grounded

‘grounded’ is a solo exhibition by artist and curator Courtney Spencer, bringing together a body of work that grew out of a research journey across Western Australia in 2019 and early 2020.

Over eight weeks Courtney returned to the places she had lived during her primary school years, revisiting them as an adult and spending time again in landscapes that had quietly shaped her early sense of place. During childhood she attended five different primary schools over seven years, and the project followed this geography.

The journey began in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, before continuing to Bibra Lake near Perth. From there Courtney drove for three days across the Nullarbor Plain to the remote settlement of Forrest, travelled north to Meekatharra on the edge of the desert, and finished in Esperance on the southern coast of Western Australia.

The trip began without a fixed plan. Returning to these places allowed Courtney to experience them again through an adult perspective, reconnecting with landscapes that had shaped her childhood and reflecting on what remained, both in the places themselves and in memory.

During the journey she began collecting materials directly from the landscapes. Sand, dirt, ochre and other found elements were gathered from each location. By the end of the trip more than 120kg of material had been packed into boxes and shipped back to her studio in the UK.

The works in ‘grounded’ emerge from an ongoing exploration of these materials. Rather than depicting landscapes through image or paint, the works present fragments of landscape directly. Pigments are rubbed onto paper so that the colour of the material itself forms the surface of the work. In this process the act of making becomes a form of physical contact with the land.

Many of the works appear as quiet fields of colour contained within simple grids or frames, allowing the material itself to hold the landscape rather than describe it.

Alongside the works on paper, the exhibition also includes small sculptural compositions made from gathered materials. Coral, sand, rope and other found elements are assembled into modest arrangements that explore the meeting point between natural and synthetic materials.

Across the exhibition expansive environments are quietly condensed into intimate forms. Vast landscapes become small surfaces and structures that can be encountered up close, inviting a slower kind of looking. Subtle shifts in colour, texture and form emerge through the materials themselves.

Seen together, the works bring fragments of distant environments into the gallery space, offering a reminder that landscapes are not only places we observe, but places that remain with us.

This exhibition has been supported by The Art Court, Eye Room and Leeds City Council.