Crafting Memory - Jo D'Hagé

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