Verge

The Verge narrates memories of artist Jennifer Baker and her experience of growing up on the Barwon Darling River System of Western New South Wales and her gratitude for a childhood rich in nature, friendships, open space, and long peaceful drives. Her childhood familiarity with the open road continues as she now journeys to meet family and in search of home. 

The Verge explores deep connection to the beauty and fragility of those inland river systems and expresses the preciousness of stock routes and roadside reserves as places of great ecological, cultural and historical value. The works consider the strength and vulnerability of the dry open forests and Mitchell grass plains of which surviving road reserves encompass.

We peek through windows of other lives, other cultures, the chaos within self and the myths that help traverse and make sense of circumstance. Baker questions why humanity considers that their homes are the most important and not the homes of the creatures who share the planet with us.

While gratitude underpins much of Baker’s work, there is an undeniable undercurrent of grief. There is a duality which celebrates the gifts of her colonial upbringing but also grief for what it has cost, for what is lost, what is endangered and disappearing and for what cannot be restored. This duality leads her to find ways to make work with grace and to consider and minimise her personal ecological footprint.

The works hold the emotional complexity of life, the “she’ll be right mate…, no worries…, yep all good…, it’s ok it made me stronger…, it was meant to be…, it has a purpose” – all those self-supporting statements told to help make sense of the disharmony and sorrow while on the verge of breakdown.

The Verge is a meditation on thresholds—between belonging and displacement, breakdown and breakthrough.

Baker finds herself considering myths to help her make sense of reason and currently  sees herself travelling through the myth of Vasa Lisa as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes; a story of a young girl who is tasked with seemingly impossible ventures but finds her way through the tests put upon her and ultimately finds her path home again.

Make work about your earliest love makes sense to Baker. The love of family, the Barwon Darling River System, water birds, creatures in general, old trees, Mitchell grass, soil, stock routes, intrigue, curiosity of others, quality over quantity and introspection. Baker feels that the environment and material choices are a reflection of self and her use of barbed wire, she realises with amusement and apology to those who have felt her discontent, denotes her prickly self.

Baker holds the philosophy that there is life force in everything, even seemingly inanimate objects. Memorialising heritage and seeking connection, she works with natural and discarded  material such as old fencing wire, rusted machinery components, weathered timber, collected soil, charcoal, repurposed paper and worn cloth. These materials speak of passing seasons and the stories which shape them. She often reuses material that she has previously used, breaking it down and reconstructing into another form. Baker is drawn to materials marked by time. They guide the development of her sculpture, drawing, printmaking and ceramics, becoming vessels of familiarity, grief, gratitude and ecological awareness.

Baker expands this in her comments “I feel other presence while I am working. Possibly my grandparents, probably my father and my older brother, but who knows how many generations of ancestors are watching and guiding.  Some of the materials in The Verge have travelled with me for over a decade, in the back of the car or in storage wherever I am living, waiting for the time when I pick it up and include it in a work. It brings me joy to use found materials and to create simple work. It brings me peace and contentment, and I love that the material and I go on a journey together, finding our path through the thick of it all.”

Mostly, the Verge is about grace and gratitude, connecting the past to now and considering the path ahead.