Erin Coates and Anna Nazzari

Erin Coates and Anna Nazzari are both Perth-based artists who frequently collaborate. Together they have produced films and sculptural installations, they also regularly exhibit their individual practices alongside each other. Coates and Nazzari work across a variety of shared mediums including drawing, sculpture and installation. Their artistic interests overlap too; both artists are concerned with the body, ideas of gender, absurdity and morality. Most recently, their shared focus has been the subject of Ocean Gothic.

Ocean Gothic is not to be confused with an art historical movement or sub-genre of contemporary art. Rather, it describes a philosophical relationship we have with the ocean. This relationship is centred on concepts of scale, power and beauty, and encompasses emotions like awe and sometimes even terror. The fact that the ocean is so deep and such a powerful force of nature, and also remains largely under-explored compared to other environments like the desert or outer space, means we fill the depths of what we don’t know with figments of our imagination.

Coates and Nazzari combine the mysterious and bewitching qualities of the ocean with the human body as a means to explore human fragility, as well as our attitudes towards the landscapes we live amongst.

Erin Coates was born and raised in Albany, a coastal city on the southern tip of Western Australia. Her fascination with the ocean is partly inherited as her father was a professional shell diver; she grew up in a house full of shells, marine curios and relics from shipwrecks. An avid snorkeler and free-diver herself, the variety of marine life in her graphite drawings comes from first-hand observation. Across the series we see a menagerie of molluscs, sponges, weeds and corals in combination with parts of the human body.

The Ocular Superiority of Cephalopods (2019) sees octopus and human quite literally meet eye-to-eye. The two figures appear to be wrestling for space on the page but also in quiet observation of each other. EchinodermDentata(2019) describes a similar hybrid, where animal meets human.

The title gives us a clue as to the combination. An echinoderm is a species of marine invertebrates, such as the starfish or sea cucumber, and the Latin term dentatameans “toothed”. As you scan the fleshy forms populating the drawing you encounter sets of human teeth. Coates draws parallels between metaphors of the ocean and metaphors of the self. Having spent much of her time exploring the ocean, she shares an endless fascination and empathy for marine species.

In 2015, Anna Nazzari produced a series of carvings using the late-eighteenth century technique of scrimshaw. The hand-skill involves engraving the surface of whales teeth and bones. As a relic of the whaling industry, the teeth are frequently dominated by heroic imagery chronicling dangerous sea journeys; coastlines and landscapes recorded from sea; and feature portraits of boats, sailors or important naval figures. A scrimshander, the title given to a person who produces scrimshaw, would often rub the carving with soot to make visible the etched surface.

With increasing demand for conservation, whaling in Australian waters permanently ceased in 1979. As a result, scrimshaw is rarely practised and contemporary scrimshanders only use whales teeth already in circulation. Nazzari sourced the teeth for her scrimshaw series through estates and antique auctions in Albany, one of the last operational whaling stations in Australia and where she learnt the craft.

Under Nazzari’s hands the whales teeth are powerful talismans. They are the physical evidence of an animal that once lived. Nazzari builds a relationship between your body and the imagined body of the whale; in observing the teeth, you and the spectre of the whale now occupy the same room. The imagery of The Séance (2015) doubles down on this idea. In their attempt to communicate with spirits, three men are seen to sit around a table conjuring a phantom whale. The Burial Grounds (2015) also describes a supernatural occurrence. A man levitates above the ribs of a beached whale. His hands and feet appear energetically charged, the background farm house places us out of time, and a brooding sky altogether evoke an eerie sense of spiritual power. Nazzari’s images of the whales, as well as the teeth themselves, embody tales of radical environmental change, loss and resurrection.