Sunday 3 November – Sunday 8 December 2013 Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland Opening event 6pm Friday 1 November 2013 Floor Talk 12noon Sunday 3 November 2013
Crafting Memory: Recent work by Jo D’Hagé “You use your life.”
— John Fowles, The Collector, Random House (Vintage), 1998
Jo D’Hagé’s paintings have an intrinsic
connection to her life – as a feminist, mother,
artist and collector. Crafting objects emerges
from a family history of crochet and handwork but also significantly connects to feminine
skills-based traditions over the centuries.
She notes, “I need to paint”, exorcising the
impulse to create with her hands, and earlier
work has focused on producing detailed and realist images of objects she has collected
and worn personally. It has included painted
manikins decorated with her dresses, shells,
corsets, braids, jewellery and other objet d’art
she has pursued in old wares and vintage
shops. Previous exhibitions have seen these objects constructed in a realist manner, twodimensional qualities juxtaposed with colour
and pattern within tightly composed surfaces (Trousseau, 2005).
Crafting Memory continues D’Hagé’s inquiry into the role and relationship between selected objects, being female and the painting process. Objects and motifs based on archetypal forms conjure up memories, emotions, reflections and associations of femininity.
Abstract qualities were developed further in
Gaea Dreaming (2009) with the introduction
of images of ceramic swans from the 1950s, nostalgic in the evocation of their slick
surfaces and blue-green glazes.
With Crafting Memory, D’Hagé enters new, if related territory. While the reference to
memoir remains in the use of objects from
her own collection, these images are looser
in technique, exhibiting a new commitment
to the medium itself and its serendipitous
possibilities. They develop from a more
internalized place, a delving within the body,
psyche and intuition, evocative in their soft
capture of light and depth. While they draw on
hair, mirrors, seed pods and other objects she has collected, these paintings might equally have been drawn from the soft interiors of a
woman – a skein of human hair becomes a
motif that evokes a blood-engorged vulva-like formation – and egg-shapes emerge from
the surface like body cavities. The torso of
previous paintings is referred to in the human
scale of the oval form, its relationship to
D’Hagé’s oeuvre like the physical memory that remains in the muscles of the body or the overlay of a new impression over a
younger self.
These are meditative, melancholic images that speak to a contemplative sensibility.
In their shadows and echoes they offer up
what might have been and what was – and
nurture these possibilities in their references to the feminine.
Equally, the titles take us inward – spikes of
light that shine from the oval shape central to
Beneath the Skin speak to the bare canvas and the capture of light and space within
the translucence of the painterly surfaces.
A cascade of hair down the surface of the
painting is anchored by the knotted braid at the bottom, symbolizing bodily objects that
may be kept, relics of a life. The memorializing
sensibility is also visible in Deep Time, with the graduated pulsing of the red forms
emergent, evoking blood and its symbolism
in life and death, and conjuring darkly internal
places. The image of crocheted mesh also floats across the surface of each of these
canvases. In these works we see D’Hagé
creating a human presence with absence,
and referring to the intrinsic value of the memory, personal, familial and universal, which exists inside our psyche.
Louise Martin-Chew 7 October 2013
Acknowledgements Jo D’Hagé would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their valued contribution to this exhibition project:
Official opening – Dr. Anne Kirker Catalogue essay – Louise Martin-Chew Redland City Council and Redland Art Gallery Stephanie Lindquist Director
Redland Art Gallery Amy Wilson
Exhibitions and Public Programs Officer Redland Art Gallery
ISBN: 978-0-9923679-0-9 Designed by Stephen Kolesaric at Liveworm Studio
Images (left to right): (on cover) Jo D’Hagé, Weep 2013, Oil on Linen, 160cm x 125cm (red on green) (detail).
(top left) Jo D’Hagé, Deep Time 2013, Oil on Linen, 160cm x 125cm (red)
(bottom left) Jo D’Hagé, Weep 2013, Oil on Linen, 160cm x 125cm (red on green)
(top right) Jo D’Hagé, Beneath the Skin 2013, Oil on Linen, 160cm x 125cm (yellow)
(bottom right) Jo D’Hagé, Without Surrender 2013, Oil on Linen, 160cm x 125cm (blue)
Redland Art Gallery is an initiative of Redland City Council, dedicated to the late Eddie Santagiuliana
Redland art Gallery, Cleveland Cnr Middle and Bloomfield Streets, Cleveland Q 4163
Monday to Friday 9am – 4pm
Sunday 9am – 2pm Admission free
Tel: (07) 3829 8899 or Email: gallery@redland.qld.gov.au www.more2redlands.com.au/ArtGallery