Exhibition floor talk | Crossroads
Loading...
Output Type
Other
Publication Title
Exhibition floor talk | Crossroads
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
School
School of Arts and Humanities; ECU Galleries
Description
Artists | Elise BLUMANN | Brian BLANCHFLOWER | Susanna CASTLEDEN | Jo DARBYSHIRE | Julie DOWLING | Eva FERNANDEZ | Thomas HOAREAU | Dianne JONES | Connie PETRILLO | Gregory PRYOR | Joanna LAMB | Brian MCKAY | Bryant MCDIVEN | Howard TAYLOR | Rover THOMAS
Curators | Ted SNELL, Danielle FUSCO | CROSSROADS
Exhibition Statement | The beginning of each new work is a form of Faustian bargain for every artist. It is a point of departure. Every project is full of potential, ripe with possibility, and always shrouded by the fear of impending failure. It is a leap into the void, a crossroads where ideas are put on the line, challenges are identified, and the resulting fission of risk instantly becomes the engine for creative engagement. Like the famous American Blues singer Robert Johnson falling down on his knees in his song CrossRoad, it is an energised moment of decision.
When Rover Thomas rolled out a canvas on the parched red Kimberley earth in 1994 and began to stain it with resin, the image that emerged with the addition of white ochre dots was revolutionary. Suffused with his life experience as a stockman and informed by his cultural knowledge and spiritual connection to Country, he constructed a new conceptual framework for depicting the land. Crossroads, an etching made from that original painting, depicts two intersecting tracks, drawn with a reductive simplicity that fuses instantly into memory. Images of the unique Western Australian landscape frequently recur in the selection of works acquired for the ECU art collection.
Elise Blumann first encountered the tortured forms of the Melaleucas along the foreshore of the Swan River when she and her husband Atrnold arrived in Western Australia in the 1930s after fleeing Hitler’s Germany. The trees registered their battle with the strong southerly winds in every twist and iteration of their trunks and branches. Set in the glistening white sand and low scrub, they were the perfect metaphor for her life and the state of the world when she was at a crossroads in her own life. Painting on card, initially in situ, she responded to their rhythmic choreography. In the soft pinks, ochres, chromatic greys, and Prussian blue accents she inherited from her Modernist training in Europe, she found a succinct equivalent for the rich subtleties of the local vegetation.
For Howard Taylor, each encounter with the bush was a transcendent experience that presented an opportunity to rethink his approach to documenting the landscape. Tree and Sky is a wing-like monolith painted in a modulated tonal flow from dark to light using a variety of different hues of blue. It is the equivalence for looking up to the sky through and around the form of a tree. As Taylor explains. “the physical business of seeing and the more subjective one of feeling” are combined, each viewer “…improves (their) perception by cultivating the looking thing”.
Artist’s record what they see and the City of Perth as it developed was another recurring theme in the ECU Collection. During the 1990s, Thomas Hoareau documented the changes to the City of Perth. Based at Gotham Studios on the corner of James and William Streets. He watched the destruction of significant buildings and the ebb and flow of people that changed the character of the inner-city environment. Horeau painted what he saw around him, offering a recognisable point of reference for his audience. Perth was at a crossroads, and Hoareau depicted it with incisive clarity to encourage them to register what was happening to their environment.
Additional Information
Exhibition dates: 14 April - 12 May 2022 | Floor Talk: 11 May 2022 12.30 - 1.30pm