Message in a bottle

In 2007, West Australian artist Jacobus Capone walked for 138 days across Australia from Perth to Wollongong.

Jacobus Capone, Dark Learning, 2015. Collection of The University of Queensland.

In 2007, West Australian artist Jacobus Capone walked for 138 days across Australia from Perth to Wollongong on the NSW south coast. He did this trek carrying a bottle of water from the Indian Ocean, which he then tipped into the Pacific Ocean.

In 2015, he did a series of physically demanding endurance performances in one of the world’s most formidable yet majestic locations, the Arctic landscape of Iceland. Then, earlier this year, he spent six weeks walking barefoot every day through a forest in Japan in winter. His aim was to honour every single tree to seek harmony with his surroundings.

Capone, who was born in 1986, is known for his ambitious performances which often take place in remote landscapes without an audience. He endures extreme conditions as a way of connecting to the environment and records his experiences using photography and video. His work continues the focus on endurance and ritualistic gestures similar to artists such as Mike Parr in the 1970s.

Capone’s Dark Learning, the work he produced in Iceland in 2015, is currently on display at the UQ Art Museum in Brisbane. At the gallery, curator Anna Briers explains that Dark Learning is a mesmeric seven-channel video installation where the artist is dwarfed by nature’s dominion through scenes of pounding waterfalls and snowy glaciers.

The video, which took more than six months to make and film, unfolds as a series of “chapters”, some short, some longer in duration, all of which explore the dramatic sublimity of nature in Iceland.

Capone first travelled to Iceland when he was 18 and immediately felt an affinity with the country. Since that first visit, he has returned many times and has developed a deep reverence for the weather and landscape while spending long periods outdoors during the winter months.

Of Dark Learning he has said: “My aim was to make the location the protagonist in the work, so it was important to capture a sense of its presence.”

The title Dark Learning refers to the Chinese philosophical concept of Xuanxue, the study or learning of the mysterious and profound. Capone has commented that this work was a turning point in his practice and that the project seeks to “extinguish all thought and instead put faith in sensation”.

Briers says the artist responds in a bodily way to the sublime.

“The grandness of the mountains, waterfalls, the wide shots, rich contrasts of snow and charcoal, Arctic ice contrasting with scenes of a bonfire, sound filling the moments of stillness, his small body pitted against the elements, all reinforce the scale of his encounters,” she says.

“The different channels and feeds of the video installation work together to create a compelling experience for the viewer. Meditative and ritualistic, Dark Learning immerses the viewer, transporting us into mysterious worlds that reinforce the present moment.”

Jacobus Capone, Dark Learning, 2015. Collection of The University of Queensland. Purchased 2017. On display, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, until December 14.