Skyring

The glinting, illuminated circle – reflective, shiny, jewel like – has a magical quality and a mystical calmness. The large mobius of polished metal hovers in space, casting its spell around the room populated with paintings whose surfaces are crystalline patterns and abstract shapes. Suspended, colourful synthetic rocks glow from within their irregular bodies. A polished metal drop of disk and diamond captures colour shapes and more reflections into its mirror finish. A hessian fabric tree and mountain – we know so because they are named – indicate a wooded, alpine landscape. 

This is a space made enchanted and bewitched. An after-glow place of spells and arcane energies. A place in which something mysterious has occurred – marked out by a white circle in a black square – twisted in the hyper reflective mobius ring that twirls in the air. This specially designated space pulses with a remanent dynamism of an event that has occurred, bestowing something miraculous to the circle.

The circle, or ring has special significance in Norse and Scandinavian culture. It is the shape of community. Of tribe. It is reiterated through pagan mythology to early churches built in the round. It holds its shape in contemporary Scandinavia, in buildings, civic chambers and numerous landmarks and art. The circle is a symbol of continuum in Scandinavian culture, a cycle, a space into which ever new generations step to continue the knowledge of life.

In this project – Skyring – including paintings, objects and a ritual performance, Trollkjerring, Mikala Dwyer continues her investigations into the energies, wisdoms and magic of her Scandinavian matrilineage. This is especially clear in the ritual performance Trollkjerring (Troll Queen). Dwyer enlists her family – her daughter Olive, partner David and Ebbe the dog – in a loose translation of Peer Gynt as interpreted by composer, Edvard Grieg. She delivers a female slant to the telling of Gynt’s dream in the Hall of the Mountain King.

In Dwyer’s version it is the Queen’s Mountain, rather than the King’s, that dominates the scene. Dwyer has cast herself as the matriarch atop this handmade peak, peering down from a panoptic height. Emerging from the mountain ‘skirt’ a daughter is birthed. Wriggling out from under, she emerges to occupy the white circle painted into the black square. To further emphasise the shape the daughter assembles odd items. She moves around the circle touching, shifting, nodding or kicking the various objects to enclose the henge for the duration of the performance. Coloured boulders, illuminated like Lamps, a small wooden IOU sculpture, silver steel objects, plump bob – materials common to Dwyer’s sculptural practice, are enlisted. Because some of the material is skittish the ring is apt to break easily. As the daughter navigates the zone with increasingly energised free movement air is shoved around, loosening the protective shape. A bell gong sounds, a techno drum beats.

Skyring references a song written by Michael Nesmith of sixties pop group, The Monkees – Circle Sky. Sitting inside a tree costume David sings the lyrics – which rotate around the phrase … and it looks like we made it once again. The life cycle continues. The creative momentum recirculates. Balance, while precarious, is maintained.

The Who’s electrified rendition of Greig’s In the Hall of The Mountain King blares out. The daughter dons a motorcycle helmet and does a dans macabre. The matriarch throws down pearls of wisdom, in the form of potatoes, which are collected like treasure by the daughter who stuffs them into her second skin, to transform her shape, so that she might become troll – a changeling being possessed of special powers and disruptive behaviours – who will continue the circle of Scandinavian lore. As Grieg’s own lyrics announce – Madness reigns In the Hall of the Mountain King. Oh yeah.

Slay him shouts the daughter.

Slay him! The Christian man’s son has seduced

the fairest maid of the Mountain King!

Slay him! Slay him!

May I hack him on the fingers?

May I tug him by the hair?

Hu, hey, let me bite him in the haunches!

Shall he be boiled into broth and bree to me

Shall he roast on a spit or be browned in a stewpan?

Ice to your blood, friends! 

All the while GOD – perhaps the redesignated theosophical God who has no place in the spirit, material, human construct, here disguised as a poodle dog – meanders around the place with nowhere to settle. A miniaturised monolithic GOD now displaced by the material mystifications that are the arcane, esoteric Trollkjerring world.

Dwyer leans into her personal and artistic matrilineage here. Her paintings and objects – crystalline, reflective, refractive and luminescent – keep company with those of precursors Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, and other artists pursuing their alchemical inner logics, fractal patterns and personal symbolisms. Dwyer, continues the work of art made by women who deployed the theatrics of ritual and performance to rupture the unquestioned hierarchy of a male dominated art scene. With her special language of talisman shapes, objects and reflections Dwyer continues her journey of inherited and acquired self-knowledge, and transfers this wisdom to the next generation, all the time aware that the Lacanian mirror distorts, fragments, and rediscovers itself ad infinitum. Growth and transformation in perpetuity for all those whose ancestral story adapts and readapts within the telling space of the magic circle.

– Juliana Engberg, 2024

Trollkjerring
Performers: Mikala Dwyer, Olive Corben Dwyer, David Corben and Ebbe.
Music by James Hayes