Penny Coss

2024

<< BACK

Stratigraphic Thinking

Bringing a Rock Home 2022 photograph on rag paper 55 x 75 cm

source Geology Department, University of Western Australia 2022

Penny Coss_March-24- Credit Document Photography-Web-6

Meeting Matter Halfway- a Universe of Rock 2024 60 Plaster and Salt Casts , zinc nails Dimensions Variable

Penny Coss_March-24- Credit Document Photography-Web-7

Installation, UNSW Paddington Campus, AD SPACE.

(wall work below) The Tides are Always with Me. Stromatolite habitat, Gathaagudu, WA Actual height of low and high diurnal tides recorded between June 26 and July 28, 2022. Conté Crayon Situated in the gallery space and Length of corridor.

(in vitrine) Bringing the tides home 2023 Rolled Bolt of calico, stains from salt, and microbial matter, sand, photograph. 90 x 15 x 15.

(wall work above) Meeting Matter Halfway- a Universe of Rock 2024 60 Plaster Casts , zinc nails Dimensions Variable

(right)Mechanism of Failure 2024 Single Channel Video with Sound

Bringing the tides Home 2023 Rolled and unrolled Bolt of calico, stains from salt, and microbial matter, sand, photograph. 90 x 15 x 15.

Still from Mechanism of Failure 2024 Single Channel Video and Sound Duration 9 minutes Photo Bee Elton Assembly Photography

(Detail) Meeting Matter Halfway- a Universe of Rock 2024 60 Plaster Casts , zinc nails

Stratigraphic thinking lies in the assemblages and de-assemblages in my creativepractice, where archiving always means re-archiving time, space, and matter. Stratigraphic thinking as a neologism enables me to approach the entanglements of matter through time, location, and space. My methodology privileges a residual repurposing of the material remains of my own performance, video, scaffolds, textile and sculptural works and led by situated fieldwork and consider the way I express and communicate through material means. If this manifests through the study of the archive, that archive may be my childhood home or the vast collection of a museum. Also tenuous is the ongoing nature of archiving that is re-membered, rearranged and reconsidered and proof that memory is never complete. These are the provocations of stratigraphic thinking, where the question always opens up to more questions. In my research, I am advocating for a new type of stratigraphic order which relies on mutual interactivity to create new beginnings which expand, in rhizomatic ways, towards ideas, events and encounters that unfold in transverse ways.

Being situated in fieldwork and responding to the archive unlocks the performative potential of assemblage, intersecting sculpture, drawing, video, and performance. This constructs an ongoing temporal and spatial narrative through stratigraphic thinking. Stratigraphic thinking is a valuable methodology for achieving material outcomes which address the interdependencies of human and the more-than-human.

Archival photographs with stereo viewfinders

photographic print on archival paper 40 x 60 cm

P. Coss 2023

The discovery of my father’s collection of photographs, amongst an amassed archive of his work as a geologist on several field surveys, carries gaps and the agency of time. Entangled with his passing is this found archive and other displaced objects. The patchy discoveries of his working life I had found coalescing with my own visual arts practice will continue to open up and make space for more.

The title of this work is partially inspired by the title of my father's thesis, reflecting the convergence of memory, rock strata, and family history through found photographs from my father's archive. Fifty eight silver gelatin photographs depicting arial views of remote landscapes were found inside an Ilford Box in the garage of my childhood home. For over sixty years the box had never been opened until filming commenced for this video .

In the video I begin by opening the box wearing black archival gloves, devoid of place in a white space giving the sensation of floating in a temporal vacuum. Removing the photographs carefully, one by one on the floor, they are placed in a grid form within the white space. The second part of the video is held suspended , the photos dissolving into a swirling mass of fine-grained minerals and sands. As the grid of photographs begins to dissolve, they take on their own agency, shifting the viewer's gaze from an objective distance to a more immersive position within the frame, suggesting its materiality of silver gelatin and paper dissolving into the minerals and strata.

The images used in the video are based on fifty-eight aerial survey photographs from 1950, which my father captured near the area of my own recent fieldwork in the Tanami Desert. Taken from a low-flying aircraft, the images were originally used to condense and objectify the landscape for mining surveys.

These works reflect the entanglements of memory and time as an incomplete and perpetual archive, de-assembled and reassembled, exploring the mechanisms of failure through editing, revising, and deconstructing both familial and fieldwork encounters. In doing so, I create space for new narratives to emerge, continuously shifting like a stratigraphic form.