Roost
Inaugural Judy Wheeler Commission at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art PICA.
10 Feb – 31 December 2023.
In her new commission, Roost, Willing responds to the architecture of the building’s entrance. In the bending and twisting forms of PICA’s wrought iron gates, Willing sees a filtration system, a threshold that visitors pass through to take in and digest uncommon experiences. Willing’s reimagining of the gates appears as a central motif in a hand-printed and embroidered linen, created for the soaring vertical space of the stairwell, spilling over into a wallpaper in PICA’s entry foyer.
Willing has hand-printed the unstretched linen canvas using kipfler potatoes, a signature material of her practice. Printed in a deep brick red, the organic, jostling forms are suggestive of yeast, bacteria, or body cells viewed under a microscope. Linen is a material associated with hosting and domesticity, while the activity of potato printing recalls childhood crafts and the history of the PICA building as a school. Lining the edges of the linen in embroidered text, Willing presents us with a series of words associated with smells she experienced across Perth, with the artwork’s title, Roost, a specific reference to a scent encountered behind the PICA building.
Evoking a wide array of experiences, perceptions, and reactions, each detail of Roost tells a piece of a larger story, unfolding into a broader consideration of the rituals and experiences of hospitality, the materiality of food and its relationship with our bodies, and the many varied tastes (and smells) of our city.
-Website text PICA
The Judy Wheeler Commission is supported by the Simpson Family.
