Lifeworks: Still motion

David Ferguson's large-scale paintings first give an impression of stasis. But after a moment of experiencing their scale and their densely pigmented surfaces, one gets the impression of fine, quick, vibratory movement. Before long, the viewer is caught up in reverie, a multi-tiered meditation on the elemental nature of things. It is this mental and emotional space — the wordless source of improvised creation — that is the true subject of Ferguson's paintings and installations. Hence the title of the show, Courtyard for a Bird, implies a safe, enclosed place where a habitue of the skies (the realm of abstraction?), accustomed to flight and constant activity (always in a flap?), may touch down for a while, rest and focus. To those of us who feel we are in ceaseless internal or external motion, Ferguson's installations offer the opportunity to experience a vital quietude, a chance to locate ourselves, look around with a refreshed perspective and take new bearings. The effect on pulse and respiration of a gallery-goer immersed in a painted Ferguson sense-scape might well equate to the benefits of meditation. David Ferguson — artist, writer and former swimmer — is also a principal dancer and choreographer with Suddenly Dance Theatre in Victoria. It's no wonder his visual works “speak” of motion. He uses complementary and contrasting colours to produce a pulsating optical effect. The vibrating surfaces of his paintings reveal other forms, defined by the pigments that flow through textural fissures and radiating lines. In Shelter, curved horn-like forms converge in a high, pointed arch, creating a gate or portal that invites the viewer to enter yet another dimension of movement. Energetic, wriggling lines rise from the bottom of the frame in Wilderness, like some kind of fantastical growth pattern caught in fast-frame photography; one imagines a vast, hyper-fertile field of wheat or succulent wild grasses. In other works, the cracked and wrinkled surfaces are more likely to evoke dried mud or lake-bottoms, or the microscopic vegetal blossoming of lichen. The surfaces seem to writhe; there are polyrhythms, accents and multiple variations on the basic theme: pure movement. Paradoxically, one way in which this movement is emphasised is through the restful stillness that the viewer attains by contemplating each work. To be sure, Ferguson controls the way in which these works are viewed, in and as the environment, through lighting, placement and the relationships struck among the installed works. But their effect is also to place the viewer into the same mental and emotional space from which they were created. Each of the works is a complex text, and decoding them is a synesthetic experience. Slight sensory distortions are a part of this. The paintings' animated fields of colour can give a vertiginous illusion of great height and distance — a telescopic view — but they can just as easily produce a sense of minute magnification. One might be gazing at the earth's surface from orbit, or plummeting into its complicated detail to have a look at its molecular structure. Serene, monochromatic fragment assemblages, on the other hand, have more modest aspects; their textures appear as the repeating patterns caused by wind on sand dunes, or by waves crashing and receding on a shore. The “bird” in Ferguson's “courtyard” is the mobile, fleeting perception of the viewer, at lucid, meditative rest. The bird's-eye vantage point is that of the artist, creating from a still point a timeless moment of perception, or the trance-like state of creative meditation. When the viewer is placed in this relationship to the work, he or she shares in the creative state of heightened perception. In this sense, Courtyard For a Bird is also performative, for the audience participates in both the creation and experience of vision. In Courtyard for a Bird David Ferguson has choreographed a momentary respite from the world's dulling clamour, suggesting that visionary perception is itself a state of grace, a sanctuary. These works suggest that we “see” and “know” differently, according to factors of stillness and motion, distance and intimacy, activity and rest. They are an invitation to touch down and check in, even if momentarily, to allow this intimate connection with the experience of seeing. It beckons us to observe the play of light upon subtle, dancing surfaces, the sublime complicities of grandeur and simplicity, excess and refinement. Yvonne Owens Ms. Owens is a Victoria-based art critic currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of York, England.

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