FourthLand
Artists weaving new myths of land and people
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P A T R I C I A
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Participating artist in Sensus Materia exhibition
Image 1: Ancestral Oracle: Horse, headwear, coal, tea leaf (augury) & eggs placed at the bottom of the garden
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Objects materialise and metamorphose from a life lived, once. This constellation activates trajectories of lineage through time, land, and mythos.
Media: horse hair, tea leaves, coal dust, reed, iron, eggs, slate, brass incense holder.
(Sensus Materia exhibition 27 Sept - 6 Oct 2024)
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Patricia Brien & Louise van den Muyzenberg
The Dreaming Ancestors
Exhibition
SITE Festival 2025
5 June - 5 July
Mixing metaphors, visitations and projections, this collaborative project by Brien and van den Muyzenberg pursues near-ancient kin as if they existed once, or will in the coming times. This exhibition considers how ancestral connections manifest in the unconscious and spaces of liminality. It traces other-than-human entities like animal callers, plant spirit, place and fleeting ancestral storylines that present themselves.
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'Horse-human relations' emerged through an interative project around ancestral lineage, the Matrixial notion of the almost-presence and restorytelling. In this particular exhibition one of her family’s equine narratives provided the scope to trace, research and fabulate ancient archetypes, animal-human relations, and the collective unconscious.
Image 3: Hippomancy and the dream unconscious: Epona’s horse brasses (2025) Upcycled wood, acrylic paint, horse brasses, brass hooks, paper, dream distillations
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This piece plays with the long history of hippomancy which is the art of divination through the movements, sounds, tracks or bones of the horse. It is found in multiple cultures and follows into popular culture through the theme of the ‘talking horse’. There are references within earlier popular culture too, for example, the Goose Girl fairytale where Falada the faithful horse gifted to the lead character by her mother is, in a tale of (self) betrayal, decapitated yet still talks, reminding his mistress of her lineage and potential in the darkest of times. Epona is the Celtic horse goddess of European (Gaullish and British) tradition, and earlier, who among other things, holds the keys to the underworld.
Behind each horse brass is a message - each one a distillation of a selected dream that I had over a period of 3 months. The accompanying text comes from the dream world, and may provide you with a message stirring in the collective unconscious.
Two Colours – two ancestral lines
Ink blue Indigo
The rich darkness that I draw on to quench my soul.
My inner core – rich, dark, almost but not black. The depthe of the night with the cold silver feedback of the stars. Inky indigo blue – layer upon layerof green blue which eventually caves into near black.
Black night, white fragrant flowers
Crystal sand, charcoal, kohl, dark rich soil infused with crystal sand particles. North star – tea. Fearsome depths – furthest reaches. Iridescence. Crow intelligence, bird flight, nomadism. Melancholia. Dark Plums. Winter depths. Still silence – looking, staring. The night – butterfly flight. Dark hedge learning. Black baby alpaca wool. Cape. Pine tree dark forest. Snowy gum tree.
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The gift from my mother’s ancestral line.
Orange with yellow edges
The is the colour mix that makes my heart sing – an emotional overwhelm of such love, reciprocity, giving.
This is the outreach colour – my connection framing community. The warmth and uplift to greet my social sphere.
Positive energy. Fooding conviviality, share, talking, communicating, dancing, smiling, summer morning. Chamomile – slightly sickening but good.
A field of sunflowers – tracing the sun through the day. Lounging, sitting, music, digestion, washed out by the sun. Linen, old and faded. Sacral and solar plexus- the rest needed. Violin, string, performance, Leo. Symbols clashing softly, with control. Radiating outwards. Coral, apricots, ripe and sweet. Singing to the garden. Mimosa. Communion.
Ceramics – fired. Galloping horses – speed. Rooibos – mountain tea, heat. Mango lassi. Fierce banksia.
The gift from my father’s ancestral line.
From the ink emerges the crystalline sharp edge which bursts forth in the vibrant soft radiance of sacral orange and solar yellow.
Passiflora edulis: Passionfruit (Edulis: Latin ‘edible’)
The two merge in the Passionfruit.
The yellow orange and dark purple black.
Fruit of abundance climbing over the side gate in my childhood home.
‘Flower of the five wounds’ from missionaries in Brazil: ‘flor des cinco chagas’
