Close to Home The Everyday Sublime
Fiona Grady Linda Hemmersbach Joanna Kirk Minnie Lumai Hannah Luxton Kittey Malarvie Lindsay Malay Maria Teresa Ortoleva Mr R Peters Deborah Tchoudjinoff
Maria Teresa Ortoleva Dancing Behind My Eyelids Series, 2021 Single unique acrylic shapes 90 x 60 cm & 67 x 50 cm
Published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Close to Home’ by JGM Gallery 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY info@jgmgallery.com Catalogue Design: Hannah Luxton Photography: Benjamin Deakin ISBN 978-1-9196153-1-8 © 2021 JGM Gallery and the artists All rights reserved
Close to Home The Everyday Sublime 11 August - 25 September 2021
Fiona Grady Linda Hemmersbach Joanna Kirk Minnie Lumai Hannah Luxton Kittey Malarvie Lindsay Malay Maria Teresa Ortoleva Mr R Peters Deborah Tchoudjinoff
Foreword Our exhibition Close to Home was conceived during Lockdown in early 2020. Through Zoom video chats we were able to virtually visit each other’s studios, staying connected and supporting each other through these challenging times. United by the period of isolation, our gaze had been turned inwards. The everyday sublime and the power of imagination was being noticed, seen, experienced - and appreciated more deeply, by more people than ever. Yet we were fresh from recent adventures around America, an artist residency in remote Latvia, and a move to the Peak District, and were inspired by our memories. The impact of new terrains enabled us to reappraise our worlds and transcend the confines of our walls. The opportunity to present work alongside the Australian Aboriginal artists opened us to conversations about how we interpret our environments and visualise the metaphysical link between the subconscious mind and the world we inhabit. The resulting exhibition brings together thought-provoking artworks by 10 contemporary British and Australian Aboriginal artists. From literal interpretations such as the mapping of brainwaves and the use of found materials, to ideas of animism and the creation of metaphysical spaces, the artists offer alternative routes into defining our world. Despite living on opposite sides of the planet, we can draw common threads between each artist. From poetic beauty to pure abstraction, Close to Home seeks to offer a glimpse at the universal truths embedded in myth, spirituality and imagination. — Curators Fiona Grady, Linda Hemmersbach, Hannah Luxton
(Overleaf) Maria Teresa Ortoleva Dancing Behind My Eyelids (XI) (Superblink Blue), 2021 Single unique acrylic shape 147 x 177 cm
MARY TEXT
(Left) Fiona Grady, Waves IV (Right) Lindsay Malay, Little Fitzroy River Catchment
Introduction Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, JGM Gallery Director
It has been an honour to work with Hannah Luxton, Fiona Grady and Linda Hemmersbach - three practising artists and curators, to enable this extraordinary collection of work to be presented at JGM Gallery for their exhibition Close to Home. Many of these eclectic works were recently created either at home; in solitary studios, or in remote outback regions of Australia, where artists worldwide spent much time isolating during the historic, pandemic lockdowns of 2020/2021. The exhibition focuses on Home, where we work, eat and sleep; spending time alone and reflecting on who we are. This twenty-four-hour ‘alone life’ fundamentally affected our relationship with personal space. Home is a human need allowing us to feel grounded and connected. Home is an emotional attachment to a safe haven; a feeling of belonging is fundamentally human wherever or however a place called home manifests. Home resonates in a different way within Indigenous Australian culture. Australia’s First Nation people have a deep relationship with place, where ownership is not a house or apartment but rather a past, present and future connection to ‘Country’— this is home including all that surrounds people in the natural world — animate or inanimate, past, present and future Country is everything — it is home. Kittey Malarvie’s two Milkwater paintings are testament to her enduring connection to Country or home, located in the remote north Kimberley region. The three curators for Close to Home have presented fascinating relationships in visual language, of the selected works. As the wind ripples across the (milk)water in Kittey’s paintings, remembering Kittey is singing her Country while painting from memory, and thinking of her home. Then to contrast the markmaking brainwave work of Maria-Teresa Ortoleva’s Forest Bathing, a literal translation of how her mind experiences the relaxing sensation of walking through the woods where she lives. Fiona Grady’s Waves are an ambient series of reclaimed windows that blend the presence of light and shadow to hint at the unseen moments beyond the panes of glass. In all works in Close to Home, there is an extra element to challenge our emotions that goes way above and beyond just the physical artwork. Deborah Tchoudjinoff’s 38°N9°W meditates on the beauty and connection to the planet through the setting sun. Her sun is created with a delicate printing process to create the tiny dots. Deborah’s closeness to nature resonates beside the legendary, indigenous artist, the late Mr R. Peters Yariny Daam (Moon Dreaming Country). His work is truly a moving representation of a sacred site on his Country — his home. Mr R Peters’ Country is echoed by indigenous artist, Minnie Lumai’s Dumbaral — a fresh water spring, and vital sacred site on her County. Beside Minnie’s work, Hannah Luxton’s paintings challenge the language of minimalism through their maximalist gestures where she paints the natural landscape of places that profoundly affect her and are firmly etched in her memory. Hannah paints the same story many times in a different way and this certainly has synergy with the practice of many indigenous artists today. Linda Hemmersbach’s use of earthy palettes and blurred forms evolved from a strong emotional sense of being, and again allude to the natural world that surrounds her. Additionally, the hidden figures in Joanna Kirk’s intricate, finely detailed pastel works could suggest isolation, yet a deep relationship with nature. The vessel shaped lines of Kirk’s tree branches and roots may feel like a close relationship to Lindsay Malay’s paintings of Country – Bulgundi, in the north Kimberley region of Australia. Both artists tell stories of family and place through the confidence and singularity of their artistic hands. I would like to thank all the artists involved in Close to Home. It is marvellous to experience the exhibition where individual artists movingly convey a deep knowledge of self and place although, culturally, there are vast differences and thousands of miles and thousands of millennia apart in their respective story telling of Close to Home.
Joanna Kirk Acceptance, 2012 Pastel on paper on board, metal frame 196 x 122 x 8.5 cm
Hannah Luxton A Change in the Weather, 2020-21 Oil on ivory linen 95 x 110 cm
From Landscapes to Mindscapes by Mary George
Close to Home: The Everyday Sublime, the exhibition curated by artists Fiona Grady, Linda Hemmersbach and Hannah Luxton demands a nuanced response. Home is a charged word, Sublime is otherworldly, Close is relative and the Everyday was familiar. From this space of uncertainty and relearning, ten contemporary artists invite, interpret and intervene to coax the sublime into a way of being. Between the artists, it is a memory, a sight, a study, a doctrine, a play that allows to tread a fine line between survival and growth, the historical and the mythical, the collective and the individual, intimacy and isolation, fear and hope, image and thought, mind and soul. It is an interchangeable stance and in this fluidity, one finds the sublime. Fiona Grady and Deborah Tchoudjinoff invoke light in this attempt. Grady is a site-responsive artist, working with architecture and light to create colourful geometric window interventions. For Close to Home, the site is claimed. Georgian sash windows and glass panels, make room for mirrored vinyl elements to tease the play of light and movement. Retaining the presence of a window, these sculptural installations, coerce the internal and external worlds to collide and introduce the sublime into the mundane.
38° N 9°W brings a sunset home. Tchoudjinoff’s multi-media installation explores our fascination and understanding of sunsets. Chasing sunsets are totemic to travel, a sought after interlude amongst new sights and sounds that rings comfort and with it longing. Captured in Portugal in hues fuelled by the Atlantic Ocean and recreated in London during lockdown and closed borders, the installation has a poignant presence of a time and place out of reach. ‘If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes’, said Agnès Varda (explaining the title of a self-directed documentary about her life called The Beaches of Agnès). Many of the works in the exhibition are sites of this opening and there is a frightening intimacy in the viewing. ‘A heroic vulnerability’, as Joanna Kirk puts it. Kirk’s psychological landscapes are at once adventurous, disconcerting and empowering. Birthed by colour, marked by earth, the pastel paintings folds you into its intricate layers, depth and scale. Knotted, rooted, in the mazes and entanglements, Kirk inserts, insists, her children and herself, often as lone figures. Finding place within the mighty chaos that is nature and finding peace within the trials and triumphs that comes with motherhood, ageing and life. Being the enabler and protector become exercises of breaking down the psyche, exhorting the fears and exhausting the depths and yet, wanting to return. Then, there is the sublime that lets you rest, the sublime that sinks in, to be found within. Hannah Luxton calls on these imprints, encountered on the road, in the vastness and wildness of landscapes in the States and Iceland. In the craters, valleys and waterfalls she finds dreams, gems, star streams and guiding flames. With a distinct lightness, Luxton captures the inherent wisdom of nature and the cosmos within us, nudging the subtle pulse that breathes life into the void, feeding dreamers to be. Linda Hemmersbach opts for an elusive narrative, yet one that is grounded by land and body, informed by fluidity between the living and non-living, micro and macrocosm; and structured by the immediacy of knowing, feeling. Her abstract paintings in its forms and placement become extended landscapes of an expanded being. Maria Teresa Ortoleva’s research-based practice explains our intuitive need to connect with nature during times of crisis. Brainwaves recorded on long walks in forests and woodlands during lockdown reflect a correlation to readings when daydreaming or being creative, as seen by the prominence of alpha (resting) and beta (engaged) waves. The mindscapes as colourful sculptural installations become a reassuring presence of the body’s innate capacity to seek and repair.
Minnie Lumai, Lindsay Malay, Kitty Malarvie and Mr R Peters, paint with an authorship that is all encompassing. Among Aboriginal Australians, artists may only work with subjects to which they are entitled and this ownership is guided by The Dreaming. W.E.H Stanner, the Australian anthropologist, advised that ‘men of words’ who are an outsider do not try and explain The Dreaming, as it will be an exercise of error. From this space of error, I shall try. The Dreaming is an Aboriginal Australians’s outlook on the universe and man in a sacred no-time, where the law of life came to be. It is meant to be followed, preserved, carried with you to eternity. It is a sacred doctrine, a parallel world that the man is bound to for his very existence on his land. The Dreamings are stories of creation and the messenger, the ones that embody the story often take their rightful place on the land as a hill, river, rock, making sacred sites, so that the lessons learned are never forgotten. Stanner, for the outsider’s understanding, summarises it is as a cosmogony and a cosmology. To understand what home is for Lumai, Malay, Malarvie and Peters and how it might differ for the others, one cannot ignore Australia’s colonial history. Stanner in The Boyer Lectures: After the Dreaming (1968) explains, ‘No English words are good enough to give a sense of the links between an Aboriginal group and its homeland. Our word ‘home’, warm and suggestive though it be, does not match the Aboriginal word that may mean ‘camp’, ‘hearth’, ‘country’, ‘everlasting home’, ‘totem place’, ‘life source’, ‘spirit centre’ and much else all in one. Our word ‘land’ is too spare and meagre. We can now scarcely use it except with economic overtones unless we happened to be poets. To put our words home and land together into homeland is a little better but not much. A different tradition leaves us tongueless and earless towards this other world of meaning and significance. When we took what we call ‘land’ we took what to them meant hearth, home, the source and focus of life, and everlastingness of spirit. At the same time it left each local band bereft of an essential constant that made their plan and code of living intelligible.’ It is from this space of loss, relearning and staunchness; the Aboriginal artists carry their Country with them. The Dreaming makes its way onto a canvas in the iconography, unique to each Aboriginal artist. Without fail, the paintings reaffirm their sacred topography, the guiding ancestors and timeless memories that are inherent in their being. For Lumai, who is named after a freshwater spring, her mark making in bold earth tones, is about her Country and culture and where they travel to hunt and fish. Malay’s aerial landscapes in natural ochres, was born from a need to connect to his absent land in Kimberley. Malarvie’s fluid brush work in the Milkwater series meditates on the ethereal play of light and wind on the river water running across her Desert Country. Mr. R Peters, a senior Gija man, carries his detailed knowledge of the incorruptible traditions of his culture. There is an impression that in their insistence to live, carry and narrate tradition as it should be, will be and has always been, there is catharsis. Something like floating in Luxton’s Dreampool I imagine and how satiating is that thought. There are words that make you indulge and others make you divulge. It has pinched me to write an essay about home, when I have been, like many of us, separated from places and people that I think of as home. It was choice and circumstance, but with the pandemic and its restrictions, these positions have been blurred, demanded and succumbed to. The confusion of finding home in a fleeting moment, the ever-changing nature of this feeling, the fury of having to redefine it time and again, the relief of momentary acceptance have all been far from the sublime. And yet it has been a blessing to write these words, to realise these needs are not isolated, the chaos is shared, there are tricks in the box that have been tested, tools perked to perfection that helps to ride this wave. From landscapes to mindscapes, the artists in the exhibition come back to them, time and again, to find the everyday sublime. In the conscious acts of looking, feeling and being, there might be some respite. From them I learned, to be unapologetically present, is a cleanse that leaves you full. Mary George is an Independent Curator, Producer and Writer, working with artists and institutions to develop projects that have multi-layered social values. She is drawn to work that owns a poetic license to engage, activate and debate plural narratives in the public realm.
Fiona Grady For ‘Close to Home’ I’ve presented my recent sculptural window pieces. The work is a direct reference to the window installations that I’ve been creating for the past few years. The window frames are reclaimed Georgian sash windows that have been stripped from homes in London. By removing them from their context and presenting them as objects I aim to consider our relationship with windows in both their physical presence and the more romantic aspects of ‘looking’. They are dividers between the internal and exterior worlds – they filter light and protect us from the outside. Rooms without windows often feel oppressive and affect our sense of time. We don’t tend to think about the importance of light to uplift our mood.
My geometric interventions on the surface of the glass allow the window frames to act as dividers which inform the structure and proportions of the geometric shapes. The transparent coloured vinyl filter light casting shadows onto the walls – moving with the light of day and glowing in the dark. The glass surface and mirrored vinyl elements reflect the surroundings and create an altered sense of place. The pieces are often compared to stained glass, however my work doesn’t tell stories, it aims to heighten the unseen and overlooked moments in time.
Fiona Grady Waves IV, 2021 Vinyl on reclaimed windows 104 x 104 x 3.6 cm
Fiona Grady Waves I and II, 2021 Vinyl on reclaimed windows 80 x 49 x 4.5 cm (each)
Linda Hemmersbach
My paintings are inspired by my immediate surroundings and embodied experiences: landscapes, the atmosphere of a place, or the essence of a memory. I am fascinated by the rhythms, structures and cycles that underlie all living and non-living things. Within my paintings, I am searching for something elemental and primal, an essence of something once seen and felt. Recent works reflect on the relationship between body and land and the fluidity between inner and outer worlds, micro and macrocosm. I am interested in the way certain feelings lodge and locate themselves in the body, and the body as an organ of ‘knowing’. In combination with each other, the paintings form an elusive narrative, an extended landscape. Their interrelated placement refers to a certain sensibility of perceiving the world that highlights the acts of looking, feeling and remembering. Linda Hemmersbach Entfernte Beruehrung, 2021 Oil on aluminium, 48 x 14 cm
(Opposite) Linda Hemmersbach Atemhuelle, 2021 Oil on aluminium, 40 x 30 cm
(From left) Linda Hemmersbach, Minnie Lumai, Linda Hemmersbach, Joanna Kirk
Joanna Kirk My large pastel paintings are meant as psychological landscapes, rather than real ones. It is a deliberately intense experience for me to render these, applying layer upon layer of pastel, month after month. As a result, each part of the surface is as important to me as any other.
Acceptance contains my two children. This was a common theme running through all my work, until Self-Portrait and Floating Above Me in Bluest Air. It is obsessive. I think it is about looking over someone the whole time.
I realised, when I had children, that I was always going to be thinking about them, no matter how old they are. You are continually involved with someone else’s life. I find that fascinating. The children are woven into the landscapes, just as my experience of landscape is inextricable from my feelings for them. The process of creating these works is painstaking, as each takes three to four months of long days. This element in my work is a bit like mothering and bringing up small children — it is very laborious, sometimes boring, you are just building something up gradually, and a lot of hours are spent with them. Joanna Kirk Floating Above Me in Bluest Air (in process), 2018 Pastel on paper on board, metal frame, 139 x 196 x 8.5 cm
Joanna Kirk Floating Above Me in Bluest Air, 2018 Pastel on paper on board, metal frame 139 x 196 x 8.5 cm
Minnie Lumai Minnie Lumai is named after the freshwater Bubble Spring, which gently bubbles with the sound of her name - lu-mai, lu-mai, lu-mai. In Close to Home, her natural ochre painting Dumbaral depicts this spring, which is found in her traditional Country, Bubble Bubble, an area now part of the Keep River National Park
Photo: Waringarri Arts
in the Northern Territory, Australia. From the top of the painting the Bubble Spring flows down to the bottom towards the Keep River. The water hole in the middle is a good fishing spot called the Catfish Dreaming. ‘Minnie paints her traditional Country, as well as stories of growing up on nearby Newry Cattle Station, a place she rarely gets to visit these days. The introduction of the 1968 Pastoral Award changed the face of the Kimberley and the lives of Kimberley Aboriginal people. Minnie remembers the day she was told to leave Newry station. She didn’t realise it would be forever. Together with many members of her family, Minnie found herself displaced and came to the new town of Kununurra in search of work. She has lived here a long time now, but her country and its stories are still fresh in her memory. ‘Like many in the Kimberley, Minnie’s story is tinged with sadness. Never knowing her father, working from childhood unpaid, remembering her brother being taken away and never seeing him again. But there is also spirit and humour and above all, an enduring longing and love for Country.’ — Chris Griffiths, Minne Lumai’s son through kinsip law.
(Left) Linda Hemmersbach Nnotiges Immer, 2021 Oil on aluminium 30 x 20 cm
Minnie Lumai Dumbaral, 2017 Natural ochre on paper, framed 73.5 x 92.5 cm
Hannah Luxton I think of ‘home’ as the centre of oneself. It’s instinct, it’s what we long for, and what connects us to the earth. Through imagination (hopes, dreams, memories) we can transcend the confines of the walls that contain us; the confines of our physical world. My paintings are inspired by the geological sublime and the late 18th Century Romantic notion that a divine order resides within raw nature. Animistic currents run through my works, hinting towards a higher spiritual dimension. Animism intimates the attribution of a living soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena, and belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe. I find subjects by exploring the remote natural world - the sun, the moon, stars, mountain tops, waterfalls, craters and ice caverns.
Mountains recede into ‘the blue of distance’ (Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost), and flamelike spirits carry a message from the future or from another dimension. On the horizon these flames could be a mirage, there and not there, whilst other glistening gem-like forms sit at the base of the paintings. These curious objects are like the pot of treasure at the end of the rainbow that you’ll never reach (except in your dreams). (Left) Hannah Luxton The Visionaries, 2020-21 Oil on ivory linen 70 x 80 cm (Opposite) Hannah Luxton Dreampool (Rose), 2020 Oil on Ivory linen 100 x 80 cm
Kittey Ngyalgarri Malarvie Senior artist, Kittey Malarvie’s traditional Country is the desert landscape around Sturt Creek, south west of Kununurra and north of the Great Sandy Desert. Painting with natural earth pigments she creates red and yellow ochre, pinks and greys. She translates the language of her country into the gestures and utterances of international abstraction.
Photo: Waringarri Arts
In Malarvie’s evolving ‘Milkwater’ series she depicts a meditation on the multifaceted play of wind and golden sunlight on waterholes in the Australian desert in the wet season. At this time, the water that runs from upstream carries deposits from the rich clay rich soils, and turns the waterholes with a milky white. Malarvie paints the light catching the rippling water and the natural ochres in the earth underneath. The artist reveals layers of cultural meaning and connectedness; memories of a childhood playing with her sisters, recollections of family histories and during more recent visits, speaking with the rainbow serpent on a moonlit night from the water’s edge. (Overleaf, left) Hannah Luxton A Change in the Weather (detail)
(Overleaf, right) Lindsay Malay Little Fitzroy River Catchment (detail)
Kittey Malarvie Milkwater, 2014 Natural ochre on canvas 100 x 140 cm
Linda Hemmersbach Strahlenmasse, 2014 Oil on aluminium 25 x 27 cm
(From left) Lindsay Malay, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, Mr R Peters
Photo: Warmun Arts
Lindsay Malay In 2010 Lindsay Malay and his brother and four sisters won a 15 year campaign for the freehold ownership rights to their 2000 acres of homeland. This land is at the centre of Gija Country and is the highest point in the Kimberley ranges in the north of Western Australia. Lindsay Malay paints the stories of his ancestry, his family’s displacement and relationship to the land. The works in Close to Home depict his homeland, Bulgundi in the Kimberley, WA. He says ‘This Country is like a big classroom. There’s a lot that we can learn from it; and damming, mining or fracking isn’t the way ... when the Government gave some funds to some of the senior elders, we were lucky that some funds were used to buy and reclaim 2000 acres ... This place has been my family’s traditional homeland for many, many generations.’ He often paints the story of his Grandfather, Sally, an Afghan Aboriginal man who was separated from his family when he was five years old. Malay says ‘his mother had no choice but to leave him because he was half caste and the authorities were looking for him. She didn’t want him to be taken a long way from his country, so she left him where the mailman would find him. The mailman, a white man named Crowla, picked Sally up and took him to Gudbahilunn (Old Bedford Down Station). The Station manager took Sally in and raised him.’ When he became of age Sally sought out his family and they were reunited.
Lindsay Malay Bulgundi (Homeland), 2017 Natural ochre on canvas 120 x 90 cm
Maria Teresa Ortoleva My group of works in Close to Home respond to the Aboriginal tradition of Dreamings and songlines, and the idea of them being tracks. I look at the signature brainwaves (also tracks) of mental states we experience when walking through the landscape. Taking walks through woodlands and forests is a practice that became especially dear to me during the months of lockdown, with a specific interest in how it brings up personal stories, memories and images from within me that contribute, together with nature, to form a composite mental scape. The relevance of alpha and beta waves especially contributes to the occurence of fancy and daydreaming — activities that become more prominent as one ventures into nature, taking distance from the urban environment and productivity. The series Superblink also refers to the act of closing and opening one’s eyes; the sudden pattern of brainwaves when switching between looking outwards and looking inwards inside our mind. They play with colours and materials that echo both the industrial world of plastic and myths about the cosmos.
(Left) Maria Teresa Ortoleva Dreaming Drawing Machines (III), 2021 Mixed media and giclée print on Hahnemühle paper 33.2 x 42 cm
Maria Teresa Ortoleva Forest Bathing (Lockdown waves), 2021 Group of 6 unique Perspex shapes Approx. 70 x 130 x 50 cm
Mr R Peters Mr R Peters (1935 - 2020) was one of the greatest artists of his generation. ‘He was revered not only for his depiction and knowledge of Country, but also his unique understanding of systems of knowledge. He strove to create works ‘two-ways’, bridging the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous ways of being and learning’ says Warmun Arts. Painting with traditional red and yellow ochres and black charcoal, he is recognised for his distinctive, intricate curves mapping Country, and dark caves and rivers. Photo: Warmun Arts
Artist and curator Tony Oliver describes Mr Peters as ‘a deep-thinking artist who contemplated for days and, in some cases, years on how he is going to translate a particular story to canvas ... Peters has been known to sit on a chair from daybreak to sunset occasionally glancing at an empty canvas. The artists meditation period is the most intense part of his creative process and there is a feeling of relief on the completion of a painting when the internal world of memory has been translated into the physical. ‘Painting is a serious and often painful activity for the artist who takes the law of his Country seriously. Many of Peters’ paintings are homages to his grandfather and father who taught him the dreamings of his country as a young boy.’ — Tony Oliver, The Age, Australia Close to Home presents Peter’s 2015 painting Yariny Daam which means moon dreaming country. This is Peters’ ancestral country, which he once travelled to by helicopter with his nephew. Travelling this way allowed him to see his ‘beautiful country’ from above. This painting demonstrates his fascination with the clouds, which he described were ‘all coming together getting ready for rain’.
Mr R Peters Yariny Daam (Moon Dreaming Country), 2015 Natural ochre on canvas 100 x 100 cm
Deborah Tchoudjinoff Using multimedia and sculpture I create installations that explore different narratives of our relationship to nature. I am intrigued by humanlandscape entanglements and how the term ‘anthropocene’ brings about new forms of social, cultural, and spiritual practice.
38° N 9°W is inspired by the sunsets in Portugal where I spent time learning to surf. The scattering of sunlight created vibrant purple, pink, orange hues on the horizon — even more pronounced in Portugal’s location by the Atlantic Ocean. This piece explores our fascination and understanding of sunsets, and plays with the reconstruction of that light experience artificially, in the context of lockdown. The colours in the screenprint react to blue and red lights omitted by the custom-made light box. The result is a shifting, moving image that captures the passing experience of sundown.
Deborah Tchoudjinoff 38°N9°W, details
Deborah Tchoudjinoff 38°N9°W, 2021 Silkscreen in four colours on cotton 108 x 80 cm
Artist Biographies FIONA GRADY (b. 1984, Leeds, UK) studied at Wimbledon (UAL) MA Fine Art and Cardiff School of Art (UWIC) BA Fine Art. Solo exhibitions include The Art Station (2021, upcoming); University of Brighton (2019); The Eye Sees, Arles (2019); and Art in the Bar, Chapter Cardiff (2018). Group exhibitions include Drawing Room, London; Flowers Gallery, London; London Art Fair; JGM Gallery, London; Thames-side Gallery, London; Bonhams; Sid Motion Gallery, London and Dalla Rosa Gallery, London. She has created public commissions for St Charles Hospital, London for Nightingale Arts (2021); Art House Wakefield (2021); British Land, Broadgate, London (2018), Watts Gallery Artists’ Village, nr Guildford (2019), K+CAW and Kensington and Chelsea Council, Kensington High Street, London (2020-21) and Jubilee Place, Canary Wharf (2021). She was selected by the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust to receive a bursary and residency at the Mark Rothko Foundation in Daugavpils, Latvia (2019). Her works are held in public collections including Paul Smith Ltd, Tim Sayer Collection (bequeathed to Hepworth Wakefield); and various private collections across Europe, North America and New Zealand. She lives and works in London.
LINDA HEMMERSBACH (b. 1984 Cologne, Germany) studied at Central Saint Martins (2008) and Wimbledon College of Art (2010). She has exhibited across the UK and Europe, including The Continuous Image, Oceans Apart Gallery, Salford (2020); Talking Sense, Portico Library, Manchester (2020); Deep Time (solo), The Old Bank Residency, Manchester (2019), Vein (solo), Cass Art Manchester (2019); Paint Lounge, Sluice Exchange Berlin (2018); Nightswimming, LLE at Mission Gallery, Swansea, Wales (2018); BLANK LIONS, Bankley Gallery, Manchester (2018); P1: Filling Station, She’ll Project Space, Ski, Norway (2018); A Tale of Two Cities (Manchester to Leeds), Basement Arts Project, Leeds (2018); Menzel’s Foot, PS Mirabel, Manchester (2017); Shaping the Void II, Tannery Projects, London (2017); Shaping the Void, Bankley Gallery, Manchester (2016); John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2016); Duplicit, Snetha, Athens (2016); On Silent Mode, Project Four, Vienna (2015); So Many Constellations, The Mayors Parlour Gallery, London (2015).
JOANNA KIRK (Cheshire, UK) was educated at Goldsmiths and has shown widely across Europe including solo exhibitions at Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Künstlerhaus, Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, Austria; and Carino Campo Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium. Solo UK exhibitions include Blain|Southern, London; Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales; Modern Art Inc, London; Todd Gallery, London; Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. She is also in many important collections, including a large amount in the Murderme Collection; the Rayden Weiss Collection in Germany; the Saatchi Collection in London; Arts Council of Great Britain; Scottish Equitable; Contemporary Art Society, London; and Nordstern Insurance Company in Basel, Switzerland, plus many other private collections. She has been written about in many newspapers and publications, including The Guardian; New Statesman; Evening Standard; Time Out; Id Magazine; Herald Tribune; The Times; Sunday Times; Flash Art; City Limits; and Apollo.
MINNIE LUMAI (b.1941, East Kimberley, NT Australia) was inspired to start painting in her 60’s, after watching and learning from others in her community. Her work has won awards including the prestigious Bankwest and Kimberley Art Prizes (2015). Lumai is exhibted widely in Australia, France and the UK, with solo exhibitions at Seva Fragos Art in Perth, WA (2007, 2009). Her work is in many public and private collections in Australia, and the Australian High Commission, and private collections in the UK. HANNAH LUXTON (b. 1986, London, UK) works from her secluded studio within Epping Forest, on the border of London and Essex, UK. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2012) and Kingston University (2009). Luxton has completed many residencies and expeditions to locations such as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, Iceland and Mt Etna, Sicily. UK solo and group exhibitions include The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2021); Cloud Gallery (solo, 2020); Dentons Art Prize (2019); Lumen (2019); ArthouSE1 (2019); Drawing Room Gallery (2018); Blank 100 (solo, 2018); The Creekside Open, APT Gallery (2017); Lily Brooke Gallery (2016); The Barbican Arts Group Trust (solo, 2016). She has exhibited internationally at Midnight Gallery, LA USA (2018); Corridor Projects, Ohio, USA (2016); Boecker Contemporary, Heidelberg Germany (2016); Galleria M, Kolkata, India (2015) and the Fljotstunga Travel Farm, Iceland (2015). Luxton’s work has received support and recognition from Camden Council (2019), The Arts Council England (2018), Betty Malcolm Scholarship, UCL (2012), The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and the Lynn Foundation (2011).
Artist Biographies KITTEY NGYALGARRI MALARVIE (b.1939 at Brockman gold mine, near Halls Creek, Western Australia) exhibits regularly in Australia and at JGM Gallery, London. She has held solo exhibition’s in Mossenson Galleries, Melbourne, VIC, Australia (2013), RAFT Art Space, Alice Springs NT, Australia (2015) and JGM Gallery, London (2017). She has was highly commended in the City of Albany Art Prize (2015), and was a finalist in the Kimberley Art Award (2014), the Headland Art Award (2012, 2014) and the John Fries Memoral Prize (2012). Her works are held in museum collections around the world including the US, France and Australia.
LINDSAY MALAY (b. 1971, Wyndham, Western Australia) grew up on Bedford Downs Cattle Station and in Halls Creek, and now lives in the Warmun Community. His was featured as a debutant in a special exhibition When The Sky Fell - Legacies of the 1967 Referendum curated by Clothilde Bullen and held at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in 2017. Lindsay has been selected for the Salon des Refuses for the 2016 and 2019 Telstra NATSIAA, and nominated as the ‘Revealed’ artist at the Fremantle Art Centre in 2017. He was shortlisted as a finalist in the Hedland Art Awards in 2017 and 2018 and is featured as a Warmun artist in the landmark Desert River Sea exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA.
MARIA TERESA ORTOLEVA (b. 1990 Milan, Italy) is an artist based in London and currently a King’s Artist in Residence in the department of Informatics at King’s College London. She graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014 and since then she has been working in the UK and in Italy, where she is represented by the gallery Luca Tommasi. Selected exhibitions: Bocconi Art Gallery, Milian (2020), Luca Tommasi, Milan (2019; solo 2018), Test Space, Spike Island, Bristol (2018), Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017), Galleria San Fedele, Milan (2017), Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (solo, 2016). Other public presentations and engagement projects include: University of Milan Bicocca (2016), Drawing Room, London (2015), Wysing Arts Centre (Cambridge, 2014-2015). Her work has received recognition and support from: King’s College London (2019), European Regional Development Fund (London Creative Network, Space, 2019), Ventura Projects Special Award (2018), Premio Cairo (finalist 2017), Premio San Fedele (finalist, 2017), Leverhulme Trust (Wysing Arts Centre, 2013), Gay Clifford Award (UCL, 2012).
MR R PETERS (b.1935 - 2000, Springvale Station, Turkey Creek, Western Australia) was a senior law man and exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions across Australia. He was a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2015 and 2019. Three of his paintings were featured in Defying Empire, the exhibition of the 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia Canberra (2017), and later at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. In 2018, at age 84, Rusty painted a 5-metre triptych depicting his inimitable East Kimberley night starry skies over Darrajayin, his ancestral land. The painting was acquired by ARTBANK, an entity of the Australian Government specialised in loaning and rotating the works of Australian artists in private and public institutions. His work is in private and public collections around the world.
DEBORAH TCHOUDJINOFF (b.1985, Val-d’Oise, France) is a London based French/Mongolian visual artist. Deborah holds an MA Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art and BA from the University of the Arts Philadelphia. Her work has been shown as part of Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi) Art, Anthropology, and Mongol Futurism (2018) at Greengrassi gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum (2019) as part of London Design Festival, and at Space Studios. She has also participated as member of Multimedia Anthropology Lab at the Tate Exchange programme (2019) addressing concerns of power in virtual and physical spaces. She was one an artist in residence on a collaborative project based out of Arcade East (2018), Hackney culminating in an exhibition called Plumial Space, which recently was selected as Finalists for the YouFab Creative Awards.
We want to thank Jennifer for providing us with the opportunity to present work alongside the inspiring works by Australian Aboriginal Artists Kittey Malarvie, Minnie Lumai, Mr R Peters and Lindsday Malay. It’s wonderful to find a passionate advocate sharing her knowledge of these works created in the most remote parts of the world. Thank you to artists Joanna Kirk, Maria Teresa Ortoleva and Deborah Tchoudjinoff for their openness to sharing their processes of making art and personal stories. Thank you to Mary George for her thoughtful essay that explores each artists entry point into our ideas of place. - Curators Fiona Grady, Linda Hemmersbach, Hannah Luxton August, 2021
Published on the occasion of the exhibition by JGM Gallery 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY info@jgmgallery.com Catalogue Design: Hannah Luxton Photography: Benjamin Deakin ISBN 978-1-9196153-1-8 © 2021 JGM Gallery and the artists All rights reserved
Fiona Grady Waves I and II (detail) 2021 Vinyl on reclaimed windows 104 x 104 x 3.6 cm