Installation for Greenworld, Bayside Gallery opening in August 2020. Digital prints cotton/ silk, 1.5 x 1.5 x 2.5m. Also installed: Air Drawing I, 2020
From the exhibition's catalogue
Joiwind Lowe
My four gardens I: Demeter 2020
A sense of journey and inner reflection characterises the work of Joiwind Lowe. From a young age American-born
Lowe has had somewhat of an itinerant life, travelling across countries and continents. She presently spends her
time in Melbourne and Miami, but calls Melbourne home (for now). Lowe’s practice is largely conceptual, and therefore takes the form that most suits her at the time. She variously works in sculpture, photography, glass, perfumery, poetry, public art installation, and she considers her practice as a Doctor of Chinese Medicine as a kind of ‘internal sculpture’ or bodywork.
Lowe has had somewhat of an itinerant life, travelling across countries and continents. She presently spends her
time in Melbourne and Miami, but calls Melbourne home (for now). Lowe’s practice is largely conceptual, and therefore takes the form that most suits her at the time. She variously works in sculpture, photography, glass, perfumery, poetry, public art installation, and she considers her practice as a Doctor of Chinese Medicine as a kind of ‘internal sculpture’ or bodywork.
Much of Lowe’s work is centered on
poetic concepts relating to stillness and movement. Citing TS Elliott’s notion of ‘the still point of the turning world’ as a concept that deeply inspires her practice, Lowe gathers and disperses experiences of place in an alchemic quest to distill its essence. Her work aims to create moments of beauty that invite stillness in an otherwise hectic context. Engaged in a dialogue with
poetic concepts relating to stillness and movement. Citing TS Elliott’s notion of ‘the still point of the turning world’ as a concept that deeply inspires her practice, Lowe gathers and disperses experiences of place in an alchemic quest to distill its essence. Her work aims to create moments of beauty that invite stillness in an otherwise hectic context. Engaged in a dialogue with
her surroundings, and with the places that inhabit her memory, Lowe’s work evokes a timeless intimacy with place, both as
an external and internal concept.
an external and internal concept.
Lowe’s work in Greenworld, titled My four gardens I: Demeter (2020), is born from her time in Brighton during 2020, which has been marked by an intense period of interiority and seclusion due to COVID-19. Taking polaroid images as she walked
in her neighbourhood was one way to find focus and mindfulness during a strangely chaotic but quiet time. Four
of these images have been transposed onto large semi-translucent fabric panels that face one another in a cube-like structure suspended from the Gallery’s ceiling. The delicacy of the fabric –
of these images have been transposed onto large semi-translucent fabric panels that face one another in a cube-like structure suspended from the Gallery’s ceiling. The delicacy of the fabric –
a fine Italian cotton/silk blend – achieves a subtle movement that gives the images a dreamlike and fleeting presence. Using a polaroid is an important aspect as it encourages an improvisational working style, where chance is a collaborator in the result.
Lowe has produced an additional two works for Greenworld, one is a signature scent that visitors experience when they enter the Gallery and the other an ‘air drawing’ that instructs participants to undertake a series of instructions at a particular place that induces mindfulness and memory. As with My four gardens I: Demeter these works are guided by the relationship between place and person, and the sensual and sensory nature of our relationships with our environment.
It is turning cold, the world has stopped, we have spent so much time inside and alone, grief permeates the world and hope for transformation infuses every substantive conversation about what this all means. This work shifted within that context. It is the first part of a series of four. The question is, what constitutes our finest essences? My answer: Light, Sea, Perfume, Sinew.
