August 6 - August 23, 2026.
indeterminate lifeform (new tidal energy) is a presentation of studio works developed during Jess Tan’s International Exchange Residency facilitated by Walyalup Fremantle Art Centre x Incheon Art Platform (June to August 2026).
Images: Incheon Art Platform.
For this project, Jess’ ongoing lived reciprocity with materials deepens into a curiosity about what lives on, adapts and transforms under the pressures of industrial capitalism. In a rewilded landscape, materials have undergone processes of natural and synthetic change. Through fragmented connections, we are led to consider our non-human ancestral ties, the hybridisation of materials and the residue of landscapes dissolving.
These studio works unfolded through observing ubiquitous Ginkgo trees and field trips to Wolmido Island, Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Plant and the tidal flats (getbol) at Oido Island and Masian Beach.
‘Visiting Siheung Oido Museum, I encountered (real and simulated) variations of Neolithic artefacts excavated from around Oido Island that through material histories, revealed insights into early coastal life on the Korean Peninsula. Later, combing the shoreline outside the museum, I collected relic-adjacent findings - seaglass that had been rounded and mottled through processes of elemental degradation.
I was thinking about sand, silica reformed into glass, then broken glass bottles churned through the tides against debris to degrade over millenia, returning to its original form - what is left behind and how has it altered in these processes?’
Using an adaptive model of what is at hand and left over, these works are led by sensation. Following an affective resonance with the Ginkgo trees, Jess imagines the Ginkgo - considered one of the world's oldest living fossils - as a distant non-human ancestor - contemplating the shedding of our skin despite existing on different scales of time.
