Up in the Air
QCA Project Gallery, 6-17 December 2022

Dr Ursula K Frederick, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Creative & Cultural Research, University of Canberra

After viewing the exhibition Up in the Air I find myself thinking of Icarus. It is not only the presence of wax, the enveloping blues of sky and sea and the perspective of giddying heights. It is also the wonder and exhilaration of soaring over serene pools of whiteness and discombobulated horizons. There is the eye navigating complex layers, tonal shifts and a majestically clouded vision. And there are the precise lines and potent dangers of miscalculation. All of these impressions come together in an atmosphere of beauty and tension to evoke the freedoms and fragilities of human flight.

Like many story-telling traditions, the Icarus myth serves as a cautionary tale, a moral guide, an exemplar. But why is it that this particular narrative from ancient history remains so familiar in the twenty-first century? I imagine that Icarus persists not simply as an allegory of over-confidence (i.e., it teaches us to not aim too high) but precisely the opposite. Icarus encapsulates a wish and the promise of potential, enabling us to imagine ourselves as something else – a bird, a heavenly creature – somehow capable of going beyond the seemingly possible. Greek mythology also brought us the story of Narcissus: a beautiful young man who fell in love with his own watery reflection. Unable to break his stare, he ultimately perished.

While Narcissus may be read as a lesson on the power of the gaze and the captivating potential of the image, Icarus demonstrates an enduring human desire to elevate our bodies above the earth. Centuries later, in a world where airplanes take off every few seconds and selfies are at our fingertips, it is easy to forget just where these technologies have taken us. Up in the Air provides a series of insights and an open space to contemplate this journey.

In this exhibition Claire Grant marries the astounding technologies of instant image capture and air travel, through her own lived experience as an artist and flight attendant. Moreover, she has done so at a time when much of the global population was undergoing a strange and profound stillness. As such these artworks provide us with a unique outlook on the pandemic (when most of us were grounded from flying) and an aviation sector under threat of collapse. Through the integration of everyday and specialist materials, new and old photographic techniques, Grant elevates the mundane routine of her daily work on a regional charter aircraft to a complex and thoughtful study.

It is difficult to imagine the pressures that Grant and other airline crew would have faced during this turbulent period. As Ireland, Hobbins and Black (2020) point out, there is significant affective labour expended in being a flight attendant, not least “the hard work of endlessly smiling and always being polite – and the personal sacrifices of the job.”[i] An enlarged cyanotype of the artist’s x-rayed teeth hints at the demands placed on the bodies (and wellbeing) of airline cabin crew. Whether it be the long-term effects of excessive pleasantries, cascading cosmic rays or the ‘unlikely event’ of other impacts, Grant’s dental records (a requirement on commencing employment) point to the darker aspects of the aviation sector.

This skeletal smile hovers ominously at the end of the corridor, both punctuating and linking the window glimpses and aerial vista on either side. It might be seen to stand in for the attendant at the front of the cabin signalling for us to pay attention and returns us to the fact of the artist’s own body as a central medium in the making of these artworks. For despite the representational emphasis on aerial vision, cloudscapes, and topography, and the data required to navigate, the aviation experience is inherently mediated through Grant’s creative and professional work. Her presence is encountered differently in each piece. In the series of window views, it may be sensed in the tremulous trailing line of a hand applying wax resist. In the large-scale installation it is clearly observed in handwritten notations made onboard during flights. Here the very fabric of the image is comprised of ‘worn’ materials; both in the sense that they are repurposed papers marked and creased from use and in the fact that they were folded and carried in the pocket of Grant’s uniform.

This large assemblage is then, figuratively speaking, a kind of long exposure—a durational work of art that enfolds the space and time of multiple flights. It blurs the boundaries between the pressurised cabin and the atmosphere outside. An assemblage of 57 individual cyanotypes assembled into a stunning panorama of cloud and atmosphere that mirrors the mass and void of the open cut mine below. This hollowed out landscape was a familiar sight for Grant, a route she travelled regularly, as the airline ferried mineworkers through the skies of regional Queensland. With the skies closed many flights were cancelled while provisions afforded for ‘essential’ industries, such as mining, ensured that some flights remained on schedule. This work subtly alerts us to the prevailing priorities of industry and government, and recalls how the aviation industry has familiarised a new aerial vision that alters conceptions of scale, time, and humanity’s place in the world.

The rich blues and whites of the cyanotype is well suited to depictions made of and in the sky. And drawing on her training in batik technique Grant brings a unique approach to the process. The cyanotype was developed in the mid-nineteenth century and involves the application of a photosensitive solution to an absorbent surface such as fabric or paper. When exposed to sunlight (UV rays in particular) the solution undergoes a photochemical reaction and is converted into Prussian Blue. Where sunlight is blocked, the underlying substrate remains unexposed and will keep its original colour when the solution is washed out and fixed. This early form of photography was taken up by amateur and established scientists as a way of recording and cataloguing the natural world. Engineers and architects soon adopted this contact printing technique to reproduce their line drawings as ‘blueprints’, hence the strong legacy of association between the cyanotype and scientific illustration, technical plans and design work.

Many of Grant’s cyanotypes share the clarity of line and crisp detail inherent to this design aesthetic. However, the exacting sensibility of measured drawing and clean text is diffused by the frayed and torn edges of the washi and the delicate expanses of encaustic. To make these artworks Grant has drawn upon a personal archive of images and materials, ranging from the repurposed navigation guides used by pilots to her own photographs of the flight information board. These different perspectives of air travel (from the ground, on take-off, at high altitude) are layered together to create a unique multi-planar viewpoint. Consequently, we are presented with an imaginary airspace that mediates the landscape, the atmosphere inside and outside the plane, the personal impressions and the collective experience.

As a rumination on modern technologies of the air and the image, Up in the Air, is a bold vision made in an uncertain era. Like the stories of Icarus and Narcissus it issues a beautiful and beguiling alert. But unlike these mythic characters Grant does not underestimate the gaze or the powers of the sun. Instead, she carefully harnesses its rays to generate a unique body of artworks that open up shut down skies. Nonetheless, through her use of everyday materials and through lens of her own lived experience Grant brings us back to earth. This is a significant aspect of the work. It provides an unusual perspective on everyday life during the Covid-19 pandemic and is an important intervention in histories of aviation dominated by narratives of heroic male pilots. By bridging the speed and slowness of digital and alternative processes and human and machinic vision, Grant invites us to give deeper consideration to the image, ethics, and impacts of aviation on contemporary and future life.

[i] Ireland, T., P. Hobbins, P. Black, ‘Home away from home’: reflecting on past airline collapses in Australia. The Conversation. April 22, 2020.