FourthLand
Artists weaving new myths of land and people
FourthLand – the land within
the land beyond
A vessel, a place, a feeling
Fourthland is a place and a practice envisioned by artists Isik and Eva, as a way to delve into interconnectedness. Together revisiting notions of the sacred, the poetics of object and craft and the mysticism of the subconscious.
Through creating artworks across mediums of sculpture, installation, performance, film, social - and ceremonial practice the work becomes a vessel for transforming exchange - producing new myths between land and people as an antidote to disillusionment and modes of separation held in modern society.
Fourthland use their process led research and long-standing commitment to social practice to reposition marginalised knowledge in order to form new modes of social and environmental consciousness with diverse communities and cultural groups.
Since 2008 the work has sought to merge art and life to collectively develop the myths that are essential to enchant and reposition forms of kinship to foster a deeper connection to the land and each other. These methods produce surprising and transformative collaborative projects, choreographed rituals, sound work, storytelling and improvised sessions that weave together human and non-human communication.
Isik and Eva immerse themselves in making, constructing objects through a range of sculptural processes with natural materials. This includes a contemporary re-positioning of traditional and nomadic craft skills such as felt making, skin curing, stitching, waxing and natural dying alongside a range of laborious mending processes. They believe in the importance of bringing back 'the crafted' and 'the natural' into the contemporary art and social context, emphasising the importance of' being in process' and 'deep time'. Through this, preserving the knowledge and ritual passed down through the hands. Something they have come to call 'Handheld knowledge'.
The objects they make become their artistic tools. Often made over a long period of time, with repetitive and durational labour, they are imbued with a sacred weight that evokes qualities of care and universal knowledge - that of the domestic and the cosmic. The objects allow meetings to take place between unexpected groups of people, and as the objects are passed from hand to hand, they archive the encounter and re-tell the stories of our time.