In a place of Albert Namatjira Gums, red sand and wide open spaces, Emma Stuart’s landscapes are unusual. Stuart has called this body of work The Blue Hour. Where others have come to the desert and been struck by its majestic ochres, sharp light and hard lines Stuart’s work is more subtle. She writes, “The Blue Hour is the time when we transition from night to day or day to night. The twilight and the dawn. And with it comes a shift in energy and consciousness.” It describes how place resonates with subjectivity and vice versa. What’s immediately striking is the blue palette that dominates her painting and a keen sense of claustrophobia from cropped compositions, which allude to Stuart’s process of working from photographs to recreate scenes she has visited, or more aptly, experienced. Trunks of gums crisscross the field of view and light floods in illuminating buffel grass from undisclosed, almost supernatural, sources. In one painting you are confronted with an uncomfortably close view of a fork in an ancient river gum. It draws you in to contemplative state and there is a heightened sense of intruding on someone’s personal space as limbs become fleshy and nuanced, intimately detailed.
Even Stuart’s seascapes seem to capture this closed-in quality where calm waves and flat horizons are weighted down heavily by tumultuous clouds and the air is thick with an ambient tension. Her landscapes take on a hyper-real quality where trees, waves and clouds become figurative and emotional in their expressions and there is the sense of a deep allegory at play in the imagery. They are emotional landscapes, where colour and light are augmented through the process of painting to suggest the mechanics of what it is to experience place and position one self in it – how we draw insight and spirituality from our environment and imbue it with meaning. As Stuart describes this experience of place, “the deep human history and current cultural complex are just as much a part of this energy as its physical landscape.”
Alexandra Hullah | April 2015
Coordinator | ‘Watch This Space Gallery and Artist Run Initiative’ | Alice Springs
Gallery Open Saturday November 26 from 6-8pm
Day/Night – Tue Nov 15 – Sat Nov 26 – Window Viewing *
* Window Viewing – All works can be seen from the shop frontage (& by appointment)
Andrew Gritscher approaches his artistic practice in a way that reflects his formal training in Chinese medicine. Allegorically, in his work and in his medical practice, physical frameworks and parameters are understood and establish form however it is through deeper exploration and reflection that he achieves a truer understanding of what is taking place in the individual and, in relation to the sociological and philosophical messages imbedded in his artistic work, in his response to the world around us. His works are, as with his patients, comprised of a sum of parts rather than individual marks or motifs that are unrelated and independent of each other.
‘Two themes that I keep coming back to whilst making these works are – Thinking which sits outside of logic, a different way to thinking, an intuition, simply an understanding of things and secondly our true nature. Throughout making some of these pictures I have been thinking about Zen Koans. One of the pictures directly references a Koan, another (the largest work) is my own Koan. So below, for an artist’s statement, is an old Koan – it relates for me very well to a number of the pictures and how I think as well as the title of the show.
“The Ch’uan Teng Lu records an encounter between Tao-hsin and the sage Fa-yung, who lived in a lonely temple on Mount Niu-t’ou, and was so holy that birds used to bring him offerings as flowers. As the two men were talking, a wild animal roared close by, and Tao-hsin jumped. Fa-yung commented, “I see it is still with you!” -referring, of course, to the instinctive “passion” of fright. Shortly afterwards, while he was for a moment unobserved, Tao-hsin wrote the Chinese character for “Buddha” on the rock where Fa-yung was accustomed to sit. When Fa-yung returned to sit down again, he saw the sacred Name and hesitated to sit. “I see,” said Tao-hsin, “it is still with you!” At this remark Fa-yung was fully awakened… and the birds never brought any more flowers.”‘ – Andrew Gritscher | October 2016
In Fiat, Mike Portley explores themes relating to the control of currency and the impact of economies on the natural world. The ubiquitous concept of fiat currency or legal tender is in itself a a token symbol for a stored unit of value; and historically relates to items or resources of value taken from the natural world. The extrapolation of the financial system, through time, has distorted the intrinsic symbolism or currency so that the unit itself has more value than the real wealth around us. Portley asks questions about the flawed logic of the monetary system and its disconnection from natural systems.
Portley infuses Egyptian symbols and Judeo-Christian mysticism to highlight the evolution and manipulation of economies via the ruling elites to the common citizen. The use of specific symbology and financial jargon are used to juxtapose their financial context with the natural world. Surviving ancient currencies such as gold and silver are used to allude to the past and to times where currency was finite and relative in value to items of trade. The analogy of flight is used consistently in the works to communicate ideals of freedom and a flight from the counter-intuitive systems that underpin many of our current problems.
Sweet is a presentation of works on paper from the 1990’s and early 2000’s by Andrew Sibley in the second half of his career when his approach to making art shifted to a lighter emotive tone than in his early, more turbulent, years. This presentation of 8 works on paper show Sibley’s interest in exploring the inextricable highs and lows of the human condition in a more loving, compassionate, and vivacious way.
Sibley had an illustrious career as an artist for over six decades exhibiting at many of Australia’s most prestigious commercial galleries from 1961 until 2015. His work has been included in innumerable exhibitions including two significant surveys of his work at Monash University in 2003 and Melbourne University in 1976. Sibley was also a senior lecturer of painting at RMIT (1967-1987) and then Monash University (1990-1999).
Jacob Hoerner Galleries represents the Estate of Andrew Sibley and is committed to continuing to exhibit Sibley’s work and in turn research, and add original scholarship to, the existing records of his long and important career.
John Lennox was a central figure in a circle of artists, collectors and socialites that existed concurrently alongside the narrower, more canonised, academic art establishment of Melbourne during the 1970’s and 1980’s. As is evident in his more decorative work Lennox was a formally trained painter however when he deferred from painting idyllic garden or bush scenes a more existential side that reflected the nature of his eventual isolation came to the fore.
The three main paintings in Key works are representative of some of Lennox’ most iconic imagery. The repetition of his own self portrait or that of his enigmatic wife, amidst a litter of symbolic items, staged in a cemetery with his and her ultra cool disposition – or at times a non-emotive stare – combine to create a mysterious documentation of the artist and his perception of the world around him. These three key works are all interrelated and follow a narrative that looks at life and it’s inevitable intersection with death, there are references to close relationships and love, there is even a certain paranormal imbued in the scenes we are presented with.
Renewed interest in Lennox’ career comes at a time when many academics and critics across the world have once again focussed their attention on the place of outsiders in art history – those that are under-discovered – those artists that on occasion are some of the best contributers to grand narratives in art. Lennox was without doubt an enigmatic, alluring and charismatic painter that sought to show beauty as well as delve deep into the psyche of a world more akin to a surreal dream.
“The title of show is Digital Self. my thinking behind this title is that we all exist in this reality constantly looking to the future for all the answers to our self-made problems and dilemmas ….as we are becoming more and more reliant on tech our phones and internet always at our fingertips forevermore changing the way we engage with reality or our world, with huge computer systems constantly monitoring recording and analyzing our every thought and feel conveyed through social media, we are becoming assimilated becoming more the same by the way of subtle global influences manipulated for a skewed idealism by global capitalism. the technology will soon be a part of us perhaps our next leap in human evolution.
in my smaller works I am recreating myself using the same pieces but in a different way each time, cutting up my own catalogs from my last exhibition using the central image from this painting and collaging them back together to recreate this image of self same same but different. with an external shroud that hold the collaged image within indicating a more fuller self….also reflecting the symbolism of the key hole….opening the doorway to beyond. these images also bare a resemblance of religious iconography art. the outer background created by gluing finally crushed siltstone taken from drilling samples across Victoria, these natural pigments create a sensation of groundedness with there earthy textures….the works are all assimilated by their use of the same materials but all retain a semblance of individuality with in their identicallity, hopefully this subtle sense of individuality within us all will always create a variant in our computer predicted reality of the future…always someone thinking unpredictably….
the inner image I suppose can be related to the ideas around constructed spirituality as technology as our religion a dichotomy between printed reality and printed reality reconstructed re invented through creativity of the human mind….these works for me are imbued with an almost voodoo black magic mysticism cutting up images of former works recreating ideas discovered through making the original….making reflections of self…..then infusing the ground up rock that I drill into for daily work to create art…..my savior and destroyer…”
Rius Carson | August 2016
‘Gillian Warden’s latest paintings in Lacuna are a testament to her commitment to the process of painting. Daily, she embarks on a journey in her studio as if from scratch. No mark is sacred. Paint stripper, orbital sander and encroaching opaque paint are used to prune, truncate and shape her previous work. “These paintings are the result of struggle,” she says. But what is revealed by this “beautiful battle” are a series of organic, delicately filigreed shapes and patterns in luminescent colours. Branching forms float, unfurl and delicately wave. Marine gardens and igneous landscapes come to mind.
All shapes allude to the wonder of the natural world. The paintings arrive somewhere between heaven and earth. Interstellar nebulae juxtapose the microscopic. Iridescent wings flutter and settle. Their blood circulations remain anchored to their rocky supports, prevented from final rupture by a superimposed cocoon of downy, opaque over-painting.
Her dedication to the medium of paint, her excitement at revelations and new combinations, is underpinned by a series of exploratory devices. She begins by mixing colours on a large, flat palette from which she creates a monoprint directly on to the board or canvas. Sometimes paper is used to transfer these globular, textured shapes. Later prints are lighter and more delicate; the texture becomes a branching, lacy network.
Nothing is considered immiscible in this alchemist’s cauldron. Colours are combined and layered with translucent overprints of inks or paints, both water soluble and oil based, further brush marks are added or overlaid to reveal or conceal these illusions. The magic is in what we are enabled to see. The multiple experiments of this venerable pursuit are documented in a series of jewel-like small works on board, finely finished and displayed en masse.
These paintings began life during Gillian’s Master of Fine Art at RMIT, entitled Facing Defacing and completed in 2012. The works were part of her process of leaving figuration behind in order to explore a more formless approach to painting. This interim space has been productive and rewarding. Who knows what will happen as the emergent shapes and techniques branch away from their supports. The developments will continue to be worth watching.’
Dr Caroline Thew
MBBS FRACP PhD MVA MFA
