Valence
The Walls Art Space, Gold Coast/Yugambeh, 2021
Valence collates a body of new work produced by Coolangatta-based artist Jay Jermyn. Loosely framed around his interest in industrial design and incorporating skills drawn from his experience as an electrician, the works in Valence reconcile material and aesthetic sensibilities to propose new ways of looking at and/or experiencing art. Notions of self, its fragmentation and dissolution within the contexts of both nature and digital spaces are explored in wall-based tableaus, sculptures, photography, sound and performance.
Exhibition Essay
Valence is Jay Jermyn's first solo exhibition in over two years. It is composed of wall-based tableaus, large photographs, and floor-based sculptures. Jay lives in Coolangatta, is a qualified electrician and has earned a Bachelor of Digital Media in 3D Design from Griffith University. He plays synths and bass in Veople (an experimental, electronic live act with Julian Currie), surfs and designs lighting for a Byron Bay lighting brand.
Despite, or perhaps because of, Jay’s varied biography, Valence is an exhibition of restraint. What I find interesting is the artist’s ability to channel his interests and experiences into a distillation of well-balanced striking motifs.
Three large photographic works, depicting textured and fragmented forms, punctuate the exhibition. These works are taken from an ongoing photographic project titled Elevations, in which digital image-manipulation (inverting, colour balance, and algorithmic pixel enhancement) are applied to photos of rock or cliff faces. These images look familiar, but our perception is challenged on closer inspection. Digital manipulation, while subtle, skews perspective, orientation, location, and depth. This disorients our experience altering the familiar to uncanny. Glacial crevices, towering rock faces and turbulent oceans loom over us in ways not seen or experienced before. These images highlight Jay’s interest in digital representations of nature.
A suite of wall-based tableaus continue Jay’s exploration of nature in art. By compiling objects that have material contrast (glass and granite, mirror and aluminium) a palpable tension between delicacy and robustness ensues. Money-Penny (2021), Altar’d Slate (2021), An Altar’s Hue on Barnacle (2020), Death and Pixels (2020) and Triad Tension (2020) combine frosted glass, mirror, acrylic and digital screens with aluminium and granite. While these materials are hard their connection elicits a feeling of material uncertainty. Granite’s strength, for example, seems at odds to the fragility of glass and mirror. Combined with crustaceans, crystals and tap fittings, these works offer a representation of nature that implies a balance of fragility and function—but only slightly so.
Jay’s musical exploits are evident in two floor-based pieces: Quantise (2021); and A Digital Bath (2021). Quantise uses a synthesiser stand to display two granite slabs and various crystals on mirrors. Distinct from the tension established in the wall-based tableaus, Quantise includes a music sampler and guitar effect pedal. These artefacts give the work a utilitarian quality and signal the artist’s exploration of sculpture as an expression of experience. A Digital Bath takes this theme one step further by adding sound to the already finely-tuned materials in Valence. Three crystals lithely play a minor chord on a Korg Minilogue Analogue Synthesiser, which sits atop a stainless-steel workbench. The resulting ambient drone bathes the exhibition in a gentle harmonic oscillation.
As a whole Valence represents the work of an artist who, at the core of their practice, is concerned with how materials interact to create dynamic and synergetic relationships. Broadly taken, Valence explores how nature, culture and the digital can be reconciled. The fact that Jay’s work does this with deliberate sensitivity to the way materials interact, and connect with one another, highlights the artist’s mature take on this universal concern.
— CHRIS BENNIE, 2021
Images: Chris Bennie