Hægtesse (2020)
Leila Gerges interviews her alter-ego
Can you tell us about yourself?
I am the muse and brainchild of Leila Gerges. Some might call me an alter ego but I am a separate entity, I mean, I found her as much as she found me. Leila moved to Toorak a few years ago which caused a rupture in the time-space continuum and the hedges of Toorak became portals for inter-dimensional travel. I was therefore hanging around the hedges a fair bit. I have been called a Hedgewitch, a genius loci, a trickster and a daemon…I am all these things and more.
Leila’s art is inspired by psychogeography, which is the practice of walking and connecting to the atmospheres of places. She was doing this a lot in Toorak at the time we met. Because she was looking at the gardens very closely- I was bound to be exposed! She was pretty open to seeing me at the time.
Yeah wow, so why did the hedges become portals? Why not a lamppost or letterbox?
Ok, not to disparage those other objects you have mentioned but they just don’t have the same elan vital as your average hedge. And I don't simply mean that a hedge is more alive in the typical sense that it’s a living organism which is constantly growing and moving. Because the materials which make up a lamppost or letterbox are also moving and changing, albeit more slowly, but a hedge or any plant which is subject to constant pruning by humans is a very active agent. It has a very strong life force as it is always meeting the obstacle of human will in its striving to be. Some people might view these plants as trapped or controlled and therefore lacking in freedom - that the human will ultimately dominates them. And this may be true if you assume the plant would prefer to be free to grow without any interference and into another less determined shape. But this is partly human projection…a plant, like any form of life, encounters all kinds of obstacles in its life journey and its ultimate shape or life story is determined by how it meets and overcomes those challenges. Many of you know that it is often the humans who have met and overcome huge adversity that have enormous strength and character - it’s the same with plants and this is why hedges are so special and why they have the level of energy required to become portals to other worlds.
So you see the plant and human worlds collaborating in a sense?
Maybe, I’m not sure its collaboration. It’s more of a dialectic. The plants have their own will and ecology but in a city or suburb they are very much contained and dominated by human activity. As soon as the humans go, you will see them take over those spaces. The contemporary suburb has a garden which is nature under the thumb of humans, so to speak. Toorak is a place of many beautiful gardens and people actually do tours to see them. There is an aspect of collaboration in the idea of a garden - but there is always an aspect of domination in that the plants are constantly pruned and contained to fit within the parameters of the plot of land that has been sectioned off and called one’s property. So these boundaries and borders define the trajectory of a plant’s life. But, with topiary and hedges, this human intervention takes on a kind of extreme aspect as the very shapes of the plants themselves are altered so that they come to represent anything from animals to abstract shapes and what results is a sort of living sculpture.
I like that, living sculpture.
Yes. Actually, one trend which is common in Toorak is to cover the high walls of your mansion with a creeping ficus. Its aesthetically very pleasing and creates a a sort of faux hedge which over time can become quite thick- I feel like this has the spirit of collaboration as the creeping ivy is allowed to creep - it is planted on purpose to creep all over the wall and eventually cover it completely. So it’s collaboration in the sense that the human intervention is aligned to the plant’s essential character- but yet the same could be said for box hedge or ficus which do lend themselves well to being shaped into balls - perhaps humans are just bringing about their artistic potential? I don't know, I guess these are things I have been thinking about since my arrival here through the portal!
Oh I see! Is that why you look like that? With the Ball head?
Yes, I am literally born of the balls. When I came through the portal I took on the form that best allowed me to fit in to the local area. As a shape-shifting inter-dimensional being this is my current form.
Well you look gorgeous! Tell us about your collaboration with Leila?
Thank you! Yes Leila! After we met my life completely changed. And so did hers, actually. She basically fell in love with me and I become the subject of her art - she initially made some sculptures inspired by me and a video work about me called Haegtesse. She was pretty obsessed! Not in a creepy way, we just had a lot to explore together. It was a mutual admiration society. She was doing her Masters of Contemporary Art at VCA and in her second year she took me to Venice and Egypt where we shot the video work which was to become part of her final year Installation called No Limit.
Wow! How was that for you?
Yes it was amazing! I really got to connect with my roots! We went to Villa Pisani, a late Baroque Italian residence with a huge hedge maze and large gardens of sculpted trees. Toorak is a kind of suburban simulacra of 17th Century Italian garden design which was exported all over Europe via the French and then to Australia via the English. The Italian pronouncement that “things planted should reflect the shape of things built” manifested in a great deal of topiary and geometric order and it’s interesting that many of the wealthy residents of Toorak have chosen to replicate this style, which is symbolic of the absolute power of the monarchs like Louis XIV who built the famous garden at Versailles. As a style, it is designed to show off wealth and power and celebrates human control over nature. These gardens cannot be maintained without teams of gardeners and in that sense are not possible without great wealth. So I really got to experience the origins of this design stye which not only informs the physical landscape of Toorak but which also defines my current form.
Although it’s a very weird thing to realise that the history of my birthplace in Toorak kind of belongs to another time and place. Like, it has little to do with with the actual land where its is located but has roots in the aristocracy of Europe.
Wow, yes that is pretty bizarre, in a sense this “implanting” both in a gardening and cultural sense relies on erasure of the actual native plants, history, people and culture of place…
Yes, this is the process of colonisation. It’s deeply disturbing and part of what makes it such an uncanny landscape in the Australian context. Leila and I have really felt the deep sense of incongruity and dissonance of this artificial landscape. It has a certain surreal quality. It’s funny because at the time Australia was settled, topiary was falling out of fashion.The poet Alexander Pope wrote a satiric piece decrying its overuse and more natural gardens became the fashion. But it’s never really gone away, trends keep returning. So we have, in the 21st century, this overwhelmingly uniform classical style dominating the garden design of Toorak and with particular emphasis on topiary box hedge balls. It fits in here because the grand architecture matches it so it has an internal coherence even if it’s fundamentally strange from the perspective of the native landscape on to which it is plonked, but what is more strange is when you go to an outer Melbourne suburb and the style is mimicked but only partially, and you have a strange mishmash of architecture and garden design. It’s what Robin Boyd talked about in “The Australian Ugliness”.
Yes it’s interesting, then the ball tree becomes a sign for high class design and denotes a sort of aspirational aesthetic. I’ve noticed that Leila has used and referenced plastic topiary balls a lot in her work and there are rumours that your head is not actually real foliage but is actually plastic. Is this true?
You know, it’s funny, as soon as someone becomes famous there are always people who want to say - look she had a nose job, or she has a plastic head…or whatever. I am just not going to dignify that question with an answer.
No that’s fair, I apologise for asking that. Lets talk about your trip to Egypt, I know that Leila is of Egyptian heritage on her father’s side. How was that trip for you?
Yes! It was amazing, of course. So while I got to explore my roots in Italy, Leila also got to explore hers in Egypt. She travelled there with her family for the first time and they did a very touristy group tour. It was hard to get some time away from the incessant sightseeing, but we managed to get out on a few occasions and do some shooting for the film. I was amazed to discover shaped ficus trees and hedges there as well…which I can only assume are a hangover from French and English colonisation. Anyway, I had some close encounters with these distant cousins who were actually rectangular in shape! Look I must say, I really identified with some of the gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology. Many of them had interesting heads and the sort of powers I have.
Yes I was going to say you could be viewed as a god/goddess of topiary and hedges!
Hahah yeah sure… they weren't that into hedges in Ancient Egypt so unfortunately there weren't any hieroglyphics of me at all. That would have been a treat to see!
I was struck by your outfit in the film No Limit, can you tell us about that?
Yeah sure! So my outfit evolved after having worked together a few times. As Leila and I got to know each other she started to see that I was not only a hedge-rider but also a Trickster - an archetype which appears in the mythology of cultures all over the world. Due to my connection with hedges and the European aristocracy she began thinking abut the idea of the court jester and the Harlequin figure and these figures informed her thinking about the costume design. So it was quite fitting that I ended up travelling to Venice where Arlequin (the Italian Harlequin) is a staple figure of Carnival. She had started making collages out of her photos from her urban derives and so one of these, which she titled No Limit, was digitally printed on to fabric and then this was made into leggings and a top. I also wore a tulle ruff in a mint green and leg warmers in a ribbed cotton of salmon pink.
That’s great! Yes I loved the connection between the labyrinthine streets of Venice and the Hedge labyrinth at Villa Pisani- there is is this idea of being lost in a maze which can be fun and playful but also scary and anxiety producing. You seem to be having a lot of fun in the locations you are in.
Yes, as an inter-dimensional being I am an expert of being in the unknown. When you go through a portal, you never really know what it’s going to be like on the other side. But a traditional labyrinth is interesting because, although you may feel lost, there is a design which ultimately leads to the centre. It’s a contained structure in which one can be trapped and lost but only because one can’t see the grand design when inside. For this reason it’s a great spiritual metaphor. The Situationists were really interested in the idea of a city being a huge labyrinthine playhouse with changing atmospheres and went about experimenting with the idea of mapping these atmospheres in the cities they inhabited, and Venice was one of these cities. It’s the perfect walking city because it has no cars! Artists like Leila, who are interested in walking, are really all about re-enchanting the banal and boring aspects of everyday life. Small acts of disruption to the anaesthetising effects of city life are a way to reclaim the freedom and joy that is taken away by living in a constructed world largely geared towards the processes of production and consumption. Play then becomes a form of resistance. How do we create a sense of adventure in our everyday life and in the ordinary worlds we inhabit daily? Leila feels the most free when she's lost in a new city, and she sees everything fresh, like the eyes of a child. I like to think I am helping her to stay connected to that feeling.
That’s wonderful, she is lucky to have you in her life! And I hear you’re a big fan of fashion? How did you come to know or appreciate clothes and style?
Living among the hedges of Toorak, I would often sojourn into the houses and watch people, reality TV is basically my life! And of course rich women have great clothes so I began trying them on and started styling for fun. The more I did this, the more creative I became and now I’m at a point where I really feel that fashion is a great way to play with identity. And, being an inter-dimensional shape-shifting trickster, you can be sure that I am not very easy to pin down into any one style. I’m what’s often called in the human world a “chameleon”. I think fashion is an art which allows us to create ourselves, it has a lot of power for better or worse. It is also just aesthetically rich and inspiring. I’m working on starting an Instagram account with my looks so watch this space!
Oh that’s so exciting! We can’t wait to see it. And I hope you share your beauty secrets too! Your foliage looks amazing!
Thank you. I’ve been working with a leading laboratory in Switzerland to develop a range of skincare products which use photosynthesis to regenerate skin cells. I have also sourced the oils from hedges in the finest gardens around the world and it’s an incredible product that can not only reduce fine lines and wrinkles but can assist in upward mobility and inter-dimensional travel.
That is super exciting, it sounds like a truly holistic product! Thank you so much for chatting with me today its been amazing.
Its been great to be here! Thank you.
