Gosia Wlodarczak explores infinity within us, as well as the energy between people and the environment. In October she will spend 24 back-to-back days drawing on the walls of an isolation room at the Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia. Established in 1864 for convicts it became a ‘lunatic asylum’ for imprisoned alcoholics, those engaged in prostitution, the elderly, and young people with venereal disease, before closing in 1941 following the outcry from several women’s organisations. Wlodarczak’s A Room Without a View (Extended) is the second intervention of its kind that originated at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne. This time she will invert her palette drawing black on white to ‘darken’ the space.
Years ago when you lived in Western Australia did you think you wanted to address this history?
Not really, no. It was important for me to know. If you live in Australia you should know. At that stage, ten years ago, I never thought I would be doing this kind of project. I wasn’t at the point in my process where I would be limiting my sensory input. Generally my practice is about allowing sensory information to come into my brain and addressing the fact of brain function with my drawing. In some ways it’s a straight translation of the visual information that comes, and drawing in the same moment those forms that my mind registers. So of course, the more information, the more vibrant and tangible the presence is, and if I limit that it shakes the foundation of the proof of being alive for me. That’s why I designed this project in the first place, trying to test myself.
A Room Without A View began in 2013, how does it function today?
Firstly the space in which I will be working is no longer a black cube with even walls and a clean ceiling, like the one specially built before. Here, it will be an actual room, and the features of it, the door, lighting and floorboards will remind me of my reality, and character of the building. It’s important and it will somehow shape or direct my way of thinking and feeling. There is a very oppressive history, which underlines more strongly the original nature of the project that is, sensory limitation both voluntary and involuntary. In the back of my mind I will be thinking about imprisonment. I think it stays there imprinted in the fabric of the building.
When you’re doing something that’s emotional and ephemeral how do you know when you have come full circle with an idea? With the duality of black and white rooms, have you arrived?
I always keep an open mind toward my practice. Somehow projects come from previous ones, they grow like a tree; new branches and leaves emerge from the old. I don’t see the second performance as ‘a completion’. The rooms talk about the human body and our internal life. I have thought about them from the beginning as organs. The black room and also white room in reverse is a woman’s womb, I feel that from darkness comes something anew. Three other rooms I have in mind are a yellow for the liver, red for the heart and silver that represents the brain. They haven’t happened yet, maybe they will, maybe not, it takes someone else who takes it up, and helps to materialise it. There’s a possibility the Yellow room will happen in 2017 because I’m going to Joshua Tree (California, USA) for a residency.
Not all artists are comfortable being seen as they work, it’s intimate being immersed in your process. What’s your relationship to this?
It’s part of the situation. I always follow the situation. Sometimes there are less people, other times there are crowds and they can be scary. This time I will be distant from people, they will be able to see me but only through a screen. It adds another dimension because you’re being watched and you know this, you think about it but you can’t see them. It’s a disturbing situation.
Did you anticipate this feeling?
Yes you know, and I know I’m not totally free to behave as maybe I would like. It’s a very interesting experiment. There are many layers of the experience of being isolated. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a feeling that isolation would be good to treat people with behavioural disorders, such as aggression in prisons. But actually it works in the opposite way. Instead of meditating you become more of what you are. I was thinking about whether I could feel something similar, and I could. I would leave RMIT of an evening and towards the end I was angrier and increasingly aggravated. I wanted to test what it meant to live amongst others and, to not.
Fremantle Arts Centre
Endurance performance
Until 16 October, 2016
Daily 9am-5pm
Post-Performance Installation exhibition
17 October to 12 November, 2016
Western Australia
Gosia Wlodarczak, A Room Without A View, 2013, a 17-day drawing performance in isolation and a drawing installation inside the specially constructed cube at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne; pigment pen on wall, installation dimensions: 340 x 220 x 260cm
Photograph: Longin Sarnecki
Courtesy the artist, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
