CHRISTOPHER PEASE Lost in Translation 2022
CHRISTOPHER PEASE Lost in Translation
The Nyoongar people of the southwestern corner of this island continent have always been, and still are, the custodians of the land. Before and after colonisation, they helped maintain the land in the through fire management and sustainable fishing and farming methods. They also had an intimate and innate understanding of the rivers and streams as well as the wetlands that form the filters to the vast river system of the south west.
Water is the Ngoorp (blood) of the land that feeds the Koort (heart). The Boodjar (land) is the body and the body cannot live without the blood. If blood cannot flow to one part of the body it will die. If the blood is poisoned the body will die. Many areas of the south-west are losing habitat to introduced animals and alien plants that are disrupting or destroying the local water systems. Dunsborough Lakes is a suburb which is built almost entirely on reclaimed wetlands. It’s an area that acted as a giant eco-system for fish, amphibians and birds as well as a filtration system for the water returning to the ocean.
The traditional way of learning about Country is through song and dance, which ties lyrics and actions to the landscape. Songs can describe the geography of an area, the seasons, the plants and animals. I have incorporated traditional dance into many of my previous paintings for this reason; to show the relationship between culture, song and dance and the land. The paintings in this current body of work, Lost in Translation, represent the misinterpretation of the land since the time of colonisation, where places, rivers and country are changed with disregard for the traditional way of caring for boodjar, culture and historical meaning.
Christopher Pease 2021
Christopher Pease Retail Centre 2021 oil on canvas 83x150cm
Retail Centre shows three Nyoongar men decorated with traditional markings perform the emu dance - a well known Nyoongar dance describing the activities of the emu, as well as the traditional way of hunting the large native flightless bird.
$38,000 AUD The landscape is Rocky Point, a beautiful area in Cape Naturaliste park in the south west corner. The men dance in front of a floorplan for a large retail centre, symbolic of the ever increasing pressure on the natural landscape as it becomes developed as a destination for housing, tourism and shopping.
Handshake 2 is a continuation of Pease’s Robert Dale Panorama series around which he developed an entire exhibition at large scale in 2018. This work places sharper focus on a key interaction in the 1834 print, which depicts a British soldier and a Minang man engaged in a cordial handshake. The handshake in Dale’s work, while depicted as a seemingly mutual agreement like many drawings and prints of the time, raises questions of legitimacy and motive. In the background looms a target, fragmented by Nyoongar body paint markings. Pease plays on this ill-defined notion of intent and invites us to question this potent symbol and its meaning: is it a Jasper Johns target (Pease’s artistic muse), a campfire, waterhole, a logo for a retail store or a target which pinpoints a person or animal to overcome? Like the target the original Robert Dale print, Pease asks us: “does it speak the truth or is it propaganda?”
Christopher Pease Handshake 2 2021 oil on canvas 190x120cm $ 68,000 AUD
Handshake 2, 2021 190x120cm
The Uranie was a French Frigate that was captained by Louis de Freycinet. On board was draughtsman Alphonse Pellion and Jacques Arago who provided a visual and written record of camp at Shark Bay in 1818. The expedition also captured one of the earliest exchanges between the French and the Malgana people. This is part of an image from MarieAlexandre Duparc (printmaker in Paris) from the expedition. A copy of this work is in the collection of the
Art Gallery of Western Australia. Like many prints from this expedition it is filled with theatrics and edits. The image has been pushed further by placing pine trees not unlike those found in early Chinese paintings. The target motive crosses through the foreground and middle ground and is intersected with body paint markings of the Minang people.
Christopher Pease Target 4 2021 oil on canvas 74x140cm $36,000 AUD
Targets (2020-2021) is based upon Frederick Garling Jr’s 1827 drawing of Fraser’s Point and describes much of the surrounding country. The original drawing shows a small section of the river with two central figures- a man holding a rifle and a woman (possibly Elizabeth, Frederick’s wife). Pease has expanded this small landscape into a vast panorama of the area, based on his research, knowledge, historical documents and reference material. Embedded into the foreground are new objects, including a vacant camp with Mia
Mia (shelter), as well as colony of white rabbits. These interventions accomplish two aims: they mark the land as the ancestral country of the Nyoongar and show the impact of introduced species. Hovering over the river is a repeating motif of concentric circles, which can indicate a waterhole or campfire site depending on the context. They reflect the influence of Jasper Johns on Pease’s practice, in particular his ‘Target’ series painted in the mid-1950s. The rings also identify an object or site of attention or attack.
This triptych was the foundation ‘study’ for a major rooftop commission at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2021. The larger work has been reproduced at 34m, back lit and overlaid with further patterning and imagery.
Christopher Pease Targets 2019-20 oil on canvas 60x422cm $ 60,000 AUD
Doondalup 1 and Doondalup 2 refer to a story from the dreamtime passed down through the generations.
In the story, there was a tall spirit man (Mulka) and a tall spirit woman (Charnok). The Charnok woman had long white hair down. In the darkness of the dreamtime, the spirit woman saw a small pair of eyes looking up at her. She picked up this little being and did not not want to part with it, so she placed it in her long white hair where the child was held tight. As the Charnock woman travelled, she collected more and more spirit children and took them to her man ‘Mulka’ who lived in a cave near Hyden. In her travels, as she crossed a large valley that the Waugal created, which we now know as the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River) she left footprints along the way. forming lakes. The elders of the children decided to stop the Charnock woman from taking so many children so they turned themselves into Koolbardie (magpie) and chased her all over the south-west. At Hyden she jumped on to Kartakitch (Wave Rock) and was lifted into the sky. Her hair became the Milky Way and the stars in the sky represent the children she collected.
Christopher Pease Doondalup 2021 oil on canvas 90x70cm $22,000 AUD
Christopher Pease Doondalup 2 2021 oil on canvas 90x70cm $22,000 AUD
Christopher Pease Whadjuk Boodjar 2021 oil on canvas 74x110cm
George Nash painted a landscape of Perth in 1846, expressing the vista from the top of Kings Park, looking east. In the foreground of his ‘genre’ painting is a group of unknown figures (bottom right).
$ 29,000 AUD
Overlaid on this landscape is a secondary work, Summer Wooded Landscape with a Castle by Berend Cornelis Koekkoek. Painted in 1851, this work was one of many he painted during the latter part of his career after he moved to Germany. Floating in the midground is a target of concentric circles,
whilst floating in the foreground (not depicted here, but in the completed work) is the Wrlitj (eagle), Pease’s family totem, and a symbol of protection and strength.
Reference images in Chris Pease’s studio
Gallerysmith 170-174 Abbotsford St, North Melbourne | Victoria 3051 | marita@gallerysmith.com.au www.gallerysmith.com.au