Jordan Azcune:
Post-Christian Camp: N.Smith Gallery

‘I’m not coming up with answers, I’m coming up with more questions. I’m not interested in definities, I’m interested in grey areas. Those grey areas actually have a lot of colour.’

 

 

 

What interests me about star signs is that it’s based on birth, like many belief systems it is inherited and assigned. It then comes with the option to preserve or deny relationships or association we have to them.

 

Born from divination, and seen as suspect in Christianity, Astrology has become this really interesting mixture of pop-spirituality that contains identity and psychology. I think about it to grasp and define relationships, identity and compatibility. There divine number of 12 which brings to my mind the 12 apostles; Andrew, Peter, James, John, Bartholomew, Thaddaeus, Phillip, Thomas, Simon, Matthew, Judas, James - Judas having to be a Scorpio.

Enjoy Life on Earth Forever!*

 

‘Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgement. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy.’ 

– Susan 55:13**

23. ‘Use flowers sparingly but generously when necessary.’
– The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu (Ikebana), The Do’s and Don’ts of Practice 

 

Joyful. Generous. Post-Christian. Camp.

 

For Jordan Azcune Camp is Art, Religion, Life.
 
My friendship with Jordan has always had a beautiful flamboyance to it. We both love to wear bright prints, theatrically met tripping down steps while fuelled with alcohol, and solidified our friendship on the dance floor. 

 

Jordan not only expresses his own version of Religion and Camp through Art, he Lives and breathes it. 

 

Concealed within Jordan’s works is a theatrical process of creation: 

stirring crock pots filled with colourful pigment and beeswax late at night. 

Wine and RuPaul’s Drag Race keeping the artist company. 

 

A ritual imbued with the essence of Camp.  

“Post-Christian Camp” is a playful queer celebration re-claiming religious aesthetics through the flamboyance of Camp culture. Jordan’s explorations of his own conflicted relationship to faith growing up queer and raised Jehovah’s Witness manifest as sculptural wall works referencing spiritual iconography. Fragrant candle wax and archways become offerings of reflection for gallery visitors in a contemporary altar space. Through sumptuous moments of grandeur and optics, Jordan proposes alternative spiritual narratives that reconsider and complicate connections to religion and queer culture. 

I’m not coming up with answers, I’m coming up with more questions. I’m not interested in definities. I’m interested in grey area. That grey area is actually a lot of colour.
– Jordan Azcune***

 

Grandeur. Spirituality. Optics. Openness.

 

Jordan emphasises Camp’s generous and enjoyment-focused qualities that Susan Sontag penned in the writer’s famous essay ‘Notes on Camp’ (1964). Through vibrant colour, texture and scent, Jordan brings a lightness to complex and often conflicting personal histories. The artist’s works possess an openness in both spirit and form. Large-scale installations Rose Window (for him) (2021) and Ecclesiclasm (2021) reference the inserts of stained-glass church windows – both are composed of several panels suspended in space, lacking a connecting frame. This in-betweenness allows for multiple configurations, their current formation being only one of many possibilities, one of many perspectives. 

Works are complete in whatever form they come.

 

A constellation of star sign archways also invites flexibility – while distinctly individual, together they form a collective astrological understanding of the world. 

 

It’s not all about religion. 

 

As well as drawing upon biblical references, Jordan incorporates other celestial ideologies that influence and shape our understanding of ourselves and others. 

 

The intangible shapes the tangible.

Spaces between are just as important as the physical object.

 

Ecclesiclasm and three additional arches are positioned underneath the gallery windows, emphasising the architectural qualities of the space and arch works. 

 

I like that there is this space in-between, so you can see the architecture holding the arches. 

 

The absent spaces reference ‘blind arches’ that bare no gateway – instead principally providing aesthetic cohesion.

 

Not everything has to be functional.
Beauty is important too. 

 

I like this idea of promenade and vibration. 

 

Jordan’s archways express an unashamed decadence through rich pigments, sensual wax, polished brass framing and optical effects. The eye bounces between works in an interplay of rhythm and movement. 

 

Negative space permeates the surface of these dancing forms: 
beeswax indented with the concave of ping-pong balls. 

 

Creation through absence.

Residue. 
The body is still held there.

Structural forms are further softened through organic materials. Church arches filled with beeswax create sweet-smelling, sensory moments. This much-loved material is central to the artist’s practice. 

 

One thing I have to overcome within my practice is that I always have to decide the form first, that is the thing that is set in stone.

Power, cultural and physical structures contain the form. 
Yet nature is still present.

The gestures that happen within the work are quite quick.
An element of chance.

Irregularities and cracks across waxy surfaces.

Jordan’s practice encompasses Sogetsu Ikebana. This contemporary branch of traditional Japanese flower-arranging allows for the inclusion of unconventional materials and the ‘generous’ use of flowers when ‘necessary’ – as outlined in Jordan’s favourite rule from The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu’s ‘Do’s and Don’ts of Practice’. 

Such a beautiful sentiment…

There are some overly romantic rules that contradict themselves, I like that they are  campy.

 

How one defines this ‘generosity’ is open to interpretation.
Generosity is Always Necessary.

The Sogetsu School’s expansive approach to the visual aligns more strongly with Jordan’s sumptuous installations than Jehovah’s Witness methodologies, which favour textual and spoken teachings over aesthetic representations. The artist reflects on his religious upbringing through a visual language that accentuates, rather than suppresses creativity. 

 

Identity and faith are fluid, like melted wax.

 

On a hotter day the works are more fragrant – qualities of a body, bodies past. What we are actually smelling are remnants of a beehive.

 

These shifting states of wax are present in Icarus Falling in Slow Motion, Gilt with Gold (2021). The golden arch is named after the Greek mythological hero Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with golden wings made of wax despite his father Daedalus’s warnings, causing him to fall to his death in the ocean.

 

That play of heat, wax, gradient...rising and falling.

The work’s surface goes from pearly yellow to a green and back up through peach. 

Blue fleck details and this gilt perimeter set the scene for Icarus's fall and Daedalus’s regret. 

 

Catholic guilt and gilt gold.

Gilded guilt.

 

I really like the idea of merging words together to create the sense of an epic or loaded title...these works aren’t  single-minded.

 

Another archway, Subtroperotica (2021), conjures the sensation of melted wax through cheeky text.

 

It’s a play on that sense of sexuality within wax, tactility, and those tensions that come from a dynamic material that shifts states.

 

Jordan conjures the sensations of a tropical landscape through sunset orange and pink tones – a reference to the artist’s Queensland home and love of its distinctive hot, sticky climate.

 

The sub-tropics are erotic...sweaty bodies in bikinis.

 

By cooling contrast, neighbouring archway Pre-Madonna (2021) is filled with rich ultramarine blues. Made from ground lapis lazuli, this vibrant colour was exclusively used to paint the Madonna in European history.

 

Blue pigment was incredibly valuable, there is a richness to it.

Rich in colour, rich in value. Worthy of the inflated ego of a primadonna.

 

This blue is really, really gorgeous.

The base is pearlescent, there is this glimmer…

 

These ocean-like qualities of the work reference the origins of ultramarine, which in Latin translates to ‘beyond the sea’ – referring to the pigment’s initial aquatic journey to Europe in the 14th Century. Jordan draws upon the elemental fluidity of both wax and water.

 

An ocean blue.

 

Moving forward in time, the title of the work also references pop star Madonna – a queer icon known for embracing a religious aesthetic. 

 

I kept listening to Madonna when I was making these works, I listen to Pop a lot. 

 

Faith has to be fun.

 

Star signs have a playfulness and how you identify with them is curious. You either identify with your star sign or you don’t. I like that flexibility. Some people just don’t believe in them.

 

Star signs are always prescribed from birth and remain unchanged, yet there is a freedom as to how much one associates with them. This idea resonates strongly with Jordan, who contrastingly was born into strict commitment to the Jehovah’s Witness faith. In a new series of individually named star sign archways, Jordan explores how these different connections can shape us, even if no longer dominant within our life. 

 

I don’t identify as a Jehovah’s Witness anymore, but I draw on that history. 

Scorpio is my present.

 

I talk to my friends about the zodiac a lot.

 

There is a universal quality to star signs. 

It’s a language that a lot of people speak.

 

Each arch features different colours, textures and compositional qualities that embody the distinct ‘personality’ of their assigned star sign. For example, earth signs including Virgo, Capricorn and Taurus have ordered arrangements, whereas water signs Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces are more mottled and chaotic. These twelve personas are encapsulated in a singular small white arch. All Things Become Visible (2021) features casts of ping pong balls used for each star sign, staining the pure surface with pastel multi-colour hues.

 

Remnants of all the works together. 

It’s the embodiment of an exhibition, it’s all in one. 

 

The spherical casts retain some of their material memory. They still have that wax on them, which will become infused into the next works I create.

 

The white arch emphasises the interconnectedness of Jordan’s signature works across time.

 

I think of my work as being generational when I use the ping pong balls over and over again. You can trace their lineage. It is like a cosmos..like when you see the star signs in the night sky...all the constellations in one.

 

One of these generational works is Jordan’s largest installation to date, Ecclesiclasm, which references two religious terms 'Ecclesiastes’ and ‘Iconoclasm’, the latter referencing destruction. For the artist, this allows for new ways of thinking, whether it is through material explorations of negative space between panels and across surfaces, or by playfully critiquing animal sacrifice. 

 

Inviting in moments of joy.

The three arches within the work represent three animal offerings in beeswax form: the red tones in the central purple panel Bloody Door (2021) represent the lamb’s blood smeared over doorways during Passover, while Golden Calf (2020) on the right references the melting of precious gold possessions into Baal, a golden calf to be worshipped. The final work Holy Cow (2021) is a light-hearted animal version of a deity, it’s black and white mottled surface reminiscent of a cow’s hide. 

This pack of animals also references queer sub-cultures, including otters and bears. 
The animalistic side of things imply a sense of campy fantasy..

A separate rainbow archway, ‘Eat Meat’ (2021), further explores animal sacrifice, this time for human consumption – as instructed by the blatant title. By placing contradictory bible stories of animal slaughter against one another, Jordan questions religious structures and highlights the many perspectives within the bible. 

 

But this critique goes both ways. 

 

Jordan reinterprets the queer rainbow flag –  symbolic of inclusion and celebration – through a religious frame.

 

I think art often has more obligation and habit of challenging religion than it does queerness.

Thinking about what rainbows mean in the bible...it doesn’t mean gayness, part of it has to do with the flood of Noah...

In the story of Noah’s Ark, the bible divulges that humans were granted permission to eat meat once the floods receded – once Noah, his family and the animals that had been afloat his ark were able to safely return to land. The rainbow was a symbolic promise from higher powers to never flood the entire earth again.

‘Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.’

– Genesis 9:3

From a contemporary context, this sentiment is in conflict with a general discouragement from eating excessive quantities of meat, combined with the popularity of vegetarianism and veganism. The title also evokes sexual connotations, referring to genitalia as sausages and cut meat. 

 

The consuming of animal meat and the erotic ‘eating’ of bodily flesh... 
The bible becomes sexy. 

Eat Me. 
Perhaps the more environmentally conscious approach to take...

 

Conceptual layers melt together.

Sexuality, flesh-consumption and biblical tales infuse colourful beeswax.

 

Equally vibrant in waxy form and religious critique are eight golden teardrop panels. Together they form a rose window, referencing gothic church architecture often used for depictions of Mary and Jesus. Rather than filtering light through transparent panels, Rose Window (for him) radiates light from its rich golden surface and polished brass frames. Ostentatious, yet tender, the panels also form several hearts. 

Symbolic of Love. 

Rather than a love for god or ‘Him’, Jordan chooses ‘him’, his partner, and his community outside the church. 

I’m choosing Love. 

 

Reminiscent of jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs that reference Jordan’s Russian heritage; these elaborate containers hold gifts for the beLoved one.

A gift of Love.

Above all, Post-Christian Camp prioritises Love. 
In all its forms,
without judgement.

A Love of life, a Love for others, and a Love for our true selves.
 

*Jehovah’s Witness brochure

**Sontag, S. “Notes on Camp.” United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2018 (originally published in 1964), p.13.

***All subsequent italicised quotes are made by the artist, extracted from conversations with Michaela Bear.

Through solo and collaborative practices, Jordan Azcune explores abstraction, camp aesthetics, and the ineffable.