Titled A Cartography of the Heart country… a courtship of belonging, the exhibition features landscapes that are aerial and map-like in perspective, while also encompassing more traditional and pictorial depictions.
His work is an attempt to understand the animate world – a world that he sees as both alive and intelligent.
He looks for the landscape’s hidden voice, its language, its liminality and its magic.
During the process, Simeon finds that the making of a map is a courtship of kinds, a dance that hopefully allows, what he calls, the ‘creatureliness’ of the country to show itself.
A completed map becomes an invitation to the viewer to follow the deepening paths back home.
“I walk, I listen, and observe. I feel into the country, its colours, sounds and shapes, its hidden pathways, and secret places,” Simeon said.
“I like to strip back the country of its man-made additions, and speculate as to how it would be before we arrived.
“I like the idea that in my map making, I’m giving the land back to itself, suggesting it could dream once again.
“I don’t use drones or satellites and very little outside mapping.
“I prefer to walk, to enter the country with the reverence that it asks.
“I have yet to find a bottom to the work I wish to make.
“How to illustrate time? How to tell the story of the way a river snakes across a valley floor over a hundred thousand years?
“How to illustrate relationality in this sentient world. What is unseen below the ground, the effect of fire and the regeneration of country afterwards?
“The potential held in seeds, the myriad patterns? There is so much in this world, so much grace still present in the land itself.”
Benalla Art Gallery Director Eric Nash said the exhibition was a striking body of work that evidences Ayres’ skill.
“But it also his deep and abiding connection to this region,” he said.
Audiences are invited to gain a more profound understanding of the exhibition through a series of programs, including the exhibition celebration on March 14, a workshop with Simeon Ayres on March 22 and an artist talk as part of the First Mondays program on April 7.
The Art on Saturdays: Otherworld with Simeon Ayres workshop, on March 22, goes from 10am–3pm and costs $80 for members or $90 for non-members.
The artist talk on April 7 starts at 10am.
Numbers are strictly limited for both, so reserve your seat by emailing gallery@benalla.vic.gov.au.
The exhibition is free to enter and closes on April 27.
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