SAMMY HAWKER

Sammy Hawker's works evoke ideas of the unseen and unknowable - questioning what we call a 'monster': is it a shape we give the unknown, or a reflection of what we fear and fail to understand? In her work, 'ghosts' are not supernatural, but liminal - the traces and energies that linger in materials and landscapes. Her practice, grounded in a scientific process of understanding, explores the continuity of life: the transformation of matter and energy from one form to another. She asks whether materials can hold memory, whether sound can possess consciousness, and whether presence can manifest beyond physical form.

The works in Ghosts & Monsters: Symbiosis and Interspecies Dialogue, were commenced over a series of residencies at The Corridor Project (TCP) - an artist programme based on the banks of Galari on Wiradjuri Country in Central West, NSW Australia - and continued to evolve through their adaption and evolving relationship to the 13th Century barn at Messums West.

The song of a solitary Pied butcherbird - recorded early one spring November morning at TCP in the southern hemisphere - echoed through the rafters of this ancient tithe barn throughout autumn November in Wiltshire, UK. Drawing on 18th-century experiments by physicist Ernst Chladni, the eight central notes of the Pied butcherbird’s melody were played into a Chladni plate co-designed by Hawker & Sam Tomkins. This Chladni plate oscillates salt on a metal plate to form geometric shapes from sound vibrations and the cymatic figures generated from the songbird's melody were presented as a series of etchings.

Furthermore, the cymatic figure of D# - the harmonic minor key of the bird’s melody and a note of significance to Hawker - was sketched in salt on a 12ft sq steel plate, slowly corroding into a new artwork during the course of the 7-week show. At the close of the show this plate was archived as a giant print - transforming sound, atmosphere and energetic residue into material form.

There is a sense of universality to the geometric shapes produced by the vibrations of the Chladni plate - resonances to iconography used by cultures from across the world. Sensitive towards incidental appropriation of Indigenous cultural property - the process and development of this body of work was discussed with Aleisha Lonsdale, who at the time was Chairperson of the Mudgee Aboriginal Lands Council (the representative body for the local Wiradjuri people).

The cymatic figures are also found to be in conversation with the medieval hexafoils inscribed around the windows and doors of the barn. Known as ‘witchmarks’, these inscriptions were seen as protective talismans, figurative shapes believed to keep malevolent spirits at bay. Like the figures that lie within sound, these hexafoils also hold hidden layers - the whispers of superstition from those who carved them hundreds of years ago.

During the course of the 7-week show, salt slowly corroded a 12ft sq steel plate. The salt was spread in the cymatic figure of D#. This plate can be understood as a living artwork - atmosphere into material form. With the vision & expertise of Hannah Davies, Johnny Messum and Andrew & Jane Smith a giant print of this plate was made with a tractor roller at the close of the show.