Ralph Kerles’Maritime Mnemonics.
A review of the Art of Navy Exhibition, Australian National Maritime Museum, October 3 - November 18, 2019
Ralph’s obtuse reflections on the maritime swell of Sydney Harbour draw me into an abstracted act of contemplation and leave me stranded in a sort of no-man’s land between the real and some surrealist zone but ultimately they leave me to face the existential truth of a profoundly different present.
Curiously this, according European philosophy, is exactly the way the work of art is supposed to work. ‘Art’, argues the contemporary German philosopher Gunter Figal,‘does not attract by the production of pleasant form, it attracts through its ability to engender a spark of truth’.[1]Art is not something that demands our attention in conventional ways.Itcertainly does not offerthe literal,but rather it seduces our interest on the basis of appearing as something that we can’t quite grasp. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida explains, ultimately the work of art engenders a production of the imagination,byturning the mind back in on itself, encircling the meaning of what it imagines by ‘retracing its own steps into a concatenation of encircling circles.’[2] This is what the philosophers call the poiêtic thrust of the work of art, wherein the viewer is provoked, by the native cunning of the work of art, to contemplatethe possibilities of anuncanny truth.
Turning tothe pragmatics of Ralph’sphotographic practice, it is interesting to note Ralph did not begin with anyambitionto produce compelling photographic product.Rather his excursions onto Sydney Harbour in his kayakbegan as a curative,to bypass the medical prescriptionstowhat was in effect – clinical depression. Aimlessly paddling about Sydney’s Middle harbour, Ralph was relieved from any pressure to perform andin time, enabled to see again. His practice has since evolved on the basis of a two-fold process;
§ Kayaking as a therapeutic practice; clearing the mind and letting go of expectations.
§ Photography as the process of awaiting the moment when the seaoffers itself up and calls for its capture.
One such Sunday morning Ralph was religiously paddling betweenSeaforth and Castle Cove; the waters were mercurial, not a breath of wind nor a cloud in the sky, when suddenly he was stuck by an image waving at him through the water as if in a mirror gently rolling with the swell. It was the reflection of a moored yacht. The vividness of the image left him spellbound. He reached for his phone, opening his Camera app., framed-up the image took the shot. The rest is history.
The question that has since fascinatedRalph is a variant on the chicken and the egg conundrum: Does the mind generate these images itself or do theysimply reflect his mindset. Clearly the images exist independent of the artist but without a right mindset Ralph wonders if he would ever find them.
I am beginning to think these images are generated from a liminal space somewhere between my primordial subconscious and the ephemeral real that defines our unique existential experience? Have I, through the deeply meditational experience of kayaking, solo on Sydney Harbor, tapped into a source that is otherwise lost to our everyday consciousness?
Ralph credits the nascent sensitivity that comes of his kayakrituals for his ability to recognize these images,arguing it is only in this quasi-meditative state do these images fromthe deepoffer themselves to his camera.
Historically, Ralph’s processesevoke a significant theoretical lineage within the history of art, specificallyAndré Breton’s Surrealist theory of Automatic Writing and of course painting. Theidea of foregoing rational control over image had informed a broad spectrum of 20th century modernists, not least of all Picasso and Pollock, but there is a profound difference at play here.
Although Kerle takes the shot, unlike his Surrealist compatriots, Ralphdoes not make the mark. At best he recognises the mark waving at him, as if from briny depths.True to the origins of his therapeutic practice, Kerlegently filters any insistent clambering for his attention, leaving the thrust of any such determinationto reform itself in reflection.
In this regard Kerle’spractice reverses the Surrealist paradigm, in effect veiling ‘The World’ and leaving it suspended in the brine as if drowning, whilst gently allowing it to transform into something profoundly ‘Other’. Herein lies the magic of Ralph’s photographs. As compelling as his images are, they seduce rather than insist, drawing us into the contemplative process and leave us caught, spellbound, between our reflections on the world of experience and our surrealist gyrations.
Arguably these images offer relief to the world-weary seafarer in us all, as if in our own ways we have all suffered some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In catalogue, Ralph’s mnemonic images evoke a vast history of marine encounters, all jostling for our attention, whilst at the same time his images wave them away into a veiled middle-distance and leave the viewer grounded in the real of a profoundly newpresent.
Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel explained the problem in his ‘Aesthetic Lectures’ in 1835;
The life of the spirit is marred and, indeed, killed-off by comprehension. Instead of being brought nearer by analytic thinking, spirit becomes all the more remote. Using thinking as a means of grasping, man defeats his own purpose.[3]
Art evokes spiritvia the indeterminate hunch. The work of art sits somewhere between the World and Being to provoke anindeterminate sense ofBecoming.
[1] Gunter Figal,,‘For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife’, Albany New York, US, State University of New York Press, 1998. P 137. Figal agues this through the concept of the ‘Sprachkrystall’, with reference to Paul Celan.
[2]Jaques Derrida, ‘The Truth in Painting’. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987. P26
[3]Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, ‘3.The Refutation of Objects’.