Slow Response, 2023
cement, soil, gravel, mulch, grass, branches, line trimmer, sand, oxide, found materials
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About the Artist
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Transcription
Hello, my name is Cole Cochran and my work in HIDDEN is titled Slow Response. I wish to acknowledge the Dharug people as the traditional custodians of the unceded land on which Rookwood occupies today and I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging.
Slow Response explores the material conditions of the site through the observation of the remnant bushland and the heritage brickwork within the Rookwood grounds. The work mimics the form of the low heritage brick walls and edges that that have been constructed in other areas of the cemetery. These generic borders are familiar constructions to a city as they are overdetermined signifiers of colonial divisions of power.
Slow Response is an experiment in provisional making that articulates circumstance, social relations, and materials which are implicated in the vernacular of place. Part of the inspiration for the work was the remnant dry sclerophyll bush at Rookwood which,prior to settler land clearance and urban sprawl, was widespread across much of Western Sydney. This historic vegetation has a beautifully scruffy aesthetic which I wanted to reflect in the rudimentary module of a brick, by using cut grass, bark, leaves, gravel, soil, trimmer line, and other debris found from the laneways to create a series of handmade bricks.
While making these bricks, I was also thinking about the 60s art movement Arte Povera which turned against commercial art production methods, instead finding common objects such as branches and soil as the material for art making. Sydney’s brickworks are one of the city’s early settler industries which appropriated land and labour in the ‘utility’ of the region’s clay rich soil. This brick manufacturing history is evident through the commonality and variety of brickworks throughout the city today. With Slow Response, I do not intend to present a romantic turn toward these traditions, but rather a cartoonish mimic that makes wry reference to Minimalist and Land Art traditions, while gesturing to observation, the artist's hand, and Rookwood’s immediate surrounds.