2018
Cover: Viv Miller, Looped Landscape 2017 (detail), pencil and gouache on paper, Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne
FOREWORD The Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s cornerstone biennial exhibition National Works on Paper (NWOP) continues to attract an extraordinary number of high calibre entries. Australian artists from each state and territory, working and living in remote communities, regional and city locations including Indulkana in South Australia and Mao Island in Torres Strait are represented in the ‘final cut’. Selecting and judging was arduous, stimulating and highly informative. We received over 1000 entries, which is a substantial quantity of works to be considered. We had many prolonged and deeply respectful discussions around what a work on paper actually is – increasingly more challenging as digital and new technologies, often incorporating aspects of traditional processes, are utilised and activated by many artists. Thank you to all the participating artists. The 2018 National Works on Paper is a miscellany of works from figurative to non-figurative; life size to scaled down; emulsified, ripped, burned, sculpted and altered; pierced, drawn, painted or printed. The exhibition is a microcosm of contemporary artistic practice across wide ranging genres, featuring emerging, mid-career and established artists. Decades of support for this exhibition from the Mornington Peninsula Shire has guaranteed the NWOP’s continuation and its increasing relevance and profile. We acknowledge the Shire and Beleura - The Tallis Foundation for supporting the $15,000 major acquisitive award; the Ursula Hoff Institute for supporting the $3500 Emerging Artist Award, proudly supporting Post Graduate excellence in Visual Arts and Music; and the Friends of MPRG for their incredible financial support. Thank you to my co-judges Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Kyla McFarlane, Curator of Academic Programs (Research), The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. A special thanks also to Kyla for writing the insightful essay for this catalogue. And thank you to our MPRG team for all their great work behind the scenes. Jane Alexander, MPRG Director 3
ESSAY Dr Kyla McFarlane Curator of Academic Programs (Research), The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne In a world where the glow of glass screens on our networked devices are a daily reminder that the digital now pervades the fabric of our lives, the tactile, fibrous quality of paper endures as a medium for many an art practice. Versatile, pliable, delicate and tough, in its diverse uses in drawing and painting, collage, construction, mixed media, printmaking and publishing, paper serves as both support for myriad forms of mark making and as material for sculptural forms. The 2018 National Works on Paper (NWOP) exhibition brings together multiple uses of paper by finalists from across Australia, whose work exemplifies pluralistic approaches to this centuries-old medium, through both technical and conceptual innovation and finely honed skills. Watercolour and paper are long-term partners. In Ntaria (Hermannsburg), western Aranda, they have a history that began with the work of Albert Namatjira and has evolved into the Hermannsburg school, now spanning three generations of artists. Continuing this strong practice through his father Ruben, Hubert Pareroultja paints his country in Lukaria (West MacDonnell Ranges, NT), 2017, in an experimental circular form, allowing us to view the white-barked trees and russet-hued ranges from multiple perspectives, as if seen through a telescopic lens. Sam Cranstoun has added a conceptual dimension to his watercolour on paper, recasting this centuries-old medium into a contemporary framework. Diana, Princess of Wales (made using water from the Diana Memorial Fountain, Hyde Park London), 2018, is exactly as its title says. Cranstoun has painted a portrait of his subject from an existing photograph onto modest graph paper, giving the work a pixelated quality, as if it were captured in low resolution. This tension between highly circulated imagery and the specificity of place in the water used to mix his colours is both poignant and gently iconoclastic. 4
In photography, the paper required for artists to print with chemicals such as silver is becoming scarcer but recent years have seen a revival in hand-printing and experimentation in analogue processes where the qualities of the printing paper are central to the resulting image. Collage has also had a resurgence, with artists mining both the history of the photographic image as well as their own. In Black Ships, 2016 – hand-printed in her darkroom onto fibre-based paper with gelatin silver – Jane Brown presents her collaged landscapes revealing the shimmering, highly detailed qualities attainable in this analogue technique. In The Forgotten Wars, 2017, James Tylor and Laura Wills have collaborated to combine their photographic and drawing practices, communicating the impact of Australia’s Frontier Wars through their perspectives of Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians respectively. Wills’s coloured-pencil drawings overlay the landscapes depicted in Tylor’s photographs with signs of colonial settlement, survey and strategy as if invading Tylor’s representation of country. Framed by kulata (spears), Mumu Mike Williams’s Tjukurpa Kunpu Nyangatja, 2016, tea, ink and oil pastel work asserts a forceful statement in his Pitjantjatjara language against the desecration and damage of his Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands through road upgrades and mining. Equally, Robert Fielding’s Manta Miil-Miilpa, 2018, expresses the importance of ongoing custodianship and care of the land. Fielding’s work also has the graphic impact of a political poster, asserting its message through bold text and image, red earth passing through cupped hands. The hot-iron piercings that traverse this pigment print on cotton rag paper pertains to the passing of knowledge through generations. ‘With this technique,’ Fielding writes in his artist’s statement, ‘I am paying tribute to the great artists who came before me and who were famous for burning intricate designs onto wooden artefacts with a hot wire.’ Max Ernst’s surrealist device of frottage (rubbing) originated from his fascination with the grain on a wooden floor and its capacity to suggest to him other forms and subjects. Many decades later, Susanna Castleden’s 1:1 Gangway, 2016, exploits the indexical relationship inherent in this technique, as well as its imaginative possibilities. Her rubbing of a cruise ship’s gangway records its exact scale, but if we put our minds to the number of hours it would take to complete the labour of this work, our thoughts might turn to the wiling away of days on a holiday cruise. 5
In the museum, works on paper require great care in order to preserve their longevity from the effects of light and air. Mark Hislop has created a series of finely rendered drawings of French pilot Raymonde de Laroche that dissolve into the ether. This incremental abstraction seems to reveal that the act of looking intently may paradoxically result in a subject disappearing before our eyes. Hislop’s work uses a photographic source, a practice that Riley Payne also employs in his equally meticulous pencil on paper drawing, Sirening 2, 2017. Where Hislop examines an intimate photograph of de Laroche at the time of her death, Payne pays close attention to the imagery of stock photography, creating a composition that is a departure into an oblique conjunction of photorealist landscape and linear form. Visually seductive, the drawing also confounds us through this mysterious pairing. Blind tactics, 2018, by Open Spatial Workshop and Cameron Robbins’s Monmar 3 ½ hrs sea breeze jan 25 2018, 2018, both employ chance in the production of their works on paper, and materially record natural forces. Robbins set up a ‘wind-powered drawing instrument’ of his own making to document a summer breeze on the Mornington Peninsula over a number of hours. The resulting ink on paper work surprisingly depicts a circular ring, with some lines delightfully taking flight from the centre to the edge of the paper support. Conversely, the scattered marks on Blind tactics are the result of ‘charcoal projectiles’ colliding with their paper support. Cardboard is a ready-made element in Peter Atkins’s In Mono (remixed), 2017, which is produced from deconstructed record album covers collected by the artist for their shared feature of an orange circular form in their design. Atkins draws these into a serial abstraction by removing all other elements from the covers and disguising them with cardboard. The cardboard itself has varied material qualities and subtle changes in hue and geometric shape, bringing complexity to the simplicity of the recurring orange discs. We can trace the practice of artists’ books back several centuries, from illuminated medieval manuscripts to William Blake’s 18th century Songs of Innocence and of Experience and 20th century icons such as Edward Ruscha’s Twentysix gasoline stations, 1963. In TOWLA, 2017, Deanna Hitti employs the format of the book to reflect on her family’s recent migrant history. Through its screenprinted pages 6
with instructions for backgammon in Arabic and English (the letters for each exchanged into the other so that Arabic is recorded in Latin and the English in Arabic) she documents her exchange with her Lebanese father through childhood game playing. In contrast, Kylie Stillman uses paperback books as sculptural material, while also playing with the limits of language. In Just C, 2017, she stacks them into a pile, carves ‘POLITICALLY CORRECT’ into their sides, then ‘correcting’ herself with a loose, carved scrawl that erases the political. Despite its apparently fun-filled, circus-poster aesthetic, TextaQueen’s Flame within the Frame, 2018, also cuts to the core of political correctness in its satirical take on ‘the progressive arts institution’ and its relationship to minority artists to perform ‘diversity without adversity’. TextaQueen has been inspired by posters and books from the State Library of Victoria’s collection for this work, which is part of a series. The bold, linear qualities of linocut lend a similarly graphic quality to Brian Robinson’s A concoction of elixirs, 2018. Robinson’s references are culturally diverse, trans-historical and often mythical. In this still life, ancient Greek amphora sit amongst 21st century coffee pods, representations of the Campbell’s Tomato Soup can made famous by Andy Warhol, cocktails and scientific devices full of bubbling potions. Behind, the symbol for Marvel’s Hulk (himself a being who struggles with superhuman strength) is joined by traditional motifs from the artist’s Torres Strait Island heritage. In combining the wisdom and powers of all his influences, perhaps Robinson might find the secret to a long, healthy life? Whether it be constructed, collaged, marked or multiplied, the recurring use of paper brings artists with diverse approaches together in this National Works on Paper prize, which provides an intriguing overview of current works on paper practice in Australia. The seventeen artists touched upon here are just a handful of the sixty-three finalists shortlisted for the exhibition. They demonstrate some of the ways artists continue to push this medium, which continues to be a most accommodating host for the expression of robust and beautiful ideas.
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THE WORKS
10
Raymond Arnold
Elsewhere World – Expanded Field Panorama 2017 (detail)
Peter Atkins
In Mono (remixed) 2017
11
12
Alec Baker
Ngura (Country) 2016
Martin Bell
Australian Landscapes 2018 2018
13
14
Ray Besserdin
Endeavour’s Hands 2017
Solomon Booth
Dhangal Urgnu Tadiak 2017
15
16
David Bosun
Kubilaw Ulakal 2017
Godwin Bradbeer
Imago – 1000 Tears 2018
17
18
Kate Briscoe
Rockface Emma Gorge 2018
Jane Brown
Black Ships 2016
19
20
Jon Campbell
It’s a world full of lying bastards 2018
Susanna Castleden
1:1 Gangway 2016 (detail)
21
22
Danica Chappell
Shallow Shadow #1 & #2 2016
Hua Cun Chen
Extended Skin 2017
23
24 Sam Cranstoun
Diana, Princess of Wales (made using water from the Diana Memorial Fountain, Hyde Park London) 2018
Lesley Duxbury
Cloud Study: after Constable, after Cozens 2017
25
26
Robert Fielding
Manta Miil-Miilpa 2018
David Frazer
Slow Boat 2016
27
28
Ian Friend
Angel Song I 2017
Dana Harris
greenspace 2018
29
30
Katherine Hattam
He Forgot How to Speak English 2018
Pei Pei He
In the Crowd 2017 (detail)
31
32
Kendal Heyes
Foundering Boat 2017
Mark Hislop
it is to the air that I dedicate myself 2018 (detail)
33
34
Deanna Hitti
TOWLA 2017
Anna Hoyle
Anxious Sponges 2018
35
36
Natalya Hughes
Woman I, Woman II, Woman IV 2018 (detail)
Alana Hunt
Cups of nun chai 2017
37
38
Locust Jones
Back to the dark ages II 2016
Jennifer Joseph
No thank you, perhaps some other time 2016
39
40
Nonggirrnga Marawili
Baratjula – Lightning and the Rock 2017
Brian Martin
Methexical Countryscape: Kamilaroi # 11 2017
41
42
Georgie Mattingley
I Had to Lift the Calf 2018
Mish Meijers
Speculative Feminist Fictions (diptych) 2016
43
44
Viv Miller
Looped Landscape 2017 (detail)
Helen Mueller
Deficit 2016
45
46
John Nixon
A Portrait of a Member of The Donkey’s Tail (Parts 1–7) 2017 (detail)
Open Spatial Workshop
Blind tactics 2018
47
48
Elena Papanikolakis
The stripped body at exercise in sunlight. All of the heat without half-tones 2017
Louise Paramor
Boomtown #5 2016
49
50
Hubert Pareroultja
Lukaria (West MacDonnell Ranges, NT) 2017
Jemima Parker
There and back again 2016
51
52
Riley Payne
Sirening 2 2017
Dan Price
Untitled (untitled) 2016
53
54
Lisa Reid
Alison (Life Drawing Model) 2017
Louise Rippert
Black Bindu 2016
55
56
Cameron Robbins
Monmar 3 ½ hrs sea breeze jan 25 2018 2018
Brian Robinson
A concoction of elixirs 2018
57
58
Elissa Sampson
#Balloon 2017
Emily Sandrussi
Arctic Biosphere (Volume 14), from the series ‘Volumes’ 2016
59
60
Geoff Sargeant
The Silk Road Bamiyan 1970 – Buddha’s Lament 2001 2016
Jo Scicluna
Where We Come From #1 & #2 (diptych) 2016
61
62
Liz Shreeve
Out of Darkness (triptych) 2018
William Smeets
Sutton Grange 2018
63
64
Kylie Stillman
Just C 2017
TextaQueen
Flame within the Frame 2018
65
66
James Tylor and Laura Wills
The Forgotten Wars 2017 (detail)
Trent Walter
Island Island 2018
67
68
Rosie Weiss
Two Banksias Holding On 2018
Mumu Mike Williams
Tjukurpa Kunpu Nyangatja 2016
69
70
Puna Yanima
Antara 2018
Yvonne Zago
Caladenia macrostylis in a landscape vase 2018
71
72
Tianli Zu
Nüwa is Pregnant III 2018
THE ARTISTS
RAYMOND ARNOLD
PETER ATKINS
ALEC BAKER
b. 1950, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Queenstown, Tasmania
b. 1963, Murrurundi, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1932, Shirley Well, South Australia Lives and works in Indulkana, South Australia Language: Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara
Elsewhere World – Expanded Field Panorama 2017
In Mono (remixed) 2017
etching 80.0 x 533.0 cm (sheet)
cardboard and paper on cardboard (deconstructed record albums) 8 panels, each 30.0 x 30.0 cm
I grew up around the Mornington Peninsula. Places like Frankston and Hastings are very familiar names from my childhood. My relatives still live at Pearcedale. I delivered truckloads of building materials on the Peninsula during the early seventies while working to supplement my art school study. I was a regular visitor to Alan McCulloch’s gallery at Mornington and more often now the peninsula landscape flows below the aircraft on approach to Melbourne from Tasmania.
My practice is underpinned by the appropriation of ready-made abstract forms and designs that exist in the urban environment. In Mono (remixed) is a work consisting of a series of old, worn, bargain bin record albums with various orange circles and spots printed on their front covers that I collected over a number of months. I have carefully deconstructed this thematic grouping, removing all the existing text and incidental images, leaving only the orange spots, floating over fields of discoloured white cardboard.
I live out my days in the western mountains in Queenstown. I’m interested in the landscape of mining ruin that surrounds the valley town. My etching series is an attempt to find some sort of hope within the trashed mountain valley. Seamus Heaney’s poem A Herbal from his final publication gave me a literary handle on what I was trying to do with my etchings: ‘Where can it be found again, An elsewhere world, beyond Maps and atlases’.
Represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide
Ngura (Country) 2016 ink on paper 78.0 x 107.0 cm (sheet)
This is my painting about my country. I’ve been painting for a long time now. When I work, I think about how to make it a good painting, a strong one. Sometimes I’m just thinking from memory about all the country I’ve been at and the stories I have. My paintings are strong and hold all the culture from my country. I started Iwantja Arts; that’s my art centre. It’s for the whole community. I’m so proud of this art centre and all the people painting here today. We’ve been teaching Anangu the stories we have from our culture, and also the knowledge of our stockmen days – about riding horses and country. Sometimes we think, who’s going to run this place when we go away? Anangu need to be strong and learn the lessons about country, and be strong to look after this place. Represented by Iwantja Arts, South Australia and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
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MARTIN BELL
RAY BESSERDIN
SOLOMON BOOTH
b. 1978, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Snake Valley, Victoria
b. 1956, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Australian Landscapes 2018 2018
Endeavour’s Hands 2017
ink on paper 224.0 x 228.0 cm
sculptured paper (sheet formed, not cast) 76.0 x 154.0 cm
b. 1981, Thursday Island, Torres Strait, Queensland Lives and works on Moa Island, Torres Strait, Queensland Language: Kala Lagaw Ya
I have continued my enquiry into plein air landscape drawing combined with studio work, consisting of drawing still life toys, imagined fantasy buildings and studies of pieces of furniture and decorative arts. It interests me to combine the reality of the landscape with surreal figures that inhabit our suburbs and beyond. The toys as models work to be archetypes from classical and mythical contexts and the landscapes orientate the social reference. Furniture and decorative arts studies dress the sets and act as cultural anchors.
I love the expressiveness of hands and use them here to metaphorically express the similarity between the challenges of our endeavours and the flow of rivers. Life is never a straightforward path. We reach forward but are faced with continual obstacles. To overcome them and reach our destination, we decide directions, learn what works and what doesn’t, try this way, then that way, reach for help or offer ours to others in turn. Persistence prevailing, incrementally we find our way.
Combining aspects of Bosch, Dürer and Piranesi with Heysen, Streeton and Glover, the end work is to be read like an Australian film with its surreal and symbolic structure; The Cars That Ate Paris and Young Einstein come to mind. The fabric design of the French Toile de Jouy and the prints of the Arts and Crafts are some points of reference that help to inform the overall rhythm of the work.
Water flows seemingly gently, without impact, yet with time can cut its way through mountains. The visual metaphor of strength and determination from something so fluid as a river inevitably reaching its destination, meandering around obstacles, offers both poignant inspiration and a parable to remember. Here water is represented by the delicate, mere 8 gsm Japanese, handmade translucent tissue.
Represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 76
Dhangal Urgnu Tadiak 2017 linocut print 190.0 x 124.0 cm
Inspired by the beautiful surroundings of my island home, my works draw upon Torres Strait and Melanesian influences. Our ancestors were master craftsmen creating ceremonial and other utilitarian objects from wood. This is why I find linocut ideal, because it has a sense of displaying one’s articulate style of carving. The ideas and themes that I produce in my artwork are based on the rich lifestyle and livelihood of our ancestors and the myths and legends and beliefs of our forefathers and mothers. This is where I feel inspired to be a part of recording my people’s cultural heritage visually. I am proud to showcase this knowledge to the world. Dhangal Urgnu Tadiak relates to the herd of dugongs moving in between feeding grounds when the tide is right. Represented by Moa Arts, Mua Island, Torres Strait
DAVID BOSUN
GODWIN BRADBEER
KATE BRISCOE
b. 1973, Thursday Island, Torres Strait, Queensland Lives and works on Moa Island, Torres Strait, Queensland Language: Kala Lagaw Ya
b. 1950, Dunedin, New Zealand; arrived Australia, 1995 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1944, Corby, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1968 Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales
Kubilaw Ulakal 2017
Imago – 1000 Tears 2018
Rockface Emma Gorge 2018
chinagraph, pastel and acrylic medium 152.0 x 128.0 cm
collage, monoprint, acrylic, sand on paper 5.5 x 55.5 cm
Imago – 1000 Tears and other drawings from the ‘Imago’ series are meditations on the subject of the human face and the phenomenon of our existence and consciousness. They are influenced by the aesthetic of calm restraint in the classical art of several cultures. Though the face is not disrupted by extremity of expression, the immense sadness of our continuing circumstances of hurt and loss are given an abstracted description by veiling the work with a curtain of 1000 tears.
This work is from a series that continues my exploration of the geology of The Kimberley region in Western Australia, focusing here on Emma Gorge, off the Gibb River Road. This is a steep gorge whose walls display the many layers of rock formations from different periods of geological time. Where these rocks have broken off and tumbled into the gorge, a mixture of forms, shapes and textures can be seen jumbled together. I want these works to give a visual sensation of geological time as well as the extraordinary colours and textures of rocks in this particular place.
linocut print 240.0 x 124.0 cm
Coming from a rich tradition of carvers and seafaring people, I celebrate in my art the beauty and bounty of the coral sea, the sea creatures that sustain the reef, and their teachings. Kubilaw Ulakal is Kala Lagaw Ya dialect of the Malulilgal people of the Zenadh Kes meaning dugong herd at night. During the darkness of the night, the dugong herd communicates and moves in one accord with the celestial monthly phases, currents and tidal changes. The dugong is led by a dominant male, who determines the safety and wellbeing of his herd. Similarly, in our region, a dominant male leader heads each community and clan group, elected by status and cultural birthright. As life adapts and people change, the interests of the individual have taken over. Like the dugong, we must return to moving together in one positive direction, led by our cultural and political leader.
Represented by James Makin Gallery, Melbourne
Represented by Art Atrium Gallery, Sydney
Represented by Moa Arts, Mua Island, Torres Strait
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JANE BROWN
JON CAMPBELL
SUSANNA CASTLEDEN
b. 1967, Al Ahmadi, Kuwait; arrived Australia, 1973 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1961, Belfast, Northern Ireland; arrived Australia, 1964 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1968, London, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1977 Lives and works in Fremantle, Western Australia
Black Ships 2016
It’s a world full of lying bastards 2018
1:1 Gangway 2016
handprinted, fibre-based, silver gelatin print 34.0 x 130.0 cm
Black Ships is a collaged triptych of separate but interconnecting landscapes. Photographed with film and handprinted on fibre-based paper, the darkroom process creates a transcendental style – delicate tonal ranges evoke pencil on paper as the landscape becomes abstracted through collage. Photographed in the Japanese Alps, the work dramatises aspects of the physical environment as symbolic gesture: pathways, bridges, journeys, seasonal change, nature and decay. This inspires thinking about past and present, the enduring versus the ephemeral – notions central to Japanese ideas and aesthetics. The title is a translation of the word kurofone, an idiom used by the Japanese for western vessels approaching their shores, symbolising the end of Japan’s traditional isolationist status and ensuing modernisation. The expression dates back to the 16th century, but more particularly to the 1852–54 gunboat diplomacy of Admiral Perry’s fleet whose ships trailed black smoke on the horizon. 78
watercolour, synthetic polymer paint and pencil on paper 38.5 x 66.5 cm
My art has been mainly text based for the past twenty years. It’s an ongoing exploration of the visual potential of words through the use of vernacular language and popular culture. In recent paintings and works on paper, snippets of conversation, argument and dialogue are transformed using the conventions of formal abstraction and graphic design to both confuse the original function of the words and phrases and elevate them to a pictorial object. The negative spaces around the letters become positive. The viewer becomes part of the work as they unravel the text and say the phrase: ‘It’s a world full of lying bastards’. Represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
gesso on paper maps 298.5 x 1562.0 cm
This work is a rubbing of a 15-metre cruise ship gangway; it arises from a curiosity about the ways in which we come to encounter the world. In 1:1 Gangway, the somewhat dubious role of maps as accurate records of places is called into question through the more direct method of frottage. Borges’s and Eco’s ruminations on the impossibility of drawing a 1:1 map of a territory provided a conceptual puzzle to consider while engaging in the slow, methodical task of recording a 1:1 imprint of an object associated with travel. Further to this, the repeatability of frottage is dependent upon the changeability of the world – as the gangway moved between cruise ship visits, along with the conditions at the port, so too did the prints. Though frottage suggests repeatability, it does so imperfectly, thus revealing an interlacing of mimesis and mutability between print and the world.
DANICA CHAPPELL
HUA CUN CHEN
SAM CRANSTOUN
b. 1972, Ballarat, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1969, Fujian, China; arrived Australia, 2005 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1987, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Shallow Shadow #1 & #2 2016 colour carbon prints on yupo paper 35.0 x 26.0 cm (each sheet)
Extended Skin 2017 gouache on paper 252.0 x 60.0 cm
Diana, Princess of Wales (made using water from the Diana Memorial Fountain, Hyde Park London) 2018 watercolour on grid paper 29.7 x 21.0 cm
Riffing off photography’s history and embedded in constructivist methodology, my interests are drawn to the malleability of latency. In search of an object, I find inspiration in the peripheries of process and apply a cameraless activity to various darkroom-based methods. Shallow Shadow uses the 1860’s Colour Carbon printing process in combination with scanned, colour slide film exposed to light, and constructed compositions. In this manner I continue to explore dislocation of time, tactility and depth, found when blending process, form and colour.
As the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan explains: ‘clothing, as an extension of the skin, helps to store and to channel energy; can be seen both as a heat-control mechanism and as a means of denying the self socially’. In this work, I interpreted an uninterrupted construction that exists in the overlap between the quotidian realm and the distinctive consciousness. I questioned the boundaries of what is ‘real’ and what is ‘virtual’. Dense and overlapping composition instilled with compulsion and uncertainty prompts questions about the human life.
This work continues my exploration of how image culture shapes a collective understanding of history. Drawing from the myriad images that have shaped our understanding of the 20th and 21st centuries, I interrogate how accurately mass media communicates a sense of historical truth. Through the process of pixelation, these images are reduced to their purest formal properties. For this work, part of an ongoing series of pixelated watercolours, I have focused on an image of Diana, Princess of Wales – a figure whose life was continuously documented via photography. By using water from the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in London, I am also interested in exploring the role of the artist as pilgrim/ tourist, and what it means to visit historically sensitive sites in a perhaps futile attempt to validate our own engagement/ relationship with certain historical narratives. Represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne 79
LESLEY DUXBURY
ROBERT FIELDING
DAVID FRAZER
b. 1950, Accrington, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1983 Lives and works in Briagolong, Victoria
b. 1969, Port Augusta, South Australia Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia Language: Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Arrernte
b. 1966 Foster, Victoria Lives and works in Castlemaine, Victoria
Cloud Study: after Constable, after Cozens 2017 paper, drafting film, silver ink 90.0 x 160.0 cm
Manta Miil-Miilpa 2018
Clouds have fascinated artists since time immemorial, and none more so than the quintessential English artist John Constable. Soon after completing his extraordinary series of cloud studies painted on Hampstead Heath in London in the early 1820s, Constable was introduced to the engravings of schematic skies by Alexander Cozens. These engravings were intended to aid students add the sky to a landscape painting. Each one was accompanied by an explanatory text. Constable took on board Cozen’s observations, made his own copies of the engravings and also transcribed the text as a way to reinforce his own observations. In a contemporary context, my work Cloud Study: after Constable, after Cozens takes this process a step further by providing the texts only, leaving space for a viewer to ‘complete’ the image of the cloud in each study, the texts becoming visible or fading depending on the light falling on them in the manner of clouds.
Manta Miil-Miilpa (sacred earth) to me signifies unity for all by embracing the boundaries and duties of one’s birthrights towards our manta. Manta is significant and passes through our lives from the moment we are born to the moment we become part of it again. Being born out of this manta makes us custodians and carers of it. It is our birthright and duty as First Nations to hold the Tjukurpa strong through stories, song and dance to attest to our sovereignty. From our hands we pass it on to the hands of our children and to the generations to follow to take care of manta. The text is made up of piercings I have burnt through the paper with a hot iron. With this technique I am paying tribute to the great artists who came before me and who were famous for burning intricate designs onto wooden artefacts with a hot wire.
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Slow Boat 2016 linocut 120.0 x 180.0 cm
pigment print on paper with pierced/burnt alterations 150.0 x 120.0 cm
Represented by Mimili Maku Arts, APY Lands, South Australia
Slow Boat is my largest print to date. It took four months of painstaking work to complete. I start on one section, drawing bits as I go along. The image grows organically, which is risky as you can’t change the composition once it’s done but it does allow for exciting things to happen. The old boat rooted in a dry Australian landscape inspires ambiguity and mystery. Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne
IAN FRIEND
DANA HARRIS
KATHERINE HATTAM
b. 1951, Eastbourne, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1985 Lives and works in Ipswich, Queensland
b. 1964, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1950, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Angel Song I 2017
greenspace 2018
Indian ink, gouache, watercolour, crayon, casein and pigment on paper 56.0 x 152.0 cm
ink, phosphorescent vinyl, tracing paper 95.0 x 80.0 cm
gouache and charcoal on paper 152.0 x 168.0 cm
The works were made while I listened a lot to the CD Angel Song performed by Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell and Dave Holland. There’s no percussion and each piece is a combination of waves of guitar chords, bass rhythms and delineated passages of trumpet and tenor sax. It struck me how strong the allusive correlations were with the works I was making, using gradually builtup, overlaid washes of Indian ink and gouache and linear elements in crayon with just slight traces of colour.
My practice is project based. After researching particular information, I create work that is socially engaged, connecting to the world and my place in it by revealing sites and conditions and my responses to them. greenspace is a new map created after referring to a Broadbent’s ‘Melbourne To and Fro’ map from 1982. The coastline of Port Phillip has been hand-drawn in white ink, a reminder of the edge of the landmass, and small abstracted shapes have been hand-cut from phosphorescent vinyl. These shapes signify areas of parks, reserves, racecourses, and golf clubs exclusively. In isolating the green space, I am investigating new connections and charting the difference in scale that occurred in the location depicted on the map. At night, the work literally captures the light in the gallery space, mysteriously glowing as a reminder that the natural landscape bears witness. The work is another view of Melbourne, another version of the world we live in.
The title He Forgot How to Speak English refers to one of the few known details we have about William Buckley, the escaped convict who lived for thirty-two years along Victoria’s coastline with the Wathaurung Tribe. My focus here is to imagine Buckley through the lens of my contemporary domestic life. Hence the grid of book pages over which the work is done, the Chinoiserie, the European flowers, the laptop and iPhone. A stack of books are included – Capricornia, Coonardoo, Plains of Promise, Taboo, To the Islands – all fiction where Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors explore aboriginal and white relationships. I see Buckley as a man living between two cultures, with possibly an Indigenous wife and child who he later abandoned when he returned and married a white woman. The work is part of a continuing series of drawings and paintings I have been making over the last four years. His story continues to interest me.
There is some element of fading and death here. Death doesn’t really bother me these days, and being older makes one more aware and possibly a bit more philosophical about the prospect. I have said before that making art these days is more like affirming the possibility of not disappearing when one dies, or a vain attempt to defy the finality of death. Represented by Gallerysmith, Melbourne
He Forgot How to Speak English 2018
Represented by Daine Singer Gallery, Melbourne 81
PEI PEI HE
KENDAL HEYES
MARK HISLOP
b. 1954, Shanghai, China; arrived Australia, 1987 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1952, Auckland, New Zealand; arrived Australia, 1979 Lives and works in Coledale, New South Wales
b. 1962, Cooma, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
In the Crowd 2017
Foundering Boat 2017
pencil on rice-paper on scroll 19 cm x dimensions variable
ink on paper 100.0 x 150.0 cm
it is to the air that I dedicate myself 2018
The drawing In the Crowd is about everyday life in the city environment.
This image is part of an ongoing series about voyagers on the sea, those who arrive at their intended destination, and especially those who don’t make it and are kept on the outside of borders that should be open to them. The making of these images one dot at a time is literally an extended meditation on the issue of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by sea. The dot-image format also highlights the media’s often problematic role in representing refugees.
The sound, the people and the movement … these elements really touch my heart. I tried to capture the bustling blur of faces and steps, calmly translating them onto soft ricepaper.
graphite on paper 12 drawings, each 26.0 x 17.0 cm
The French pilot Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman to be awarded a pilot’s licence and was instrumental in the development and testing of early powered aircraft. An actress, artist and sportswoman, de Laroche set herself apart from her contemporaries with her ethereal and poetic relationship to flying, stating shortly before her death (in a flying accident): ‘It is to the air that I dedicate myself’. This work is based on one photograph of de Laroche from 1919 – her death scene. It consists of twelve drawings. Each drawing incrementally zooms in on the original, recording details and challenging the power relationship implied in the photograph. In this instance, drawing transforms the original from representation to abstraction, reflecting de Laroche’s ethereal sensibility. Represented by Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
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DEANNA HITTI
ANNA HOYLE
NATALYA HUGHES
b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1969, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
TOWLA 2017
Anxious Sponges 2018
b. 1977, Macksville, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales
artist book screenprint 40.0 x 30.0 cm
gouache, pencil, collage on paper on wood panels 170.0 x 140.0 cm
Woman I, Woman II, Woman IV 2018
Anxious Sponges builds on my longstanding interest in suburban anxieties, everyday habits, objects, consumer goods, trends and advertising.
Time and time again in the narrative of Modernist painting practice is the appearance of women’s bodies for the purposes of formal experimentation. She (in a general sense) is everywhere, but the specificity of her is of no consequence. In Willem de Kooning’s ‘Woman’ series we see the significance of his dynamic figure ground relationships, his handling of paint, his contribution to modelling and seeing. But I am not content to dismiss the un-named women that are used as a vehicle and are the least important part of his visual language.
My artist book TOWLA is based on the instructions to the board game backgammon, a game I played daily with my father during my childhood. The instructions are written as a cultural transaction between my father, a migrant from Lebanon, and myself. It contains written instructions in the English and Arabic languages. Starting from the left-hand side of the book, printed in grey, are Latin letters spelling out instructions in the Arabic language. Opening the book from the right-hand side, printed in golden yellow, are Arabic letters spelling out the instructions in the English language.
I love the inanity of making books for researching or reading about something useless or ridiculous like bifurcated pasta shapes; I love a poetic, musical play with words or the boring banality of 100 ways to apply mascara. I enjoy the irony of making How To books, in an age when How To or research is commonly resolved by a speed of light internet search not a book. Reference tomes are threatened. I love to play with the books’ purported seriousness and ‘believability’ in an age of self-help, advice, information, misinformation. Anxious Sponges is a random collection, whose ‘covers’ may relate aesthetically or conceptually. As a reflection of our society, media and trends, it seems reasonable to paint book titles that are shonky, unreadable, or absurd. As painted follies, they are true fictions.
cyanotype on paper 77.0 x 59.0 cm, 83.5 x 58.5 cm, 75.0 x 59.0 cm
de Kooning’s women are menacing. Their foreboding, castrating, looming grotesqueness is primary in his painterly experiments. In referencing the de Kooning’s ‘Woman’ series I am re-drawing, re-painting and re-printing the works to understand them, and to bring to them my own visual language: a language sympathetic to their status in art history. Represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane 83
ALANA HUNT
LOCUST JONES
JENNIFER JOSEPH
b. 1984, Mona Vale, New South Wales Lives and works Kununurra, Western Australia
b. 1963, Christchurch, New Zealand; arrived Australia, 1988 Lives and works in Katoomba, New South Wales
b. 1949, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Cups of nun chai 2017
Back to the dark ages II 2016
3 books, each 55.0 x 35.0 cm (closed)
ink, pencil, shellac, pigment and watercolour on paper 1000.0 x 153.0 cm
acrylic, gesso, mixed media, graphite, coffee, paper, card, cotton, slate on card and sandpaper 25.5 x 20.5 cm (each, irregular)
Cups of nun chai is a participatory memorial that emerged in response to Kashmir’s summer of 2010 when 118 civilians died in pro-freedom protests. It is an exploration of how we encounter, respond to and remember political violence. Through personal conversations and public media intervention, this work explores some of the most challenging areas of contemporary life, including the failures of democracy, state violence, the inherent fragility of the nation state, the power of the media and the idea of freedom. The work unfolded over two years of tea and conversation with 118 people, and in mid2016 began circulating as an eleven-month newspaper serial, reaching tens of thousands of people in Kashmir on a weekly basis. These newspapers have been bound into three volumes, the contents of which have been written in part by the artist, in part by world events, by Kashmiri journalists, by the actions of the state and civilians, and by advertisers.
Current themes in my practice relate to world politics, conflict, refugees, the environment and personal narratives. My medium is predominately drawing on paper using ink. Imagery is rendered using bamboo. The imagery depicted is collected from multiple news sites and other sources of current affairs, interlaced with diary events. My work is often large scale (up to 100 metres long). Imagery is piled up and overlaid onto long scrolls of paper in quick succession; news headlines and daily briefings in the form of text are written alongside imagery.
The title No thank you, perhaps some other time is taken from the text in the ripped page of the found book incorporated in this work. I was attracted to the visual and tactile qualities of the discoloured, torn and crumpled paper. Perhaps there is a subtle irony in my choice of this particular sentence with my own tendency towards postponing coffee arrangements with friends to prioritise time in the studio. This is again alluded to obliquely in my use of a coffee sachet and coffee itself in the work.
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Represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
No thank you, perhaps some other time 2016
I’m typically drawn to the physicality of selected humble materials together with the simplest abstract forms. In my art practice my concern has always been with the paradoxical nature of existence. I seek the unseen in the visible, the ‘spiritual’ in the physical. Represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, Photography credit: Andrew Curtis.
NONGGIRRNGA MARAWILI
BRIAN MARTIN
GEORGIE MATTINGLEY
b. 1938, Darrpirra, Northern Territory Lives and works in Yirrkala, Northern Territory Language: Mitwatj
b. 1972, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Ocean Grove and Melbourne, Victoria Language: Muruwari, Bundjalung and Kamilaroi
b. 1988, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Baratjula – Lightning and the Rock 2017 natural earth pigments on paper 232.0 x 152.0 cm
Baratjula is a Madarrpa clan estate adjacent to Cape Shield where the artist camped with her father and his many wives as a young girl. She lived nomadically as part of a clan group with a flotilla of canoes between Groote Eyelandt and the mainland. Her father’s name was Mundukul (Lightning Snake, and also the name Water Python and Liasis Fuscus, which lives deep beneath the sea there). These are cyclonic, crocodileinfested waters with huge tides and ripping currents. Some of the designs show the rock set in deep water between the electric ‘curse’, which the snake spits into the sky in the form of lightning, and the spray of the sea trying to shift the immovable rock foundation of the Madarrpa. Yurr’yunna is the word used to describe the rough waves overtopping the rock and the spray flying into the sky. It is said that the serpents ‘spit’ lightning – ‘guykthun’, a spell or oath. Represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
Methexical Countryscape: Kamilaroi # 11 2017
I Had to Lift the Calf 2018 hand-tinted silver gelatin print 91.0 x 63.0 cm
charcoal on paper 200.2 x 147.0 cm The name Kamilaroi refers to the Country and traditional owners of mid-North New South Wales. Methexis, a Greek term, has been garnered to understand the performative power of Indigenous cultural practices. Methexis is understood as a sense of action, a commemorative act that is the performative action which brings something into existence. Methexis emphasises a physical ground and it is through this ground that Indigenous practices resonate. The word Countryscape is used instead of landscape to reiterate that Country is a living subject as opposed to being an object. My practice is an attempt to demonstrate this framework of an Indigenous understanding of the world and at the same time reveal the dynamic of what constitutes contemporary Aboriginal art practices. This work attempts to demonstrate the crucial role of ‘Country’ (Land) and its importance to the foundations of Indigenous ideology and culture.
I created this image during my residency at an aged care facility in Kyneton. I was inspired by the memories of a resident who ran a local dairy farm with her husband. She shared a story with me about a difficult event during milking duties, when a baby calf got its foot stuck in the grates. She had to lift up the calf with all her physical strength to free its leg. This image depicts her retelling the story in her room. The image is a traditional black and white darkroom print, painted with the assistance of residents at the aged care facility. Through my practice, I immerse myself into hidden or private spaces. Working collaboratively with communities within these spaces, I use staged photo shoots and creative workshops to create images that bring visibility to spaces that are typically avoided or overlooked.
Represented by William Mora Galleries, Melbourne 85
MISH MEIJERS
VIV MILLER
HELEN MUELLER
b. 1972, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Hobart and New Norfolk, Tasmania
b. 1979, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Speculative Feminist Fictions (diptych) 2016
Looped Landscape 2017
b. 1949, Herisau, Switzerland; arrived Australia, 1973 Lives and works Sydney, Australia Deficit 2016
graphite and phosphorous paint on paper 71.0 x 101.0 cm (each sheet)
Mish Meijers uses installation, drawing, painting, digital media, performance and ceramics to translate and communicate her current concerns and research. Her practice experiments in surface tensions: how one material conforms or abrades against the matter of another. Whether in actuality or within conceptual content, she distorts the inherent worth and significance of her work with regard to popular culture, gender determination and functionality in an alchemic and at times discordant sensibility. Speculative Feminist Futures is an ongoing series of drawings that explores ideas around gender by creating fictional futures where everyone has all the same sexual pieces. ‘It is an imagining of what could be, of what I dearly hope for, a spell even – that gender as an identifier will become a thing of the past, that marches and celebrations will highlight and remember past struggles as a once-yearly fun event.’ Represented by Bett Gallery, Hobart 86
pencil and gouache on paper 30.0 x 126.0 cm (sheet)
Looped Landscape depicts a long landscape that slides and shifts between spaces and patterns, and between realism and abstraction. All of it is imagined. I’m interested in the ways in which you can create images that play between artificiality and nature, and the drawing riffs on this, incorporating what might be described as a digitally inspired aesthetic. There’s also a spatial trick played across its five sheets of paper: the ends of the drawing can join up, creating a circular loop. Its pictorial space is entirely self-contained. In this I was influenced by animation and gaming techniques. And, in fact, I’ve also used parts of Looped Landscape in some animations I am working on. I like that drawings can have their own double lives this way. Represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne
cast linocut prints on paper 98 bowls, each 12.5 cm diameter x 6 cm high
I observe with unease the depletion of our natural environment: forests, minerals, water. I seek to make comment about this in my work, wanting it to contribute to a conversation. In keeping with my conceptual concerns, I use print processes that wear down, degrade, run out, fade, to give form to my observations. Deficit took shape after reading an article in the daily press about aquafers (the main source of fresh water) around the world being drained by human action at a faster rate than they are able to replenish. With this work I register that their emptying out is a possibility. Represented by May Space, Sydney; Photography credit: Damian Dillon
JOHN NIXON
OPEN SPATIAL WORKSHOP
ELENA PAPANIKOLAKIS
b. 1949, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
(BIANCA HESTER, TERRI BIRD,
b. 1984, Cootamundra, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales
A Portrait of a Member of The Donkey’s Tail (Parts 1–7) 2017
Blind tactics 2018
photographic collage 29.7 x 21.0 cm
This work consists of seven colour photographic portraits of members of The Donkey’s Tail, an experimental musical ensemble made up of a variety of established and emerging artists, curators, graphic designers and musicians from the Melbourne scene. In 2015, John Nixon began a series of photographic portraits of various members of the group. The photographs are staged and the group members are dressed in such a way that the clothing and backgrounds are used to represent the collision of musical frisson that is representative of The Donkey’s Tail music. The photographs themselves are photo collages, montaged together in an old-fashioned cut and paste manner. The photographs are all A4 in scale and are framed in simple wooden frames. Since the inception of this project, over seventy photographs have been realised. This photographic project is ongoing and has no fixed end date.
SCOTT MITCHELL) Established 2003 in Melbourne charcoal on paper 7.0 x 58.0 cm
The stripped body at exercise in sunlight. All of the heat without half-tones 2017 synthetic polymer paint, binder medium, pigment inkjet prints on paper 49.4 x 42.5 cm
Open Spatial Workshop’s activities are framed by an ongoing interest in physical forces and the material operations that register those forces. Recent projects have explored the complex threads that connect geophysical processes to anthropogenic activity. OSW uses various processes to explore this field, which entails experiments with techniques, technologies, machines and materials. Blind tactics results from a set of experimental processes that responded to questions of material-force relations. It registers impacts and impressions from charcoal projectiles inflecting the surface as an index of intensity. The carbon in the charcoal serves as a common element in all known life, as well as having a range of uses from gunpowder to fuel. The residue of collision events recorded in Blind tactics evoke numerous encounters at various scales through which the dynamic movement of matter unfolds.
My practice spans painting, collage, drawing and photography and I am primarily interested in engaging with meaning while challenging modes of comprehension. In this work, a found image is collaged together with a personal photograph onto an enlarged book page, with the disparate images united via a painterly wash. The text of the original page has been replaced with my own, however, the original font style and page format have been maintained. The text was informed by my Greek cultural heritage – specifically descriptions of early Spartan exercise rituals and my own impressions of Greece and its people. This work utilises a page format as a means of exploring the relationship of images to text and explores notions of photographic proof and the communicative function of language. This work takes the page format, which is normally known for its clear presentation of informative text accompanied by a related image, and subverts this. 87
LOUISE PARAMOR
HUBERT PAREROULTJA
JEMIMA PARKER
b. 1964, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1952, Ntaria (Hermannsburg), Northern Territory Lives and Works in Ntaria, Northern Territory Language: Western Arrernte and Luritja
b. 1982, Bega, New South Wales Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
Boomtown #5 2016 gloss enamel painted paper construction 165.0 x 97.5 cm
Lukaria (West MacDonnell Ranges, NT) 2017
There and back again 2016 screenprint 62.5 x 58.0 cm
watercolour on paper 61 cm diameter (image) My sculptural practice of recent years is driven by what I find; in particular, plastic objects drawn from a variety of different sources, of both small and large scales. The objects themselves, often unusual in form and bold in colour, motivate and direct me to combine them in a way that produces eccentric and poetic structures, some of which have been translated into large-scale permanent public sculptures. My practice also encompasses two-dimensional work, such as the ‘Boomtown’ series of gloss enamel painted paper constructions. The series depict apartment buildings onto which an enlargement of a small sculpture is transposed, suggesting streets full of public art. The work is a response to the current urban expansion that Sydney is undergoing and attempts to bring humour and optimism to this phenomenon. Represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
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I am a Western Aranda man. I got all the ideas for the painting from my father Ruben Pareroultja, because he was a Western Aranda man too. In this circle painting I depicted my country as I see it. I painted the Ant Eater Dreaming. It is the story of three anteater’s that travel to my country at the Pareroultja area. For this work I was inspired by my earlier painting for the ‘Inti Ljapa Ljapa Irapakalam’ (butterfly going round and round) project for which I painted a circular work of art for the first time, to be used as a design for a 1950’s circle skirt. This artwork was exhibited in Alice Springs in 2015. Since then I have experimented with the circular format to depict my country in the West MacDonnell Ranges that stretch some 161 km due west of Alice Springs. Represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
There and back again captures moments in time and explores my experience of place. Images are drawn from my local surrounds, including my childhood home on the far south coast of Australia and my current home in Canberra, as well as recent travels further afield: Portland, Victoria; the southern United States and Oahu, Hawaii. Images are first captured on my phone, recording fleeting moments. I cut down paper, mix inks and hand-print, bringing the works slowly to life – a direct contrast to today’s instantly posted image. By altering the image and reimagining it as a screen print, I shift the original context, leading the viewer to question the time and place in which it was created. Soft, faded backgrounds, and warm, brownblack for the images themselves suggest that these contemporary scenes are in fact of a bygone time, evoking nostalgia.
RILEY PAYNE
DAN PRICE
LISA REID
b. 1979, Melbourne Lives and works in New York City, United States
b. 1978, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Sirening 2 2017
Untitled (untitled) 2016
Alison (Life Drawing Model) 2017
pencil on paper 60.0 x 50.0 cm
graphite on paper 8.0 x 6.0 cm (image)
lino print 30.0 x 20.0 cm
Working primarily with pencil on paper, my practice deals with the combining of elements of amateur and stock photography with looser additions of text and near-recognisable shapes as a way to open up new dialogues between seemingly disparate visual elements. Through a labour-intensive process of re-rendering the backgrounds in pencil, I aim to create a space where those everyday images can be slowed down and reassessed, both as constructed images in their own right, and also as carriers for the looser, added elements. Through humour, re-contextualisation and tension, my drawings attempt to simultaneously highlight the contradictions and manipulation inherent in advertising and stock imagery, while also showing the creative tools at our disposal to help in the processing of this information.
Through the process of image making (drawing), photography, and sculpture, my work looks at notions of duration and decay and the idea of the ‘malleability’ of time. I am interested in imagery and objects that reference ‘end points’ in contemporary culture, using my work to re-examine the finality that images and objects can represent. My practice attempts to expand these visual markers, to explore mutability and transience, in opposition to a sense of finality or historical punctuation that images generally represent.
Lisa Reid is an accomplished multimedia artist working in ceramics, painting, drawing, printmaking and digital media. Often utilising preliminary workings of an image as a blueprint for her work, her attention to detail and focus is apparent not only in her painting and drawing but also her ceramic practice. Her dedication is reflected in her highly detailed, intricate work and meticulous practice, inspired by working from life, old family photographs and popular culture images. Reid’s work reflects a rich and unique view of everyday life, where the artist’s interpretation and translation of imagery are keenly observed. Lisa Reid has worked as an artist in the Arts Project Australia studio since 2002. Represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne
Represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
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LOUISE RIPPERT
CAMERON ROBBINS
BRIAN ROBINSON
b. 1966, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1963, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Castlemaine and Melbourne, Victoria
Black Bindu 2016
Monmar 3 ½ hrs sea breeze jan 25 2018 2018
b. 1973, Thursday Island, Queensland Lives and works in Cairns, Queensland Language: Kala Lagow Ya and Wuthathi
paint, pencil and silver gilt on paper 104.0 x 71.0 cm
Some of my earliest childhood memories involve being struck by paradox: learning that black is not a colour but the absence of colour, or that the dome of the night sky is not the end of the universe but something infinitely expanding. While black can represent the fearful, hidden aspects of our experience, its characteristic absence is also symbolic of a positive state of potential. The single black dot, or bindu, of Indian theology represents the point zero or numinous void from which all things emerge, and to which all things ultimately return. For artist Kazimir Malevich, the void in his painting The Black Square was filled with both emptiness and a hidden truth: ‘It is from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins.’ Black Bindu has been inspired by my own continuing fascination with this paradoxical void and its deep resonance with the themes of time, thought and the mystical unknown.
pigment ink pen on paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm
This drawing is a direct 3 ½ hour transcription of a summer sea breeze moving across the Mornington Peninsula. It was created using a wind-powered drawing instrument of my invention. An extension of the hand that has evolved beyond sticks and wires, the portable wind drawing instrument involves rotary mechanisms that respond to wind speed and wind direction. It allows chaotic motion, rain, hail, snow, birds, atmosphere and sun to play on the drawings. It was set up for one week at Police Point Shire Park/Monmar in Portsea; I made twelve drawings from the summer weather systems. This drawing communicates a story about the wind energy that it transcribes. It can also be described by mathematicians and physicists working with weather, chaos theory and even statistics, using terms such as Phase-Space Diagrams, and Stochastic Bundles, and Strange Attractors. Represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne
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A concoction of elixirs 2018 linocut printed in black ink from one block 80.0 x 135.0 cm The search for eternal youth and a fountain of youth is a frequent fixture of various myths and legends from around the world. While in modern days it will likely be genetics and stem cells that lead to prolonged life, humankind’s quest for immortality is not new and has taken many forms through the centuries, with various elixirs, magical charms, and famous artefacts all reputed to grant everlasting life. There may be such places and objects tucked away. Whether true or not, it is intriguing to imagine such wonders. There will be those who will search no matter what, enamoured with the notion that it could be possible to live forever. Maybe there are even those who already have. Is there really a secret cabal of immortals out there who have drunk from the fountain and have pledged to eternally hide its secret? Nobody knows. Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Melbourne
ELISSA SAMPSON
EMILY SANDRUSSI
GEOFF SARGEANT
b. 1976, Townsville, Queensland Lives and works in Townsville, Queensland
b. 1989, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1944, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Nar Nar Goon, Victoria
#Balloon 2017 graphite pencils on paper 30.0 x 30.0 cm
Arctic Biosphere (Volume 14), from the series ‘Volumes’ 2016 paper and ink 120.0 x 90.0 cm
Specialising in realism, I work with graphite pencils on paper creating mostly black and white pieces. I find there are a variety of creative possibilities that can be found in objects all around us and I seek to magnify and explore their textures and intricacies in my work. #Balloon is a play on the rise of the hashtag in social media. Originally known as a pound or number sign, the hashtag originated in its current form in 2007 in the Twittersphere. Changing language for millions around the world, it has become integral to the way we communicate online. You would be hard pressed finding a post to Instagram or Twitter without a string of trending or content driven hashtags sitting in the comments. From being overused to starting entire online movements, the hashtag has blown up and its relevance will not be floating away anytime soon.
Emily Sandrussi’s recent series of works, ‘The Whole Field of Human Knowledge’, seeks to dismantle the problematic institution of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, challenging the position it held for so many years as a status symbol for an aspirational middle class. The works engage with the tensions associated with recording or collating history and knowledge, examining the hubris inherent to any attempt to prove or celebrate humanity’s accomplishments and progress. Arctic Biosphere (Volume 14) contains every page of a single volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; shredded, pulped, and remade through a baptism-like process of recreation. The necessarily flawed authority it once commanded as a monument to human achievement is washed away, and in its place stands a sheet of paper – fragile, expansive, and mostly blank. Through this act of destruction, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is silenced, echoing its real-world descent into obsolescence.
The Silk Road Bamiyan 1970 – Buddha’s Lament 2001 2016 colour pencil on paper 47.5 x 47.5 cm (image)
As a photorealist working in colour pencil on cold-press rag papers, I reference images I have collected on film over 40–50 years. The selection is often done in meditation and generally contains layers of interpretation such as symbolism, abstraction, pareidolia and history. I use the technique of layering to build up colour and use a pointillist effect when filling the grain of paper with sharp pencils. The giant buddhas of the Bamiyan Valley, dated from the 4th century CE, were located on one of the ancient silk roads. They were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Along with thousands of cave temples and shrines, the Bamiyan Valley formed an artistic meeting place of East and West. This picture goes back to a vintage overland adventure in 1970 and I felt a strong desire to portray Afghanistan as it was, and still could be, as a foil to the destruction that is currently happening.
Represented by Artereal Gallery, Sydney 91
JO SCICLUNA
LIZ SHREEVE
WILLIAM SMEETS
b. 1969, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1949, Suffolk, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1958 Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales
b. 1991, Adelaide, South Australia Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
Where We Come From #1 & #2 (diptych) 2016
Out of Darkness (triptych) 2018
Sutton Grange 2018
archival pigment ink on cotton rag, acrylic, Victorian Ash timber 45.0 x 45.0 cm, 45.0 x 60.0 cm
mixed media on paper each 69.0 x 69.0 cm
graphite on paper 122.0 x 88.6 cm
My compulsion to explore, record and manipulate landscapes is driven by my cultural motivations as a firstgeneration Australian. I engage the landscape photograph as a cross-cultural device to pose questions of identity and belonging in relation to place.
Light is central to my practice. The repeating structures such as flaps or curls of paper act to catch and colour light and make one aware of seeing. In Out of Darkness light is the subject of the work as well as the material of which it is made. The paper curls on the black and grey panel are covered with writings about light and its place in art, physics, biology, behaviour and philosophy. The writing represents knowledge. Does an accumulation of knowledge lead to enlightenment?
My work is autobiographical. I visit each place, each scene. I spend time in the surroundings, taking note of the composition, the light and the feel of the environment. By layering pencil on paper I am able to realise the light and shadow and the contrasting rough and smooth texture of the trees and their surroundings. I create predominately landscape works focusing on a central tree. I find it grounding to use a strong pillar that connects us to the environment. With each new trip, new landscape visited and new blank page, these works over time will link together to reference my life.
In this diptych photographs of coastal rock formations are layered with photographs depicting similar landforms. Each layered photograph is treated with a circular incision that reveals underlying imagery. This conflated landscape poses an interplay between traditional distinctions such as inside/outside and absence/ presence, exploring the phenomenological and cultural scope of this interplay. This work metaphorically suggests the cumulative historical ‘strata’ embedded in the Australian landscape. The inclusive title invites the viewer to consider who the ‘We’ might be, alluding to the properties of matter that define our collective origin.
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Represented by Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
KYLIE STILLMAN
TEXTAQUEEN
JAMES TYLOR AND
b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1975, Perth, Western Australia Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
LAURA WILLS
Just C 2017
Flame within the Frame 2018
hand-cut paperback books and timber base 23.0 x 20.0 x 14.0 cm
Indian ink marker and synthetic polymer paint on paper 112.0 x 76.2 cm (sheet)
Tylor b. 1986, Mildura, Victoria, Language: Kaurna; Wills b. 1981, Adelaide, South Australia Both artists live and work in Adelaide, South Australia The Forgotten Wars 2017 coloured pencil on photographic print 5 sheets, each 50.0 x 50.0 cm
Kylie Stillman uses a wide variety of piercing and cutting implements to create captivating negative spaces in objects. Working with piles of similarlysized paperback books, the artist intricately carves into the object’s surface to create a void. The artist considers this process as ‘drawing with a scalpel’ – there are no pigments here, only shadows and the ink inherent in the book’s pages to create an image from what is removed. In the instance of Just C, this carving reveals the words ‘POLITICALLY CORRECT’ alongside freehand marks erasing and circling over the stencilled font to present a counter claim of just ‘CORRECT’ for consideration. For the artist, the contemplation and aptitude required to produce the work is akin to the response intended by the viewer – to ponder the act of correcting and the evolution of language. Represented by Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney
During a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, TextaQueen has been drawing inspiration from the Library’s collection of political, circus and magic posters and books, and also conceptually collaborating with the diverse members of the 10gentle collective to create a satirical poster-style series examining the experiences of marginalised artists working within institutional contexts. Flame within the Frame comments on the conditional inclusion of diverse artists and their transgressive work to validate the institution’s progressive identity, while they are expected to perform personal and cultural palatability to white audiences.
The ‘Forgotten Wars’ series alludes to the story of the Australian frontier wars by presenting a series of photographs of the Australian rural landscape taken by James Tylor. Laura Wills has overlaid the photographs with drawings influenced by colonial war, surveys, town and mining maps from the British Parliamentary papers, and Commissioners' reports on the colonisation of Australia. The Australian Frontier wars were a series of armed conflicts, massacres and battles that took place from 1788 to 1930 between the invading British Government and Aboriginal Australians. This collaborative project between an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous Australian artist helps to find a way to decolonise the telling of stories about Australian frontier wars in mainstream society in Australia. Represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
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TRENT WALTER
ROSIE WEISS
MUMU MIKE WILLIAMS
b. 1980, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria
b. 1958, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Capel Sound, Victoria
Island Island 2018
Two Banksias Holding On 2018
screenprint and offset lithograph 96.5 x 69.5 cm
Chinese ink and watercolour on paper 54.0 x 76.0 (sheet)
b. 1952, Pukatja, South Australia Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia Language: Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara
My artwork is concerned with reanimating ready-made images, texts and objects. Island Island emerged as a reimagined magazine cover, taking its form from 20th century magazine Asia, combined with a snake charmer image from a circa 1910s photographic postcard and text relating to the use of archival images, cultural references and materials. Returning to the printing films recently I was interested in what material and conceptual shifts would occur from overprinting. The result is curious. While the inverted silhouette suggests an absence, the figure is still present though pictorially displaced. And an uncanny resemblance has emerged between the two figures that have become incorporeal. The pictorial intervention also displaces the text: its repeated form making it as much visual device as statement, while its content becomes more enigmatic as its subject’s form becomes less stable.
My work examines our relationship with the natural world. I find plant fragments/ remnants on the edges of human activity, on the sides of roads and paths, school playgrounds or logging tracks. They have often been stripped back by wear and tear to their essential structures. I use them, like actors on a stage, to tell our stories. For the past couple of years I’ve been collecting and drawing eroded plant specimens from all around Port Phillip Bay, dislodged by sea level rises and channel deepening. On one of these journeys I came across these two banksias on the very edge of the land. I visit them often, photographing and drawing them, each time there is more of their root structure exposed, and they seem to hold onto each other with greater urgency.
Printed by the artist and Lucas Ihlein 94
Tjukurpa Kunpu Nyangatja 2016 tea, ink and oil pastel on paper, with kulata (spear) frame 150.0 x 150.0 cm
The government’s road upgrades have made a mess of the land. They never asked the traditional owners for permission. My heritage site (Iyakuta pulanya tjara – Minyma Kutjara Tjukurpa) was damaged and desecrated. They’ve got no shame. Digging up the earth for mining damages our Tjukurpa. The old men and women – the senior cultural elders – they look after the land. They don’t want mining. They remember all the Tjukurpa, the strong stories. They’re standing up strong, but the government and the mining companies are not paying attention. They’ve got their eyes and ears closed. The elders, the senior cultural men are saying: It’s our land, our Tjukurpa, our sacred sites, our history, our heritage, our language, our EVERYTHING – we’ve got to look after it, keep it strong for the future generations. Represented by Mimili Maku Arts, APY Lands, South Australia
PUNA YANIMA
YVONNE ZAGO
TIANLI ZU
b. 1955, De Rose Hill, South Australia Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia Language: Yankunytjatjara
b. 1980, Perth, Western Australia Lives and works Perth, Western Australia
b. 1963, Beijing, China; arrived Australia, 1988 Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales
Antara 2018
synthetic polymer and oil paint on paper 105.0 x 77.0 cm
watercolour on mulberry paper, hand cut 205.0 x 102.0 cm
My most recent body of work considers ornamentation and investigates the close relationship that the natural world and ornamentation have, with an emphasis on pattern and form, using Western Australia’s native flora endemic to my local environment as a starting point and inspiration. I work primarily within the framework of painting and ceramics, and I’ve always found my influences within the natural world and memory. The curved and ubiquitous form of the vase, a historically functional form that has been decorated despite its humble uses for over 3000 years, has the predominately modern usage of storing cut flowers, becoming ornaments in themselves. In this piece the vase depicts the landscape of a local waterhole, frequented by herons and other birds, which pays homage to 14th century Chinese porcelain.
Nüwa is a goddess in ancient Chinese mythology. In today’s society when a woman becomes pregnant, people commonly see it as hope and promise for a bright future. This work, however, reveals a realm of complexity and mystery that indicates that this pregnancy is perhaps not quite a world of serenity. Transforming hope into psychological anxiety, this ironic work proposes that the modern world is disrupted. Based on personal experiences, I create art to engage with social problems we confront every day – each cut sheds some light, hoping to channel the vital energy to give birth.
ink and synthetic polymer paint on paper 152.0 x 122.0 cm
Puna Yanima paints Antara, an important women’s ceremonial site near Mimili community. Puna first learned about Antara from her mother, Lucy, through inma (song and dance) when they went camping out to Paralpii (Victory Well) to collect maku (witchetty grub). The rhythm and intensity of this original form of storytelling becomes evident in Puna’s paintings. With energetic brushstrokes she maps the kapi tjukula (rock holes), apu and murpu (rocks and mountains) of Antara. When inma is performed at the right time, kapi pulka (big rains) fills all the kapi tjukula (rock holes) and there is enough mai (food) for everyone. The fluidity and immediacy of Puna’s ink drawing evoke this idea of plentiful resources, balanced by the rhythmic and patient patterns of her woka-wokanyi (dot painting). Her artwork evokes the very essence of ngura (country) and the Maku Tjukurpa (witchetty grub story) of Antara. Represented by Mimili Maku Arts, APY Lands, South Australia
Caladenia macrostylis in a landscape vase 2018
Nüwa is Pregnant III 2018
I learnt papercutting with Shaanxi peasants in the 1980s. Painting with a knife has become my resource that never runs out. My work conceals and reveals the spontaneous movement of light and shadow, the everinterchanging solid and absence: a metaphorical and elusive form that, while ungraspable and ambiguous, draws us into a labyrinth of emotions. 95
Note to reader: All artwork titles are printed as submitted by the artists. Photography credits: All photos have been provided by the artists unless otherwise stated.
2018 National Works on Paper A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition 20 July – 9 September 2018 Project management: Jane Alexander, Director, MPRG 2018 NWOP judges: Jane Alexander, Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art and Dr Kyla McFarlane, Curator of Academic Programs (Research), The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne Curatorial team: Danny Lacy (Senior Curator, MPRG) and Narelle Russo (Collection Curator and Co-Registrar) Exhibition Support: Kate Bêchet, Ainsley Gowing (Registrar, MPRG), Marni Howard, Paul Nuttney (ExhibitOne), Elli Pelz, Sunny Scott Catalogue production: Rowena Wiseman External editor: Vanessa Pellatt Marketing and publicity: Rowena Wiseman and Sharon Wells (Pan and Bacchanalia) Design: Linton Design Printing: Blue Star Print ISBN: 978-0-6481941-2-5 Edition: 2018 Print run: 500 © External authors and the Mornington Peninsula Shire
Authorised by Coordinator Arts and Culture, Mornington Peninsula Shire, Marine Parade Hastings