'Many gardens will begin' is a sculptural installation by Carly Fischer that responds to the shifting peripheral spaces in her local area in Melbourne's north, situated between industrial zones, remnant waterways and generic suburban development, through the concept of a Minimalist ouroboros. Reflecting on the industrial fringes, forms and energies that originally inspired Minimalist sculpture, the installation considers how these peripheral spaces can be generative sites of rupture, transformation and feedback within the generic suburban veneer of Melbourne. In between the iterative mutations and ruins of Minimalism- the concrete commission housing, the townhouse development, the IKEA hard rubbish and the serial construction debris- are quiet refuges for creatures and fragments to accumulate and merge, forming entangled ecologies and slippage between contexts. Forgotten quarries at the end of suburban streets create interruptions to manicured sports fields, reminders of ancient volcanic plains and extractive mining histories under the surface, now full of energy drink cans, seed pods and eroded rubble. The old NuFarm site, where the components of Agent Orange were once manufactured, glitches amongst suburban lawns and orange trees, a reminder of toxic histories still threatening to leak out. In their in-between states, these peripheral places oscillate, between toxin and transformation, warning and gesture, forgetting and remembering, past and present. They are sites of alchemy.
Borrowing its title from sound artist Maryanne Amacher's reflections on sound that expands out of rigid categorisations, to overlap, intersect and feed back across place and context, 'Many gardens will begin' gestures towards practices of attunement and connectivity within local environments as quietly political and generative acts. In the installation, sculptures slip between form, materiality and context, mutating, merging, glitching, mirroring, twisting, snaking, feeding back, devouring themselves, referring to themselves, their past forms and their speculative futures as Minimalist host bodies for new becomings and expanded dialogues amongst the layers of suburban Melbourne.
Carly Fischer is a sculptural artist from Narrm who often works collaboratively with sound artists across sculpture and sound to create place-responsive installations. Drawing on the smaller details, forgotten fragments, hidden histories and peripheral dialogues of specific places and sites, her installations weave alternate narratives within familiar environments, through incidental intersections, tangents and diversions. Ambiguously merging found fragments with subtle reconstructions, her sculptural assemblages and installations slip between form, materiality and context, creating generative interruptions and glitches within the overlapping details of our local environments. Carly has exhibited both locally and internationally, recently at Wangaratta Art Gallery, The Lorne Sculpture Biennale, The Beechworth Biennale, HAIR ARI, BLINDSIDE and Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow.
Carly Fischer (detail) Photo Edwina Stevens