Simon Ogden - Diving for Pearls

Crafted from and on linoleum, here are works in bitumen and flocking, paint, pollen, paperback bark, beads, pearls, willow charcoal, accents of copper, gold or silver leaf and varnish. Caches such as these intrigue and invite the eye to travel slowly because these are shifting surfaces. Experiences made visible.

Move along and across these narratives. Observe the attention to scale, proportion and repeats of forms that dance and allude to content and vice versa. Tricky? Plays of paradox and irony? The ‘language’ and discipline of design will emerge. It will take time. Why? Because these are exercises in alchemy, alterations in[i] forms and media, symbolic yet fluid. A layered syntax. One which acknowledges that time does not idle; it is in perpetual motion. Change. Beneath our feet, starred and satelited above us. The current of change. Changes that may make clear or ambiguate the way.

With the deft adaptations of the bricoleur, materials are scrutinised and re-vitalised in mainly non-objective, non-representationalabstractions that glimmer or spark with allusions to the natural world. Birds sport grandiflora plumage. Moths or perhaps butterflies glide like slow, silent sailplanes. Numerous suns and moons co-exist in concord. Colours gratify. Titles often speculate.Consider, for example, the multiple panels of ‘La Soirée Bleue’ (2024/25). Revels in remnants? Or, 'Under the Visiting Stars' (2022-25). An evening offering novalunosis; star gazing?[ii] Or, ‘After the Gold Rush’ (2024/25). Across these 20 odd panels there appears to be an almost stereoscopic view of the daily grind. Here imagination addresses the illogicality, the incoherence of ‘reality’; day after day punctuated with correlations and contraries of motifs. Ironic and diverting. Perhaps inviting savvy technophiles (accustomed to instant summaries and definitions) to pause and play.

At other times, titles appear to denote the precise topographical inspiration of a work. For example, 'Lawn Hill' (2024/25). Yet the actual execution of this diptych, a fecund red ground, hosting a relatively sparse mosaic of abstract forms, appears to strip away any titular certainty. “Nowhere in the landscape of experience is there order. You have to construct it.” Ogden comments.

“The form, colour and scale to Lawn Hill is incalculable. Rock and earth beneath opalescent light, punctuated by turquoise water, riverine forests, evolved planting, and untold bird species, all in constant movement. Mesmeric. It stays with me. As Sydney Nolan observed, ‘Time and space are obviously welded together … Both are old’.[iii] For me, to make this visible was not a matter of expressing its beauty, but rather giving form to the truth of it, time and space, and a human experience of it.”[iv]

Several apexes and verticals punctuate this red landscape. They recall Aboriginal Larrakitij, ancestral memorial poles.[v] But, equally, they could be percussive clap sticks. Or gallows? And, amongst other characteristic emblematic verticals, perhaps Ghost gums or Brittle Range, are birds. Two are supine, as though as dead, or star-gazing. Others stand sentinel. And throughout this forest, fluid shapes pose free associations and, paradoxically, lend weight and visual impact to an intensely interior experience made visible, an immersive journey towards ... understanding.

When the eye lights on a sprig, a star, a moon or pearl, grasp it. Why? Because it just might serve as a stepping stone, a point of reference in the sandbox of knowledge and understanding. Chances are it will be a signature bird, moth or butterfly. Or a tree with an odd branching habit. Forms, invariably abstracted from nature, offer numerous, even contrary associations. It may be a glass bauble. A prism or a penny gem to ward off an uncomfortable reality. The vicissitudes of existence abstracted yet tangible. Ambiguous? For sure.

What was it that Ruskin said? ‘Ornament is the origin of architecture’. So, what is Ogden’s architecture? Attention pays dividends. Ogden rejuvenates discards long past their use and, in the process, constructs a culturally syncretic idiom. Yet is there the possibility that the sheer variety of mark and media will seduce or overwhelm? What can prevent rampant eclecticism from slipping into dances of nostalgic pastiche, or gewgaw surfaces – so often promoted in our sensory over-stimulated, ever-wired world?

Whenever and wherever Ogden travels, he photographs, draws and paints the localities and, subsequently, with myriad remnants, he constructs narratives that aim to make visible his experience of time and place. His use of symbols, abstractions and referents inlaid throughout these works are not simply the product of a mind stoked on imagination. Ogden’s ability to attend to, remember and re-member experience is mosaiced in a rich but disciplined architecture. It is not so much that his media is the message, the materials of memory, but rather that these deeply syncretic substances potentially probe how we remember and re-member. Or not.

Paint, pearls, pollen, paperback bark, beads, bitumen, flocking, charcoal, accents of gold, silver and copper leaf and varnish. Here are caches that call on the eye and imagination to travel slowly. Perhaps that’s the nub, the nucleus – to experience time and place and alterations made visible.

Cassandra Fusco, 2025

[i] ‘Alterations in’ signifies changes made within the structure or content of existing forms, implying that the modifications happen "in" the forms themselves.

[ii] Novalunosis - the state of relaxation and wonderment experienced while gazing at the stars.

[iii] Sidney Nolan diary notes, Alice Springs, 28 June 1949, Jinx Nolan papers, National Library of Australia.

[iv] Anthropologists suggest that forms were considered heavenly or divine ideas that the soul had prior knowledge of. Understanding the true nature of form involved undertaking a process of remembering them to see past any representative phenomena. The modern definition of form is basically a physical phenomenon with objective characteristics that are not other-worldly but are instead geometric qualities of an object.

[v] Traditionally cross-hatched with dhulang lines marking the ancestral identity of people and place, and patterned with miny’tji[v], these Stringybark hollow logs functioned to carry deceased ancestors and to celebrate ancient knowledge systems.