Space as Substance, Auckland Art Fair 2020
“Fillary’s architectonically layered images and corresponding installation mimicking the ma-terials used in her oeuvre effectively extend and question the notion of painting. The aesthetic experience itself, not the artwork, is the allegory. Using random materials (human air, clay, soil, rust, dirt,…) as building blocks in her mark making result in an exhilarating tension. All these components of breathing form are transformed into formless paintings accentuating the battle between sanitary, order and despicable anarchy. This stylistic symbolism … and limited colour pallet based on earth hues act as temporal signifiers of utter destruction. Fillary is an alchemist showcasing materials in their natural form and the fragile honesty of her work contrasts with the stark subject matter in her paintings. The textural and visually tactile work alludes to the heavy burden of sorrow and corroding dialectic between the spiritual formless and anarchic material. In the end it offer us an allegorical reading related to biology and breaking down social taboos around destruction and death.”
– Arthur Buerms, Curator Death, The Nomadic Art Gallery 2020
Selected exhibitions include: Auckland Virtual Art Fair, Projects “Space as Substance” (2020), The Nomadic Art Gallery “Death” (2020), JB Contemporary “Art to Match the Curtains” (2020), Mothermother (2019), Allpress Studio “Fine Threads Thick Colour” (2019), Uxbridge Arts and Culture “Showcase” (2019), Green Street Projects “New Paintings” (2019), Elam Project Space “Goofer Dust” (2019), Elam Graduate Show “Dirt” (2018), George Fraser Galleries “Inlookout” (2018).
https://elamartists.ac.nz/projects/dirt
http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/entertainment/20200910/anatomy-of-the-formless/
