NIGHT VISIONS
Trent Parke, Waratah Lahy, Andrew Browne, Mark Kimber, Dinni Kunoth Kemarre, Josie Kunoth Petyarre, Marc de Jong, Greg Weight, David Stephenson, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Dennis Nona, Jon Cattapan, Viv Miller
15 DECEMBER 2012 - 3 FEBRUARY 2013
NIGHT VISIONS Trent Parke, Waratah Lahy, Andrew Browne, Mark Kimber, Dinni Kunoth Kemarre, Josie Kunoth Petyarre, Marc de Jong, Greg Weight, David Stephenson, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Dennis Nona, Jon Cattapan, Viv Miller
The night is a vast and universal theme. As Gulumbu Yunupingu said so poetically; “the stars show us that we are all the same underneath. We can all look at these stars whichever sky we are looking at.” Night Visions is a beautiful exhibition which features works by contemporary Australian artists exploring various aspects of the night in an Australian landscape. It brings together an esteemed list of artists, a number of whom, most notably Jon Cattapan, Mark Kimber, Andrew Browne and Trent Parke, have explored the theme of night over consecutive series. front cover: Trent Parke Midnight self-portrait, Menindee Outback NSW series: Minutes to Midnight 2004 Pigment print, 30 x 45cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery
The exhibition gets to the very essence of night – capturing the charge of night; actual and metaphoric. It speaks of the dark and the shadows, but also of light; natural and artificial. It conjures the feeling of the night and how it triggers the imagination. The exhibition reflects the spaciousness of the night, and negotiates country from parts of the Northern Territory, to Melbourne and back up the Torres Strait. In its exclusive attention to the night, it also speaks about the absence of day.
This exhibition was conceived by the Gallery’s curator, Kezia Geddes. I congratulate her on her vision for this project. We would like to thank all the artists and lenders for supporting this exhibition. Thanks go to Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Griffith University Art Collection, Milani Gallery, Stills Gallery, The Australian Art Print Network, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Australian Galleries, Brenda May Gallery, The Mossenson Galleries, John Buckley Gallery and Neon Parc. Thanks also go to Aruna Pavithran, Amanda Hall and Nick Edwards. Additional thanks go to Amy Miller and Hobie Porter. Brett Adlington
Director, Lismore Regional Gallery
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Trent Parke Caravan Park, QLD series: Minutes to Midnight 2004, Gelatin silver print 30 x 45cm, courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery
ESSAY Kezia Geddes Curator, Lismore Regional Gallery
The other night I went walking. I was occupied by the fullness of a day, which had pushed me about from one task to the next. My mind recalled problems it had been confronted with several hours earlier. It ran them round in circles, not to solve them, but to tire them out. I anticipated a sleepless night, and pushed tentatively into the dark air outside.
The night wrapped around me, scented with wet bitumen and night jasmine. Far from being blinded by darkness, the light that was there selected a vision that was different from that of the day. Illuminated objects were thrown into focus and the space around them dropped off. I filled that space with possibilities and left the day behind.
Night Visions is an exhibition that examines what the night makes visible. At night, gaps in what we see are filled with atmosphere and forms from our imagination. In addition to this romantic vision of the night, the exhibition at times takes a more scientific view, to tell true stories outside what the naked eye can comprehend. It also pays heed to the rich references to the night sky in traditional Indigenous cultures. The artists in the exhibition present an image of the nocturnal landscape. Their works, divergent at some points and overlapping in others, embody a point of difference that enables us to embark on a fresh voyage of seeing. The dark
The cloak of night lets us relax the good behaviour the day requires. We can be more erratic, more outrageous, tragic, intoxicated. Trent Parke’s photographic series, Minutes to Midnight, was commenced in 2003 to present an image of outback Australia that we do not see in travel brochures. In contrast to the sunny official image of Australia, Parke’s version is menacing. Travelling 90,000 miles, he ventured into every nook and cranny he could access and found a dark country pushing blindly towards some sort of finality.
Trent Parke Light Bulb, Caravan Park, QLD series: Minutes to Midnight 2004 Gelatin silver print 30 x 45cm, courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery
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Waratah Lahy Nightlife (Pink People) 2008 oil on glass, 7 x 5.5 x 5.5cm courtesy of the artist and Brenda May Gallery
Emotional portraits of their time, the photographs present as fragments of dreams and nightmares that we piece together to locate a storyboard and disjointed narrative. They are linked by a disjuncture that the romantic perception of the Australian way of life and the more complex reality don’t match up. We see a small boy, his face illuminated by the white light of the television screen on which his eyes are firmly fixed; insects clinging to a light bulb; and a hills hoist with Australia’s national dress, the wife-beater tank, neatly pegged to it. They have a menacing, ghostly presence. The overall picture of the series holds an implication of things about to come undone. Waratah Lahy draws her imagery from suburban Australia and similarly to Parke, she uses the night to bring about a sense of disturbance. Her work represents the good life; with family, friends, booze and the suburban environment. Painted onto glasses we know well as vessels for our favourite bevies, Lahy makes a playful comment about Australian culture, and its unsteady priorities. As familiar as her imagery is, we are distinctly removed from it. Distorted according to the form of the glass, it is as though Lahy’s painted miniatures are caught in amber. With Andrew Browne’s painting Washington study #3, sensing the branches of a tree overhead, we feel the urge to duck and weave to find our way out of its shadows. The
Waratah Lahy Nightlife (Prunus) 2008 oil on glass, 12 x 8.5 x 8.5cm courtesy of the artist and Brenda May Gallery
Andrew Browne Washington study #3 2011 oil on linen, 75 x 198.5cm courtesy of the artist and Martin Browne Contemporary
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Mark Kimber South bound 2008 series: Edgeland Giclee print, 68 x 68cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery
painting conjures up childhood memories of when, upon venturing into the undergrowth too deeply, we realised the possibility that it might have powers unanticipated. Perhaps the bushes, speaking in their creaks and groans, might abduct or disorient us, preventing our escape towards the safely of sunlight. Tone is a powerful ingredient in emphasising a theatrical malice of night. A naked, tangled canopy shimmers silver against deep velvety blacks. Browne’s tree is bent and formed from his imagination. It has grown up from an amalgamation of images of real and invented places. Undeveloped terrains in the planned city of Melbourne make up a proportion of its genealogy. Artificial light
With electricity, we have knocked urban spaces back to a more comfortable mid-tone. This eases our fear of the dark but does not erase it. The unknown still clings to this halflight. Mark Kimber’s cityscapes in his Edgeland series are filled with other worldly light and colour. The poetry of twilight mixes with an electrical light, which offers shelter from the shadows. By day, these industrial sites are predictable, utterly ordinary. But the breath of night places them in the territory of the sublime – beautiful but uninhabitable.
Mark Kimber Car wash 2008 series: Edgeland Giclee print, 68 x 68cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery
Here appear blank stages, familiar on one hand, unreal and unsettling on the other.
In contrast to Kimber, Josie Kunoth Petyarre and Dinni Kunoth Kemarre present their experience of the city lights as exhilarating and joyous. When in 2007, these two artists travelled to Melbourne for the first time, Mossenson Galleries’ director, Diane Mossenson, was struck at how captivated they both were by this large metropolis. Returning home to their traditional lands on the remote outstation of Pungalindum, in Utopia in the Northern Territory, they embarked on a series of paintings inspired by what they saw.
In her painting of Melbourne at night, Josie Kunoth Petyarre applies a painterly logic that she learnt in Utopia, painting alongside her elders, including Emily Kngwarreye, Minnie Pwerle, Kathleen Petyarre and Gladdy Kemarre. The stories these great artists painted about were occupied with traditional themes. Now an elder herself, Kunoth Petyarre typically draws inspiration from her traditional knowledge, whilst integrating a landscape of her immediate circumstance. Melbourne at Night presents an enlightening image of the urban landscape as seen from a radically different cultural background. The pictorial language of the Western Desert painting tradition, such as the aerial, topographical rendering, dotting technique, and a loose and confident
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image left: Dinni Kunoth Kemarre Melbourne at night 2010 acrylic on linen, 151 x 111cm Private Collection, courtesy Mossenson Galleries image right: Marc de Jong Lightening 3 2011 nylon polymeade and phosphorescent acrylic on canvas, 142 x 191cm courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art
handling of paint, is applied to rendering this vibrant scene of the city at night.
Marc de Jong’s Lightening 3 takes in the city from similar heights. It depicts the artificial charge of the city, and its natural relation, lightning. Made from the artist’s own concoction of nylon polymeade (flock) and phosphorescent acrylic on canvas, the artwork itself emits light. Charged by exposure to light, it glows in low lumen whilst it still holds this memory of light. It succinctly translates the utter wonder of light and dark as actual entities. The stars
Not only is the sky in the desert free of light pollution, when the sun is very active in the day the night sky appears brighter. This luminosity comes from a natural airglow, which arises as the atoms and molecules in the air lose the solar energy charge they have absorbed by day. Greg Weight and David Stephenson both travelled to the desert in the centre of Australia to photograph the stars. Weight’s photographs subtly increase what would be possible to see with the naked eye. His images are firmly based in the discipline of non-manipulated photographs, but his camera and command of its settings permit incredible detail. The images remain simple and elegant, honouring the natural beauty of the sky without artifice or trickery.
Stephenson approaches his abstract star drawings with the same awe of his subject and the ancient light of the stars.
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Greg Weight East of Emily with Meteorite 2009 permanent pigment print on cotton rag paper, 54 x 80cm, courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries
image left: David Stephenson Star Drawing #1207 1996, type C photograph 107 x 107cm Collection of the Gold Coast City Gallery image right: Greg Weight Trephina Evening 2009 permanent pigment print on cotton rag paper 80 x 120cm courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries
He turns his lens upward and photographs the sky using long exposures. Then he has rotated his camera, and overlaid different exposures in the one image to create an overall pattern, or drawing. The stars and planets draw a little silver trail as they journey past his lens. In this way Stephenson integrates an astonishing characteristic of the sky that we could not possibly see.
Traditional stories in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures frequently make reference to the stars. Stories read from the nocturnal heavens are used to pass on cultural knowledge between families over generations. The appearance of the night sky at different times of year can also mark the changing seasons and guide harvesting and hunting. Gulumbu Yunupingu’s Ganyu (stars), provide a metaphor for interconnectedness of everything. “They give us bush tucker, they multiply food in the sea” Yunupingu explained, also pointing out that they connect us as people across cultures and race; “how can we be separate if we’re all under the same stars?”. Free people from all corners of the globe can rest under their broad canopy. We have all wondered at the timelessness and mystery of the night sky.
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Dennis Nona Baidam Aw Kuik 2010 cast bronze, pearl shell and fibre, 16 x 15 x 24cm courtesy of the artist and The Australian Art Print Network
The importance of the night sky is apparent in the Torres Strait, where vegetation, ecosystems, migration, and breeding seasons are strongly connected to the appearance of particular stars and constellations, and their position in the sky. As seafaring people, the people of the Torres Strait also used the night sky for navigation. Baidam, or the shark constellation, is a constellation of seven stars. It is a particularly important constellation in the Torres Strait, and one that frequently appears in the work of Dennis Nona. According to Nona; “The shark constellation rotates throughout the year. In February, when you see the stars beginning to shine, that’s the shark.” When the shark constellation flattens out across the horizon of New Guinea in mid-year it is time to plant particular vegetables and fruit. Nona identifies this constellation as one used for navigation on the trading routes between the Torres Strait Islands and New Guinea. With Baidam Aw Kuik he depicts Baidam in the seven inlaid pearl shell stars. Adorned and decorated skulls (acquired in battle) were used by the Torres Strait Islanders as a main item of currency in trade with their Papua New Guinean neighbours.
Jon Cattapan Local Night Study No. 1 2010 oil and acrylic on canvas 3 parts, 50 x 50cm each courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery
The spaces between In the 1940s, night vision devices were developed for military use, where seeing in the dark is an obvious tactical advantage. In 2008, Jon Cattapan took up a residency and commission through the Australian War Memorial at Timor Leste, where he explored the nature of night vision technology. Cattapan has been interested in night scenes and the nature of nocturnal light since the mid-1980s. Local Night Study No. 1 draws on his experience using night vision goggles, whilst also recalling ideas, imagery, and a sensitivity to paint that he has developed over the course of his career. Night vision goggles cut off the wearer’s peripheral field, creating a circular field of view. Cattapan applies this technological side-effect by using the circular vision field as a framing device and to imbue notions of surveillance. The left panel of Local Night Study No. 1 recalls this influence. The only figurative component of this work, it shows a city at night. Although the title implies that it might be ‘local’, the city is a conglomerate, standing in for a universal city. The other two panels of the triptych contain dots, like code or digital bleeps of information about the world. These could be slippages; visual static between an image and a blank screen. They speak about painterly concerns but equally draw the viewer into a deeper engagement due to their evasive content.
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Viv Miller Moonlight 2005 oil and enamel on canvas 102 x 81cm collection of Joyce Nissan courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc
Viv Miller is similarly concerned with the inadequacy of painting to accurately translate an image. Miller’s Moonlight is a lush romantic visualisation and a vague symbol of nothing in particular. A kind of deep emptiness. The painting radiates rigid pixels – like a digital image technology glitching to understand the ancient moonlight. Both Miller and Cattapan speak about this by making it impossible to attach a linear narrative to their paintings. Instead, they provide territory for contemplation. We attempt to assign content to these impalpable tendencies of their work but can only assign possibilities. As is the case when we cast our minds to the voids of night.
At night, the lack of clear vision does not obscure our sight – it allows us to see other things. Time is liquid, not punctuated by the stops and starts of the day. Things are stripped back to their basic elements, to a skeleton of information. It is as though the night, older and wisened by the lessons in the youth of day, finds an economy in its being. It is flattered by candlelight, but blankets those in need of refuge in the embrace of night.
Published by Lismore Regional Gallery
Lismore Regional Gallery staff
Catalogue credits:
131 Molseworth Street, Lismore NSW Australia 2480 T. 61(2) 6622 2209 E. artgallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au www.lismoregallery.org
Brett Adlington Kezia Geddes Amy Miller Shane Dunian Phoebe Hall Claudie Frock
The artworks and images are courtesy the artists and their galleries
ISBN 978-0-9804400-7-2
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image back page: Josie Kunoth Petyarre Melbourne at night 2008 acrylic on linen 121 x 121cm Private Collection courtesy Mossenson Galleries