10 August 2016

Sitelines (Heide MoMA)

   
Natasha Johns-Messenger
uses your illusion at Heide

       
Robert Nelson
The Age (9 August 2016)

       
When I walk around Enfolder, there is always a man in front of me. When he gets to a corner, his twin momentarily appears in profile, but rapidly disappears. I never catch up with him. If I hasten, he also speeds up; if I tarry, he also lingers and has longer consultations with his twin at the corners.

You too, when you walk around this glassy ambulatory by Natasha Johns-Messenger, will encounter someone in front of you, a taciturn wanderer who is enigmatically duplicated at various moments and mysteriously preserves a regular distance in front of you. Actually, it is you, your image from behind who becomes your forerunner, the person whom you never see in the mirror. Your ghost from the rear leads you without a moment's contact.



 Natasha Johns-Messenger's Enfolder at Heide MoMA
 photo by Christian Capurro

            
This engaging work at Heide recalls Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte's painting Not to be reproduced, where a man looks in the mirror only to see the view from the back instead of the front. But the installation by Johns-Messenger is not a passive mirror upon a wall but a slick circular sculpture shaped like a Kugelhopf tin, the causeway of which clamps around your head and leads you on the vain chase for your double . . . . 
   
          Read the full review here
     
. . . . Reflection itself is a great metaphor as well as a physical reality. The mirror that Johns-Messenger holds up to space and subject-object relations is intriguing; but ultimately it's up to us to supply the last reflection of ourselves between appearance and reality.
                          

 Natasha Johns-Messenger's Encircler at Heide MoMA
 photo by Christian Capurro                       
 detail
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