Arts Writing

OCTOBER 28, 2015

The collaborative duo of Shatrick, made up of Shannon Tonkin and Patrick Zaia, according to their website promises their work is a combination of a few sexy sounding words that culminates in EPIC WALKTHROUGH NARRATIVES. On the 25th of September, I visited ARI The Laundry Artspace to look at their show The Garden of Shatrick.

Initially arriving at the venue, it is your typical ARI kind of house. Unassuming suburban area, obvious share house etc, a precarious walk down and a little game of limbo with their garage. The usual. However arriving outside the house, you immediately notice the constant, rhythmic humming. It was repeated so consistently I genuinely thought it was a recording looped over. It is then that you are greeted with a door covered with bright pink streamers. When you enter the small walk through, there are of course many more pink streamers coming from the roof, mostly obscuring to the vision to the other side. However you can make out that the exit to the hallway is obscured by a large pink plastic sheet with a large slit in the middle. 

The realisation that you are now standing in a large cavernous vagina becomes even more obvious as you realise both sides of the wall are also covered in large pink plastic sheets. But i’ve never been one to say no to a good old fashioned rebirthing ceremony. Probably my favourite part of this room however was the projection. On the left side of the walk-through on the pink sheet was a looping projection that took up the entire wall. The sheer size of the projection in such a small space was impressive enough (where on earth did they hide that thing?) but the content of it did make me laugh. Rapidly across the wall a large edited version of their faces flickered rapidly backwards and forwards in more bright barbie pink tones. Heavily stylised in a blurred kind of fashion, the smiling faces were bringing you forth into the world of Shatrick. It’s important to note at this point the rhythmic humming is still happening, and adds to the intimate, very womb-like feel of the room. It was a clever way to really absorb you straight into their intimate little world. Visual gag received, I made my out through the labia into the next room.

Now while this room was the much less vibrantly decorated than the other room, it definitely held the much deeper content. Straight to it, the artists Zaia and Tonkin are standing in the middle of the room on a small, circular black mat with ritualistic candles around the outside and small, almost rat like assemblages at their feet. They were holding each other in an open mouth kiss, with pink sheets of tissue paper over their faces reminiscent of The Lovers by Rene Magritte. They were also completely nude except for small blotches of pepto bismol pink paint splotches all over their bodies, and small flower petals over their nipples. The open mouthed kiss was also the source of the continuous humming. 

I later learned they continued humming into each others mouths naked like this for three hours during the exhibition, only taking one or two breaks to go to the toilet. In the beginning there was of course the original shock and novelty factor that comes with incredibly raw and vulnerable works like these. A few people tittered and then moved on outside quickly. But the more time you spent in the room, the more desensitised you became to their presence and the more you able to focus on the other aspects of the room. 

In the other corner next to the Shatrick; a small, one person, change room tent had been erected. Shatrick had completely filled the inside with their own murals. It was reminiscent of new age, fertility magic illustrations (the kind of style you would see inside a crystal healing store), but with an acute self-awareness and sense of humour. There were fortresses of penises ejaculating violently near the face of a fireball with a screaming face bearing down on them. A slightly stoned looking cloud with small sperm like structures breaking off of him. But probably the most contextually important part of the mural was the Psoriasis Phaerie, naked and covered in the little bright pink dabs like Zaia and Tonkin. This Goddess figure that obviously ties symbolically into the performance fed into this feeling that Shatrick are inviting us to view their intimate, sexually charged universe of their own creation, with their own religious dogma. The clues lie in things like the Psoriasis, the bright pink colour theme, and the constant throwbacks to surreal imagery in everything from the Magritte reference to the dream like style of the mural tent. These are evidence of a complicated multi-layered world. We won’t fully understand it because it’s an eco system that they created, that they need each other to sustain. Like how they sustained each other for three others in the performance. It’s a beautiful testament to the absorbing nature of collaborative works.

Probably the weakest work in the room was the small, paper mache car-like structure tucked away behind the tent. I feel it didn’t have that sexually charged, totally over the top theatrical elements like the rest of the works, and I didn’t fully understand the relevance to the rest of exhibition. But then again, I feel like the strength of Shatrick’s collaborative relationship lies in complete non-concern in making sense. I know this weird little car fits in somewhere, but it’s not important to the duo that I know where. 

I also slightly wish the second room was dramatically filled as the first room. The first walk through was slightly smaller yes, and thus easier to completely cover. But if you’re going to commit to the theme of an EPIC WALKTHROUGH NARRATIVE, you really need to push to make sure that it’s as truly as dramatic and theatrical as you can possibly make it, even if it is cheap and gaudy things as tons and tons of streamers or just a couple of extra projections covering the bare walls. Even some more of the beautiful bouquets of condom flowers lovingly assembled at the bottom of the tent.   

Overall however Shatrick as a duo definitely know how to put on a good show. I was confronted, entertained, absorbed and slightly confused, which I imagine a large part of their goal to be. The quirky and intimate elements of the room created a puzzle of a deep and well established collaborative relationship that doesn’t need to make sense to the outside world. I’m excited to see more of their work in the future, to see how much deeper and further their world gets.