Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours), Monash Art, Design and Architecture
By Neil Twist
The floor sensor—Trigger (2024)—sets off a doorbell that heralds my arrival in the room. No going back now. Trigger is my introduction to Nathan Jokovich’s installation of photographic dye sublimation prints, soundscape, and painted blue screen wall.
2x,ê8_Lover (2024) is a high-gloss photographic study of black leather that could be part of a jacket, but whose detailing evokes the eyes of a sado-masochistic mask. The anthropomorphic title of this work, and its “eyes” imply a portrait. This idea is with me as I move on to F∆˃˃Fꭍ˃˃_Blister (2024), a disembodied foot on a black background so lustrous that my reflection materialises. My ghostly likeness stares back at me gazing at the naked foot and I become my own voyeur, a self-portrait as foot fetishist.
The creepy and furry C¿DDGD_Coda IV (2024)—is that a teddy bear’s eye socket?—is paired with the equally mysterious blurred figures and rumpled sheets of ÊŸ€∏Π_Haunting (Echo) (2024)—are they fucking? Intrigued, I lean in for closer inspection, just as Trigger warns me that I have company. My engrossment (perving?) disrupted, I hastily move on, only to be confronted by a carnal memento mori. Uh oh—out of the frying pan into the fire.
The orchids, hair (or perhaps coiffe), and blood platelet-like strawberry are simultaneously familiar and strange, exuding a shiver of furtive eroticism like the decayed glamour of Robert Mapplethorpe. But Jokovich is less studied, and tantalisingly ambiguous. I look for clues in the image titles with their password-like jumble of letters, numbers and symbols. The codes are elusive, obscuring rather than revealing the private meaning lurking within Jokovich’s imagery. Behind me, the speaker stack of Double (Blue) (2024) plays an almost inaudible soundtrack, waiting for its yet to be filmed blue screen feature. Maybe.
Confounded by Jokovich’s opacity, I stick my head into the small dimly-lit backroom on my left. I almost leave after a cursory glance suggests the room is empty, but then the glowing orb of John Elcatsha’s Observer / manazir 1 (2024) catches my eye.
The work, which initially appears to be a small sconce in the centre of the far wall, doubles as both artwork and light source. Closer examination reveals that it is an opaque oculus onto the outside world, through which I am compelled to look but cannot see. The “Manazir” named in the work’s title was a tenth-century Arab scholar, whose treatise on vision underpinned the science that would ultimately enable Elcatsha’s ophthalmic prescription (which incidentally indicates that he is mildly shortsighted, a condition we share). The room resembles a camera obscura, but the aperture is too thick for an image to be revealed. My brain cannot process the subtle shifts in colour that the opaque, glowing orb reveals. It is as if I am trapped inside someone’s cataract-damaged eye. The lens lets in light but not detail, creating an ethereal shimmering quality, a movement from the outside world that I cannot quite discern.
Returning to Jokovich’s room, I gaze at that confounding blank blue screen of Double (Blue) again. It provides much needed visual space within which to reflect on the way both artists create a compelling atmosphere of visual suggestion, offering a sensuous experience of decipherment that extends beyond viewing. Leaving, I am jolted out of my reverie by Trigger bidding me farewell.
Neil Twist has recently completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Melbourne, and he is an emerging art historian in Naarm / Melbourne.