Remnant

Anastasia La Fey

Venue: Sauerbier House

Year the project commenced:2019 
Year it became impossible:2020 
Audience not reached: unknown
It is ironic that the lack of opportunities to present work in 2020 meant it would have been the perfect time for artists to undertake national and international residencies. Travel restriction of course made such things impossible. As was the case for artist, Anastasia La Fey. La Fey had been invited to create a series of works as part of the Sauerbier House Cultural Exchange (South Australia). A three-month residency and exhibition program was due to begin on April 1st 2020 (and, no, the April Fool's Day "joke" is not lost on her). La Fey writes: “The artistic proposition I submitted in my application for residency selection was to build upon and expand from a series of material and conceptual studio investigations (EarthWorks) to create REMNANT. My intent was to develop and create a series of textile-based works situated in, and in response to, the environment of the Sauerbier House grounds & Port Noarlunga surrounds.
"Works would be left to alter and erode under natural conditions - a deliberately ephemeral undertaking - some remaining in the environment in which they should have been situated as almost accidentally discoverable ‘Disquiets’; some offered as ‘Invitations for Interaction’ and/or Creative Documentation (both with the project’s artist collaborators and with the greater community); and some ‘Recovered’ to be re-positioned and interpreted within a more traditional gallery context." "Central to my body of work to date, is a foundation philosophy of action-based craftsmanship and material mastery coupled with the enhanced possibilities that come from cross-disciplinary collaborative practice. Building on and materialising ideas established from this framework, previous research, experimentation and collaboration, my objective aimed to realise a series of solo sculptural/installation works and collaborative sound and digital environmental enhancements for exhibition - works which considered relations between artistic approaches to ourselves, the environment and other forms of knowledge and practice, including cultural questions of weather and climate, ruin and waste, habitation and movement, boundary and journey, observation and interaction”. La Fey
La Fey had been fortunate to squeeze an international residency in the North of France just prior to the Covid-19 lockdowns. During that she had begun a series of experimentations and investigations in preparation for REMNANT at Sauerbier House and worked with a feeling of focused momentum and great excitement soon be embarking upon it. Ten days following her return to Australia, and three weeks before she was due to fly to South Australia, the WHO officially declared a Covid-19 pandemic. After a 6 month wait Sauerbier House offered La Fey a new residency in 2021. So the impossible maybe becomes possible again but as La Fey notes "The project is now imbued with a literality it didn’t carry before. The concept itself seems a remnant of a “before" existence". “Everything became other than it was before”.
Sound Artist - Michele Vescio 
Cinematographer - Lucy Pijnenburg

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