Untitled Attunement, 2023
Emma Scully
I’ll never be a butterfly and that’s okay. Like the moth, I chase the moon.
I’ll never be a butterfly and that’s okay. Like the moth, I chase the moon.
Often people go to art galleries, expecting to feel something. But I do not go to art galleries out of choice. It is an experience thrust upon me. I blame my catholic school upbringing for why I find art galleries boring. In my education, art was only another way to draw meaning from the sacred Holy Trinity. So, when I do find myself in an art gallery, I tend to observe people over the exhibits. People tend to be much more interesting.
When I stepped into Buxton Contemporary Art Museum, I had preconceived notions. I expected pretentious art: whacky sculptures, paintings, photography and scribbles a child could have drawn. I hoped for absurdity, I wanted to laugh. Something to steady how hollow I was feeling. But on a day when all I wanted to feel was numb, I felt overwhelmed.
La Tierra: Oblivion
In Mexican folklore, this is the first stage: ‘The flesh is the first to go in death …’
Such a graphic depiction of what happens to the arms that held us and the lips that kissed us. The gallerist’s words echo through me as she begins to explain Mikala Dwyer’s 2011 mixed-media sculpture. For the gallerist, the artwork connects to her Mexican heritage and reminds her of Día de los Muertos. In Mexican folklore, there are seven stages of death. La Tierra (earth), El Agua (water), El Viento (wind), El Fuego (fire), El Vacío (emptiness), La Luz (light) and La Memoria (memory).
As I stared up at the sculpture and contemplated this spiritual journey depicted, I was unsuccessfully trying to calm the swelling tide of my own emotions. The tide that had swept in on such a sunny winter day that it felt like spring.
Maybe that's why his death felt so out of place because the weather was so at odds with the season.
As much as I tried to ignore my reaction, the artwork continued to pique my interest. It insisted on breaking me, cracking me open there on the floor of the dark gallery in front of all my classmates.
The day before, I had been playing a child’s game. In Melbourne Now, I laid down on a fake hospital gurney, put on virtual reality glasses and watched as doctors tried to resuscitate me back to life. Then my soul floated off into space. The stars lighting my path as I travelled the cosmos. When the simulation was over, I sat up, laughed it off and continued about my day, not giving death a second thought. It was just an innocent experience.
What a contradiction, to wake up the next day and find out he had taken his life.
As I gazed into the lamp of the sculpture, I wanted to bargain with the spirit world. I wanted to cry. Scream even, because it was so unfair that a mother would have to bury her too young a son.
And that I would have to accept the reality of his oblivion.
El Agua: ‘What is meant for you will never leave you’ - Adele, 2022
In this stage of death, the body embarks on a journey through the underworld, leaving behind what is no longer needed in the river. The weight of the boat stabilises. The traveller is safe. The stones sink into the abyss as the soul travels on.
Often in life, there are versions of ourselves we must leave behind to move forward, but it is easier said than done. There were past versions of myself I kept hanging in my closet, despite them no longer fitting. I enjoyed opening the closet on my past to admire them.
The little girl who wanted to rock out as a pop star; the teenager who dreamed of winning an Oscar; the twenty-year-old traveller who wanted to move to Edinburgh, where she could reinvent herself and fall in love with something so different that it felt like home.
Hanging up these versions of myself felt like ripping away my flesh, erasing pieces of my soul as I dropped them into the river on my journey to whom I’ve become. Despite these versions no longer fitting, I still admire the ripples of joy these stones left along the river of self-discovery.
“A pandemic might make you rethink everything. The world stopped moving. But you didn’t.”
Installation view of nightshifts, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne, 2023. Featuring Mikala Dwyer, Untitled 2011. Michael Buxton Collection, the University of Melbourne Art Collection. Photography by Christian Capurro.
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El Viento: Be the black cat
In this stage of death, the soul faces strong winds on their journey to the afterlife. A test of perseverance and strength against challenges the unknown throws at the soul.
Ever had your cards read? If you have and you know tarot, you’ll know most people fear the death card. But often, it isn’t as sinister as you think.
Embarking on a new journey can feel like jumping into the abyss of the unknown. But holding on to the familiar ‘safe’ option may just kill you too.
When you’re dead on the inside, you battle between your dreams and the crushing reality of living as a starving artist. The logical part of your brain rationalises staying in that financially stable job. It pays the bills. And in this economy, you must have a job. Even if it’s sucking your soul away.
The soldier in you wakes up and goes to war, becomes numb to the explosive customers and colleagues. Each day, you slowly lose a little bit of faith in humanity. The mind-numbing tap—tap—tap of the keyboard as your fingers write emails instead of stories, hollows out the hours of your day.
When you get home from your exhaustingly boring day, the enemy combatant is waiting for you in bed.
As you wind down for the night and stare at the flashing space bar in your wordless manuscript, the child in you screams: ‘BUT WE HAD ALL THESE DREAMS!’
You take that child and lull them to sleep with endless scrolling across social media. You watch as other people successfully live out your expired dreams. When you roll over in the morning, the soldier is exhausted as they brace for another battle. You think: How the fuck am I supposed to do this for the rest of my life?
A pandemic might make you rethink everything. The world stopped moving. But you didn’t.
As you drift away from the firing line, pursuing the mission you think is the next step, you know you’re going to struggle. The enemy combatant screams at you to get back in line and to ‘STOP BEING A PUSSY CAT!’
Suddenly, it hits you like a bullet, the best insult. And you wonder how you missed it all this time.
El Fuego: ‘I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace’ - Taylor Swift, 2020
In this stage of death, the soul faces a trial by fire leading to purification.
In the gallery, as I pondered the black hoop adorning Dwyer’s artwork, I couldn't help but notice the anger I felt. The rage grew as my eyes travelled up the columns of white wood to the figurine of the black cat.
Isn’t it enough that in this life, we have to jump from hoop to hoop, obstacle to mountain? And for what purpose? To only reach the black cat that guards the gates to hell. If this is the journey the soul goes on through El Fuego, then I don’t want it.
A death that burns your soul the most is the death of a relationship. Whether it be a lover or a friend. Someone you shared everything with one night can become a stranger in the daybreak. I think Taylor Swift’s song, ‘right where you left me,’ puts it best:
‘Friends break up, friends get married
Strangers get born, strangers get buried
Trends change, rumours fly through new skies
But I'm right where you left me
…Help!’ (Swift, 2021).
The worst aspect of this process is how one of you will try to keep that old flame burning. You’ll hold the torch, grinning and bearing that pain as they leave you in the dark. You’ll climb their impossible rope and meet every one of their toxic expectations. And in the process of it all, you’ll light yourself aflame just so they can shine.
When you reach the black cat that guards the gates to this unknown version of the person you once loved, you might just barter your soul if it will give you the answers as to why they left you behind.
You’ll continue to rage about all the ways they burned you. Because in some fucked up way, this is how you keep the friendship you’re not ready to drop into the river, alive.
‘Glass shattered on the white cloth.
Everybody moved on…
But I’m right where you left me,’ (Swift, 2021).
“And in the process of it all, you’ll light yourself aflame just so they can shine.”
El Vacío & La Luz: The moth chases the moon
El Vacío is the stage of death that represents the void, the transitional phase before reaching our destination. And La Luz is the stage of death where the soul reaches a state of illumination and transcendence.
The second floor at Buxton Contemporary is so dimly lit, that one can’t help but feel as if they're on a journey through the void, taking in each illuminated artwork within the gallery. In the void of my emotions, the first thing that caught my eye was the large lamp. Emitting a small glow, it looked like a massive rose quartz encased in fog. Dwyer’s lamp has been described as a ‘portent distant signal through the fog, gesturing to the otherworldly place, a marker to light the way along a solo journey’ (Buxton Contemporary, 2023).
In mysticism, rose quartz is a crystal known for its healing qualities, inner peace, and unconditional love.
Learning to love myself was like learning to breathe underwater. It felt near impossible: the waves of self-loathing that threatened to drown me each time I made any progress; the current of negativity pulling me further and further from the surface. I remember the first time I realised my body would never look like the women on the silver screen. That I was undesirable because I wasn’t below a size ten. I lived in a world where people weighed my worth with their eyes. Judged my whole existence and capabilities for work, relationships, friendships, attraction and beauty.
In a society that has become so accepting of gender and race, we still refuse to accept that someone in a bigger body is worthy. That being skinny is not the epitome of beauty and that being fat is the exception. The way society treats moths and butterflies should have told me all I need to know. Butterflies are symbols of rebirth and joy. With their colourful wings and graceful flight. Yet moths are creatures of the shadows, constantly chasing the warmth of the light they are starved of. Their muted colours and big eyes make people scream and throw hands. The same hands that would gently hold a butterfly.
Like the moth, I chase the moon. That beacon of light amongst the shadows. That rose quartz shining through the fog on her journey.
La Memoria: ‘In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary,’ (Rose, n.d.)
This is the final stage. It involves the soul being remembered and celebrated by the living during Día de los Muertos.
The irony is not lost on me that out of all the whacky, weird exhibits in Buxton Contemporary, the artwork I would connect with most would be a mish-mash sculpture touching on the philosophical meaning of death.
In the past when I’ve visited art galleries, I never could quite understand how some people could sit with an artwork for hours on end. I was envious of how deeply attuned they seemed to be.
Sure, in the past, there have been artworks I liked, even loved enough to order as a phone case cover. But, I had never had the desire to sit with an artwork for hours on end, in the way I wanted to spend hours gazing into that lamp light until it dispelled all my uncertainty.