Ouyang Yu & Jessye Wdowin-McGregor / Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is a collaborative residency project exploring the time-honoured correlations between text and image. It features the words of poet, writer, literary scholar, translator and editor Ouyang Yu and the images of multi-disciplinary visual artist Jessye Wdowin-McGregor.

From July until November 2023, the artists worked together to capture a short film exploring Ouyang’s ‘tree-writing project’ - a poetic representation of his daily practice of writing poems on the trunks and leaves of trees in Bundoora Park, Kingsbury, a site of inspiration the poet has returned to again and again for almost thirty years.

The film, a ‘video poem’ featuring Ouyang’s words and Jessye’s imagery, was conceived as a reflection upon ecology and time, the artists’ mutual love of nature, belief in the spontaneity of the creative act and the vitality of the poetic image in the search for a sense of spirit and place. 

Jessye concurrently examined flora and fauna in the parklands and the surrounding Dirrabeen (Darebin) waterways, continuing her long-standing inquiry into her relationship with place, particularly plant life in the urban realm and her broader search into ‘the thresholds between body and landscape’. 

There were three stages and areas of thematic interest. 

–– 8-29 September: Ephemerality/permanence – Entanglements with the natural world

The first exhibition instalment featured the film in progress along with four historical works from Jessye’s series of photographic collages, The Surface Ripples and four new poems by Ouyang, written in response to Jessye’s works. Alongside this, a selection of Ouyang’s leaf poems, entitled Multiple Leaves Written - Part 1, was presented and remained in the space for the final exhibit, along with three of Jessye’s works from The Surface Ripples and Ouyang’s poems presented in the book displayed on the front table.

–– 29 September- 10 November: Found or self-found poetry & spontaneous forms of urban nature

During this stage, Ouyang wrote four new poems and many leaf poems while Jessye continued to work on the film alongside two sculpture projects that drew inspiration from her walks in Bundoora Park and along the waterways. In collaboration with the Craft Contemporary Festival, an open studio session was held with Jessye, exploring the intersections between her sculpting/casting projects and her hand-made photography and collage practice. 

–– 10 November - 2 December: Body & self-translation ‘into’ place – Elemental infrastructures and materials that shape our surroundings & sense of place

The final exhibit featured the video poem, four additional poems by Ouyang, a new series of leaf poems, and three new still-life photographs and sculptures by Jessye, presented alongside historical works. In the final weeks, Ouyang led a poetry workshop on-site, and the project culminated on 26 November with a sonic response to the practice and shared ideas on-site by musician/composer Mindy Meng Wang. 

The exhibition closed on Saturday, 2 December. The artworks below are offered for sale. To explore the catalogue of works available, please visit correspondences Editions page and select Ouyang or Jessye’s page. To receive a complete catalogue, please email info@correspondences.work.

Acknowledgement
Our project was made on the country of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We respectfully acknowledge them as the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work. We pay our respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We extend this respect to all First Peoples.

We also wish to express our heartfelt thanks to Arts Merri-Bek for supporting our work. Thanks must also go to Annika Kafcaloudis for her stunning installation photographs presented here and Saskia Yeung for her support us Assistant Producer (Intern).

Press the titles to read the poems and learn more.

Ouyang Yu is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based poet, novelist, literary scholar and translator. Over his decades-long writing career, he has published prolifically in both English and Chinese—including the award-winning novel The English Class (2010). His more recent works include the novel Billy Sing (2017) and the poetry collection Flag of Permanent Defeat (2019). He is the recipient of the 2022 Australia Council Fellowship for Literature, the awarding of which has allowed him to focus on his new documentary novel.

Jessye Wdowin-McGregor is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist whose practice spans video, performance, photography, drawing, and collage. A relationship to place underpins much of her work, and she is inspired by environments that are sometimes at the periphery of attention, particularly within the urban realm. She is interested in our entanglements with other species, the thresholds between body and landscape, the human impact on the natural world, spontaneous forms of urban nature, and the elemental infrastructures that shape our surroundings.