Chaos, Peace and Everything In-between
Amanda Greenberger
Figure 1: Temple by Rel Pham at the NGV, NGV website, accessed 17 August 2023.
Figure 2: Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations by Taree Mackenzie at the NGV, NGV website, accessed 11 September 2023.
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbourne-now/artists/taree-mackenzie/
Darkness.
Sounds.
Eerie music.
Bright lights.
Flashes.
Boom.
Darkness.
As I enter Temple, I enter a new realm. A new world. A place detached from the place where I once was. I become one with this realm, with the life and the truth of the world and the darkness and the chaos and the peace. I am here; walking, watching. Taking in every sight, every sound, every intricate detail from the floor to the ceiling of the story being told in here. I am overwhelmed, yet at the same time, intrigued. Temple isn’t just a piece of art—it’s an experience—one that rattles through my entire body and mind and the spaces in-between. I experience this space so deeply, in a way that I’ve never experienced a space before. This is where I am.
TOUCH
I cannot feel my surroundings.
I cannot touch this work of art.
Temple represents the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds and the blurring between them.
I cannot touch either.
I cannot touch the computer fans, gaming drives and other components that make up this space.
I just walk in-between.
In-between the digital and physical world that Rel Pham was trying to create.
In-between the chaos and the peace I feel while being here.
SOUND
Calm music.
Eerie music.
At times, the two are one of the same.
Music adds to the atmosphere, to the way I experience being here.
The music is loud.
My chest is pounding, aching, almost burning—but in a good way.
In the way I experience life.
We play the soundtracks of our hearts.
The songs we love.
The ones that bring us joy.
The nostalgic ones.
The sad ones we need when we’re upset.
Music acts as a grounding tool.
A tool to help us relax and take a moment of peace.
A tool to help us experience.
SIGHT
The space between the eyes and the world.
The space that connects both.
The images we see, the stories we live.
Colours. Shapes. Lights.
Temple is bright and dark.
Juxtaposition.
Yin and Yang.
Good and evil.
Chaos and peace.
Temple is lit up bright blue, contrasting with the dark spaces in-between.
Water.
I see water on the screen of the shrine in the centre of Temple. The shrine contains the eight Bagua symbols—Taoist symbols, embodying the principles of reality. The water falls downwards into a rock pool in thousands of tiny droplets. In another part of the video, they fall upwards. I feel like I am in an ocean, submerged in water, taking in the chlorine and salt. Blocking out the rest of the world. It’s peaceful.
The video clip changes, and the water disappears. The music becomes eerier. Buildings appear. They grow. They expand. Like the continuation of life; the ongoing, ever-changing process of societal growth. As cities rise and fall and empires reign and people die and people live and people love, and people hurt. I get caught up in the experience, in the ways of life. In the lines between the digital and physical worlds that consume many of my waking hours. The days go by faster. The months become years. Every day I move further from childhood and closer to death.
CHAOS AND PEACE PART 1: GROWTH
Growth is scary. I am scared of things changing. I’m scared of becoming me. Life is too chaotic sometimes. I get consumed by work. By technology. By social media. I do it all the time. I waste time scrolling aimlessly on my phone, getting consumed by things that are often completely irrelevant to my present life. Suddenly, the whole day is gone. Suddenly, it’s 3 am and I cannot get the sleep my body so desperately needs.
I want to return to the water, to the peace and quiet beneath the waves. But as I grow, I also learn the importance of balance. Of finding peace within the chaos. Of taking breaks from everyday life and finding the water—seeking that lake or river or ocean and feeling that feeling of peace again. But the water is just a metaphor to me. The water doesn’t just have to be a literal body of water.
The water is anything or any place I find peace. For example, nature in general. I want to experience more nature, to seek out the beauty of the world around me. Sometimes I get so caught up in life and forget to look around every once in a while and appreciate the beauty of earth. If I don’t take these moments, I might miss it. I am missing it.
I am constantly struggling to find the balance. I need the balance. Otherwise, I will not stop. I will keep going through life like it’s never ending. Like everything is overwhelming. Like the loud sounds which are consuming. Like the brightness of the sun. Like the darkness of night. Like all the overwhelming thoughts that swarm my head and make it hard for me to sleep and focus and get things done and—
I STOP.
Next to Temple is another room filled with bright colours and shapes. But this place is different. These colours a lighter. I can still hear the eerie music coming from Temple, but here, in Taree Mackenzie’s Pepper’s ghost, effect circles, 4 variations, it’s a lot quieter. Here in this room, I feel almost another kind of peace.
This room contains different panels with different circles and colours. I am curious. I walk around, wanting to discover what they mean. I find that they are illusions.
TOUCH
The panels.
The light.
I cannot feel the illusions physically.
But I feel them seeping into everyday life.
Like liquid, like water.
This room only gave an illusion of calmness and peace.
For behind the calm, there are illusions.
SOUND
Soft, eerie music.
Maybe the sound overflow from Temple is what gives this room a calm feel.
For eerie music can be calming.
An odd sense of calmness.
But eerie music can also be deceiving, like this room.
SIGHT
I see colours.
Bright and pastel.
Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Pink. Black.
I see shapes.
Rectangular panels.
Circles.
Sizes.
Small circles inside bigger ones.
I see illusions.
The circles change size and colour depending on which angle you look at them from.
In ways, this is just like life.
Everything and everyone look different from a different angle.
Whether you are looking at a mountain from bird’s eye view or from the ground.
Whether you are judging a person based on how they look or after you get to know them.
Life is full of illusions and different perspectives, and in them, more than one truth.
CHAOS AND PEACE PART 2: TRUTH
The truth is, everything and everyone has their own truth. The truth is, there is going to be dark and light. Happiness and sadness. Chaos and peace. No matter where you look. But, I guess, life is about how you approach these things. How you react. How you interact with other people.
I may not understand how the illusions in Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations work, but I know that my position changes their appearance. I know, based on the piece’s inscription, that Mackenzie was using light and colour to create a ghost effect, to make it feel like there’s a ghost or another being in the room. Maybe not a ghost exactly, but another version of yourself or something you see. Another truth. The ghost is that layer yet to be discovered—just under the surface of the world you see with your eyes and feel with your senses.
In this room, the viewer’s position affects their view of the circles. Outside this room, in everyday life, what you do and where you go also affects the things around you.
It takes time and patience to uncover the layers of something or someone, to truly understand them. It takes time to find the balance between the chaos and peace. That is what life is.
CHAOS AND PEACE PART 3: LIFE
Life. The single word that binds everything together. The experiences I feel throughout my body and mind. Growth. Truths. Balance. Chaos and peace.
The meaning of life, which so many people seek to find and so many people ponder, only to be left feeling a lot more clueless than they were to begin with. I may not understand everything about life. Why does violence exist? Why do bad things happen to good people?
I may also struggle to seek balance between the chaos and the peace. Between stress and calm. Between everyday activities and relaxation. But it’s these little moments that bring me some peace and happiness—the feeling of the sun’s rays shining down, admiring blossoms and pretty flowers in the springtime. Meeting new people. Exploring new places. Experiencing new things.
Visiting an art gallery and connecting with a piece of work I may otherwise have never discovered. In Temple and Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations, I realised how much I love art and how transporting it can be. I’ve been to galleries before, but I don’t often go. But when I do, I feel transported. I feel like I am in a new world, one of beauty and history and ideas. A thing someone created. Isn’t that awesome?
Leaving the Melbourne Now exhibition at the NGV in which both Temple and Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations are located felt like re-entering the real world. I went back outside. I went back to class. I went back to everyday life. But I didn’t leave the same way I came. I took something with me. I took the meaning of life. Well, maybe not the exact meaning. But parts of it. Things I enjoyed. Things I experienced. Things that made me feel human and connected with my body—mind, soul and senses.
Placed next to each other in the NGV, they create a very grounding experience which plays on the senses. They may seem like opposites on the outside. Temple being dark, loud and bringing peace within the chaos. Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations being lighter and quiet, but also creating illusions. Perhaps they were put together like this to purposely contrast and play on the senses. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am reading into this too deeply and differently than other people would, but that’s okay.
As Rel Pham, the creator of Temple said about his work, ‘...how people experience it is also up to them as well, because like any work, you know, the work has a history and an experience of itself. But then we bring our own personal histories and it's that sort of collusion and that combination of those two things coming that you can’t determine like the right or wrong way about that’ (NGV 2023).
So, for me, these artworks are about chaos and peace and everything in-between. They’re about life and how we experience it. The world is beautiful, and if we don’t take time to connect with its beauty, we may forget it exists. In the light there is chaos and illusion, and in the dark, there is peace. In both, growth and truth and life and wonders and happy and sad moments. In both, all the things that make us inextricably, undeniably, unapologetically human.
References
Figure 1: Pham R (2023) Temple [image], NGV website, accessed 17 August 2023. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbourne-now/artists/rel-pham/
Figure 2: Mackenzie T (2022-2023) Pepper’s ghost, circles, 4 variations [image], NGV website, accessed 11 September 2023. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbourne-now/artists/taree-mackenzie/
Pham R (2023) Temple [large-scale responsive inferno of computer fans, gaming drives, video on screen, lights], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC.
Mackenzie T (2022-2023) Pepper’s ghost effect, circles, 4 variations [angled panels, lights], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC.
NGV (2023) Rel Pham | NGV | Melbourne Now, NGV website, accessed 17 August 2023. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbourne-now/artists/rel-pham/