Primitive Learning by Filippo – Artist Talk
February 3, 2026
Loose Footings
James Carey & Jen Berean
Exhibition
After Ruins
Artist
James Carey & Jen Berean
Written by
Krisna Sudharma
Reimagining Ubud’s loose urban boundaries, Loose Footings blurs the line between function and form—inviting public interaction, reinterpretation, and reflection on the ever-shifting nature of city space.
–
Jen Berean and James Carey’s Loose Footings is a sculptural response to Ubud’s temporary, often ad hoc street bollard infrastructure. Bollards, as urban tools, are traditionally used to define boundaries and thresholds, separating pedestrians and vehicles while regulating movement between spaces. However, unlike the permanent or fixed bollards commonly found in Australia, Ubud’s bollards are ‘loose,’ allowing individuals to move and interact with them freely. This characteristic inspired Berean and Carey to create a series of twelve sculptures across two locations—Nonfrasa and DESA—where they recently undertook an artist residency. These sculptures, while functioning as street bollards, invite engagement and participation, redefining the relationship between public art and urban infrastructure.
Loose Footings draws on the existing street bollards of Ubud but subtly reimagines their forms, materialities, and weight. The sculptures are constructed from rhomboidal modules, characterized by bilateral symmetry and a deliberate, intentional design. Linking the sculptures are handmade chains, crafted from found and existing materials, adding an almost jewelry-like element to the otherwise brutalist aesthetic of the steel footings. The steel posts are interchangeable, granting agency to those who encounter and choose to interact with the work. Softening the rigid structures are intermittent screen prints that hang from the posts, featuring distorted images of a pool of water taken by the artists. These prints highlight the use of water in the creation process, subtly embedding the material’s presence into the work.
The work’s title, Loose Footings, speaks to its conceptual underpinnings. The term “footings” refers to the foundational elements of a structure, yet here they are intentionally destabilized, reflecting the transient nature of Ubud’s urban fabric. This tension between permanence and impermanence is a recurring theme in Berean and Carey’s practice, as they interrogate the intersections of labor, environmental, cultural, and political systems within the built environment. By recontextualizing bollards as both functional tools and participatory sculptures, the artists challenge conventional notions of public art, inviting a dialogue about accessibility, agency, and the fluidity of boundaries in urban design.
The work resonates with artists like Constantin Brancusi, stands apart from the “isms” of modern art, embodying a unique approach to form and essence. Brancusi’s philosophy, encapsulated in his statement, “Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things,” speaks to his centripetal process of paring down forms to their most economical and essential expressions. His Endless Column (1918) exemplifies this approach, evolving through years of experimentation and refinement to achieve a formal and iconographic purity. This reductionist ethos resonates with Jen Berean and James Carey’s Loose Footings, where the intentional design of rhomboidal modules and bilateral symmetry reflects a similar pursuit of clarity and essence. Similarly, Tony Smith’s Free Ride (1962) enriches this dialogue through his lifelong quest to seize upon the defining framework of “wholeness,” bridging the gap between natural and artificial forms. Smith’s sculptures, characterized by implicit anthropomorphism and a vital internal impulse, sought to infuse geometric abstraction with a sense of life and organic connection. This tension between the rigid and the organic parallels Loose Footings, where the brutalist geometry of the steel footings is softened by the handmade chains and screen prints, creating a dynamic interplay between structure and fluidity.
In contrast, Jean Arp’s philosophy of “concretion” emphasizes an additive, centrifugal process, where art grows organically from a nucleus. Arp described concretion as “the result of a process of crystallization,” where forms emerge from the interplay of natural elements—earth, stars, stone, plants, animals, and humans. This approach, which values the multiplication of poetic associations over the purified essence of a motif, offers a counterpoint to Brancusi’s reductionism. While Arp’s work does not directly resonate with Loose Footings, his philosophy of organic growth and improvisation provides a conceptual framework for understanding the participatory and modular nature of Berean and Carey’s sculptures, which invite interaction and reinterpretation.
Through Loose Footings, Jen Berean and James Carey create a nuanced commentary on the intersections of art, infrastructure, and public space. Their work invites us to reconsider the systems that shape our urban environments, offering a sculptural response that is both functional and poetic, rooted in the material and conceptual complexities of the built world.
