The pouring, flowing, spilling of substances suggests (pro)creation - in this case, of the world - in the most bodily and sensuous of modes, without denying the conceptual implications of these materials. This is the case even without entering into her concern with maps and mapping, with map projections and their underlying mathematics. As Gordon Bull has noted, there is a strong emphasis in Ruth's work on the connotations or associations of the materials she uses. However, arriving at the material for her work L'Origine du Monde in this exhibition was a mixture of intellectual enquiry and everyday contingency. With her first choice of substance - sugar - she played out a range of ideas: from the crass symbolism of greeting card romance (sugared hearts), through the metaphorical (sweet in small doses, poison in quantity), to the political-economic (colonial commodity, cane fields, slavery). Contingency then pushed the choice of material towards salt - another richly symbolic substance.

The connotations of the materials Ruth uses may be found in both their formal properties (the sparkle or shimmer of sugar or salt) and in their social history. In this exhibition, these formal qualities entered into a serendipitous relationship with the works surrounding L'Origine du Monde. In the large central exhibition space of Abstractions the shimmer of Ruth's salt map, resting on the rich brown of the polished timber floor, set up a relationship with the brilliance of the white ochre cross-hatching, on tones of brown, in the bark paintings by Djambawa Marawili and Wanyubi Marika, and with the 'sign-writing' (dark text on white ground) of Vernon Ah Kee's works. These formal, material connections also worked to initiate new meanings. L'Origine du Monde rested on the ground below the 'saltwater paintings' of Djambawa and Wanyubi which refer to the intertwined spiritual and physical aspects of their clan lands, in a coastal area of northeast Arnhem Land. Ruth came to see these new connections during and after the production of her work in salt.

View a QuickTime VR of the central exhibition space of <abstractions>.