Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to the people, cultures and elders past, present and emerging.
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #24, 2024, oil paint skin burnt and stripped off French machine made lace, 79 cm × 65 cm (framed)
As this issue goes to print, the halfway point of the year has well and truly passed. In the southern hemisphere, this milestone is placed in the depths of winter. It prompts many of us to pause, to reflect, before we spring forward with renewed energy and vigour for the months ahead. The pages ahead are alive with that energy–works imbued with vitality and vim, executed in bold colour and idiosyncratic technique, define this issue and carry us forward into an exciting period for the gallery and our artists.
In Singapore, the gallery is proud to open Singapore Studio, led by Megan Arlin and Mariia Zhuchenko. Chloe Borich writes on the launch of this space and its significance in expanding our diverse international program.
In the galleries, Sanné Mestrom presents a major new body of work in Solar Cry, speaking to what it means to embody and embrace a duality; Kanchana Gupta’s Open and Close, the result of rigorous study, looks to the material history of lace; Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran breaks new ground, both technically and conceptually, in The Self Portrait and the Masks; and David Flack, director of Flack Studio, curates a dazzling exhibition of archival works by one of the country’s most important artists in Sydney Ball: The Weight of Colour.
We have the joy of introducing to you three artists new to Sullivan+Strumpf: Sam Cranstoun, Tiffany Loy and Gemma Smith. Each artist is singular in the visual languages and exacting techniques that define their practice. Their commonality lies in the precision of their focus and their devotion to leveraging the most revelatory results from their individual methodologies.
Two art fairs distinguish this moment in our calendar with the gallery excitedly returning to Sydney Contemporary on home ground while venturing to New York for our debut presentation at The Armory Show with a solo presentation by Tony Albert. We meet both occasions with every enthusiasm for the opportunity such events provide to advocate for our artists, both at home and abroad. In October, we are proud to be traveling to London for our debut presentation at Frieze as well as a return to Art Jakarta in Indonesia. We look forward to sharing more on these important highlights on our calendar in the next issue.
Until then, as you meander through these pages, we hope you feel as energised and emboldened by the works and narratives within as we do.
Jo + Urs
Books Furniture and Conver-
Connecting
Furniture
QUICK CURATE
MEGAN ARLIN
DIRECTOR, SINGAPORE
‘SHEER’ FEATURES ARTWORKS THAT DELVE into the essence of the fabric, exploring its materiality, contextual significance, and historical narratives. Artists within this Quick Curate examine its ties to material necessity, gender identity, and the diverse ways it shapes human perception.
Kanchana Gupta’s ‘Edges and Residues’ series combines her artistic process with social materials such as tarpaulin and jute, the two fabrics commonly used at construction sites in India and by migrant communities to build temporary homes. Gupta’s signature oil paint skins are created on jute surfaces, leaving the imprint of jute weaving once the layers of oil paint are torn and peeled. The materiality of jute offers strong resistance to forces of gravity and tearing, creating unpredictable cracks, rips, and edges on the oil paint skins, which are then assembled to create her works.
With an ongoing interest in how to render different material surfaces in paint, Gregory Hodge’s work eschews a slick, pop finish for a deliberately handmade quality designed to resemble the warp and weft of tapestries and/ or woven materials. This is achievable by using specially handmade tools and brushes, working from illustrations and photographs that are digitally collaged before painstakingly recreated in paint.
Ache for an Epilogue (Enchantment/Disenchantment Series) draws on Seton’s interest in the puffer jacket as a currently ubiquitous fashion item that is wryly suggestive of the very human desire to protect and insulate ourselves from an exterior world, both natural and constructed. This extends Seton’s ongoing questions of how the individual participates in their society, and in particular, their digital connectedness and the search for a truly private, sequestered space — now a rare and privileged luxury.
Natalya Hughes’ practice investigates the decorative and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body, and the excess. Employing the life and work of major 20th century male artists, namely Willem de Kooning and Ernst Ludwing Kirchner, as well as archival studies Sigmund Freud, Hughes seeks to examine society’s problem with women and the associations that have ultimately determined them.
Polly Borland’s new sculptural works embody an illusion of material softness which, through 3D scanning technology, is translated to the aluminium-cast humanoids of her recent series. Retained in this translation is the appearance of the soft, squishy sculpture, whose origins involve a human figure cased in stockings.
Forever agitating the definition of what constitutes a painting, Ry David Bradley’s tapestry works originate from ‘paintings’ done using Artificial Intelligence and digital technologies. Translated from the screen to a tactile reality, these works bear all the material qualities of a traditional woven work rendered in distinctly contemporary aesthetic language.
1. Natalya Hughes Two Girls with Umbrella, 2022 acrylic on poly 153 × 122 cm
2. Alex Seton Ache for an Epilogue (Enchantment/ Disenchantment Series), 2024 Chillagoe Pearl marble (Wakaman), cosmetic finishing powder 35 × 72 × 47 cm 125 kg
3. Kanchana Gupta Edges and Residues 16–Cerulean Blue, Steel Blue, Paynes Grey on White, 2019 stacked oil paint skins burnt and stripped off jute and mounted on wooden structure 125 × 95 cm
4. Gregory Hodge Winter House, 2021 acrylic on canvas 195 × 130 cm
5. Polly Borland Birdie, 2024 cast aluminium with automotive paint, matte finish 61 × 21.3 × 19.6 cm Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
6.
Natalya Hughes Woman 1 (Dangles), 2021 custom made fabric, appliqued, stretcher 172.5 × 132.5 cm
7.
Ry David Bradley Hub04fifty18backpack, 2020 dye cotton tapestry 160 × 140 cm
Sullivan+Strumpf Studio in Singapore
Welcoming a new era for Sullivan+Strumpf, director Megan Arlin and associate director Mariia Zhuchenko introduce their latest venture in Singapore’s up-and-coming Kallang district. After a symbolic pineapple rolling ceremony to usher in good luck and prosperity, the Studio has officially opened its doors to the public.
Arts programming is witnessing a universal pull towards collaboration, community and fluidity. There is a desire for authenticity and cross-cultural encounters, for the boundaries to dissolve between artists and place to make room for genuine interactions and meaningful experiences across continents. Where permanent bricks and mortar have previously dictated and reflected the scope of a gallery’s influence, new energy has been found in the concept of having no fixed address.
Responding to this shift, the new Sullivan+Strumpf Studio in Singapore will foster an engaging international program, while simultaneously facilitating an intimate meeting place for conversations and knowledge sharing. Led by director Megan Arlin and associate director Mariia Zhuchenko, the space functions as a global flagship location to share the work of represented artists and drive alternating projects across Southeast Asia and beyond. Following the success of international exhibitions brought to life with curator Jenn Ellis, including Story, Place, co-curated by Tony Albert, and Dawn Ng’s Into Air in London, the Studio will build upon relationships abroad through an expanding exhibition roster and art fair calendar.
In contrast to Sullivan+Strumpf’s original Singapore gallery that opened at the Gillman Barracks in 2016, the Studio intends to resist conventional white cube attitudes, from location to scheduling. “There’s a strong arts enclave in Singapore. Clients and collectors travel from across Southeast Asia to visit us here,” says Megan, who has directed operations in Singapore for the past eight years. Though
“The space functions as a global flagship location to share the work of represented artists and drive alternating projects across Southeast Asia and beyond.”
Though change is on the horizon within the local sector, including the imminent closure of the Gillman Barracks, and industry leaders are reimagining what the future may bring.
“The Studio opens opportunities for us to develop a responsive gallery model with more ambitious and thoughtful presentations.”
change is on the horizon within the local sector, including the imminent closure of the Gillman Barracks, and industry leaders are reimagining what the future may bring. “There is a particular interest in collaboration, whether it be at art fairs or in tandem with international galleries,” explains Megan, “since closing our permanent space in 2020, we found that popup exhibitions really work for us and the artists. The Studio opens opportunities for us to develop a responsive gallery model with more ambitious and thoughtful presentations.”
Based in the city’s up and coming neighbourhood of Kallang, the Studio is situated on an upper level of the modern CT Hub 2 building. Surrounded by an eclectic mix of hawker markets, old shop houses, cafés, restaurants, design and architectural offices, the area evokes a reverence for culture, both past and present. Inhabiting the bright expanse of Singaporean artist Dawn Ng’s former studio, visitors ascend to sweeping views of the city and an inviting atmosphere more akin to an atelier. “We want to educate visitors and nurture relationships with the care of a gallery, though outside of traditional white walls,” shares Mariia, who recently relocated from the Sydney gallery to join the Singapore team, “the Studio is where we can draw parallels and begin dialogues between artists from Australia, Singapore and the rest of the world. For example, we currently have works by Australian artist Yvette Coppersmith hung next to pieces by our new Singaporean artist Tiffany Loy, which have never interacted before.”
With an evolving calendar of exhibitions and offsite projects comes a growing artist
stable. Megan and Mariia will focus their gaze on Southeast Asian and international artists who are living and working in Singapore, indicated by the recent onboarding of Tiffany Loy, who showed a new body of textile-based work at the Studio in July. Throughout August, a preview of Indian artist Kanchana Gupta’s exhibition destined for Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney will be on view. In September, a guest presentation by Spanish painter Carmen Ceniga Prado will take over the space. Alongside these exhibitions will run a series of social and cultural events, tapping into partnerships with the Art Galleries Association Singapore and members of the Singaporean art community. Further afield, Sullivan+Strumpf will debut at The Armory Show, New York in September and Frieze London in October, coordinated between Singapore and Australian offices.
Leaning away from a typical gallery structure, the Studio embraces the rewarding challenges of producing temporary yet memorable one-off experiences for audiences and artists alike. With a thriving arts scene that represents the breadth of practice across Southeast Asia, Singapore is at once a supportive community and universally recognised platform for Sullivan+Strumpf to spring from into further corners of the globe.
SANNÉ MESTROM
Solar Cry
TO FETCH BLOOD FROM STONES is apparently impossible. In 1435, the English poet J. Lydgate wrote that, “Harde to likke hony out of a marbil stoon, For there is nouthir licour nor moisture.” Neither honey nor liquor nor moisture can be brought forth from a stone. Stones and moisture, moisture and stones, neither the twain shall meet.
But what about the tragic tale of Niobe from Homer’s Illiad ? Upon witnessing the murder of all 14 of her children by the twin gods Apollo and Artemis, her grief was so deep that Zeus took pity on her and turned her to stone. Zeus was trying to still her grief, to remove the watery sadness from her. But still she cried, the rock emitting moisture ceaselessly, and she became The Weeping Rock which is still visible today on Turkey’s Mount Sipylus.
This is the paradox of love rendered solid in stone. In this weeping stone is the endless bind that the ones we love, or should not love, or cannot help but love, can cause such endless grief. The more we submit to love the more possible our pain becomes.
Mestrom’s weeping woman title also elicits moisture from her solid bronze mass. Like Niobe’s Weeping Rock, this sculpture performs the impossible with her endlessly productive grief. She crouches, curling her enormous limbs asunder and curving about her vessel. In this sculpture her eyes are poised over a bowl catching her tears, her head gently bowed as she weeps. With large, sturdy, useful-looking hands, she holds her bowl, allowing the tears to be caught and to replenish her in an endless cycle. These tears are not wasted, but are instead an essential elixir. Rendered in plaster and cast in bronze, she brings moisture from her mass; tears from bronze, and bronze from tears. The paradox of our pain-bearing love.
But who caught Niobe’s tears? Perhaps they trickled into streams and rivers, bringing forth many more life forms in lachrymose ecosystems? Perhaps hers were also flourishing tears, in keeping with Greek traditions suggesting tears have qualities of fertility? Whether they are shed by gods, men or trees, tears give birth to a variety of substances and plants, 2 as in the story of the Heliades, the seven nymph daughters of the sun-god Helios. When their brother Phaethon was struck from the chariot of the sun by Zeus, they gathered around his smoky grave on the banks of the River Eridanos, and in their unrelenting grief were transformed into poplar trees and their tears into golden amber.
“… in grief for Phaethon, [they] drop the amber radiance of their tears”
—Euripides Hippolytus 740–741, trans. Kovacs. 3
I have held in my hand the golden gum from kauri trees in Aotearoa, and the poplars must be a shared genus. Their gloopy, syrupy emittance seems an unlikely end for tears, but perhaps a mighty grief can bring forth such an unseemly, sticky translucence, such generative matter.
Above: Sanné Mestrom, You smear, I carve, We gather, 2024, painted steel, 187 × 121 × 21 cm. Opposite: Sanné Mestrom, The Weeping Rock (detail), 2024, Bronze, pump, 107 × 109 × 100 cm, Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs.
Mestrom’s sculptural eyes merge creation with secretion. The large bronze eye-fountains are isolated from their bodies; not quite dismembered, but certainly highlighted. They rain tears from the iris, not from the tear duct. Perhaps in our seeing we pour or empty ourselves out, like Odysseus, who weeps “fertile tears and lets his aiōn flow out of him.” In Homer, aiōn refers to lifespan, elixir, vital force, and source of vitality. Perhaps Mestrom’s eyes cry their life force – not as an emptying of the self, but as a filling of the world. The more we look and the more we see, the more vitality we bestow about the place. Vision being synonymous with knowledge, the artist in particular uses their vision to generate new ways of seeing. Mestrom’s are endless, flourishing tears with their own humid, life-giving ecosystems. Similarly, the Heliades’ poplar gum is not the end of the story of their tears, for it too is flourishing, life-giving. Bees harvest the resin to make propolis (colloquially referred to as ‘bee glue’). In Greek, ‘propolis’ means ‘city wall’. Bees use this substance to strengthen their hives and their honeycomb structures. Humans harvest this propolis and use it as a supplement to strengthen their immune system. “You trickle, they swirl, we gather” reads another of Mestrom’s sculptures. Even in grief, the woman produces, restores and replenishes, making space to gather. As if in the extreme relief of grief - the shuddering, aorta-rattling wail that signifies change - there is some life-giving substance. Tears are the sluicing water wall, the hose through our psyche, that strips our insides of monsters and gods. Tears are the deep clean that ‘lets the light in’ 4. The tears in Mestrom’s works are life giving and immunity building. They are “Emptied, open, still.” 5
1. Dave Henderson, The Medieval English Begging Poem: A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ,2008
2. “Tears of the dawn = dew (Ovid Metamorphoses 13.621–622); tears of Helen = helenium (see p. 104 above); tears of the lotus = gum (Herodotus 2.96); tears of trees = propolis (Aristotle History of Animals 533b28, etc); see Deonna 1965: 148–153.” From Centre for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, III.4. The Language of Tears, https:// archive.chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6812.iii-4the-language-of-tears#n.32 accessed 29 June, 2024
3. Centre for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, III.4. The Language of Tears, https://archive.chs.harvard. edu/CHS/article/display/6812.iii-4-the-language-oftears#n.32 accessed 29 June, 2024
4. Words from a poem written by artist Bridie Lunney to Sanné Mestrom and her son Dante. September 2021.
5. Words from the same poem written by artist Bridie Lunney to Sanné Mestrom and her son Dante. September 2021.
Sanné Mestrom, Solar Cry, Sullivan+Strumpf Naarm/Melbourne, 01 August - 24 August, 2024
Above: Sanné Mestrom, Holding up the Sky, 2024, Fibreglass and bronze. Opposite: Sanné Mestrom, The Weeping Rock (detail), 2024, Bronze, pump, 107 × 109 × 100 cm, Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs. Photography by Siobhan Sloper
KANCHANA GUPTA
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #25 (detail), 2024, Oil paint skin burnt and stripped off, French machine made lace, 82 cm × 64 cm (framed)
OPEN and CLOSE
TEXT EMMA O’NEILL
ARTWORK PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON ANDERSON
PORTRAIT BY SARAH ISABELLE TAN
ItIS HARD TO IMAGINE FINISHING an artwork that has absorbed countless hours of labour, by setting it alight. For artist Kanchana Gupta, offering her work to the flame is a moment of surrender. In nature and in art, flames destroy but also bring things to the surface, melt or evaporate what is hard, and solidify and shape what is pliable. Though the alchemic effects are varied and rate of attrition high, Kanchana’s process yields unexpected results that make the gamble worthwhile.
Throughout her practice, Kanchana has been drawn to materials that unravel history, memory, place and feeling. Investigating their personal significance and social symbolism, she mines and manipulates their meanings through process. Fabrics of interest include chiffon and lace embedded with social history; as well as urban materials that like jute and tarpaulin that locate place and artefacts of her childhood in India such as vermillion powder, henna, silk, and sandalwood powder. At the hands of the artist, these materials are irreversibly altered in shape and chemical composition. The ensuing transformation creates new contexts in which to reflect on the embedded social and gender politics of each material. In her latest series, Kanchana turns to lace.
The artist’s careful layering of lace at the beginning of her process is as meditative, controlled and fastidious as the making of lace itself. It pays tribute to a long lineage of female lacemakers. Now largely machine-driven, the painstaking craft was dominated by women until the mid-nineteenth century. Its international trade tells the story of colonisation in Kanchana’s homeland of India, where the industry’s origin in 1780 aligns with the introduction of Christian missions in the Godavari Delta. Though a signifier of class in Europe, lacemaking was taught by foreign missionaries to under-privileged and usually low-caste Indian women. With the industrial revolution and the opening of trade in India, the lace trade and Christian influences flourished in the 1800s.1
Through its history of international trade, as a female craft, and a sustained presence in women’s fashion, lace is a complex signifier of femininity, colonisation and the Church. A symbol of status in pre-industrial revolution fashion, it has since assumed opposing associations with the erotic and the virginal. It adorns, conceals, reveals and fetishizes the female body. Cognisant of these knotted histories, Kanchana seeks to translate memories and traces of place in her work with the material. This encoding is evident in her material listing: “Oil paint skins burnt and stripped of lace.” Each work consists of up to 30 layers of oil paint, pigment and torn lace which are separated with fire and then peeled back to reveal a contemporary lace that is distinctly of Kanchana’s making.
Above: Kanchana Gupta, 2024. Photography by Sarah Isabelle Tan. Opposite: Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #05, 2023, oil paint skins burnt and stripped of lace, 59 × 80 cm each (framed)
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #10, 2024, oil paint skin burnt and stripped off French machine made lace, 110 cm × 85 cm (framed)
“Through its history of international trade, as a female craft, and a sustained presence in women’s fashion, lace is a complex signifier of femininity, colonisation and the Church.
A symbol of status in pre-industrial revolution fashion, it has since assumed opposing associations with the erotic and the virginal.”
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #02, 2023, oil paint skin burnt and stripped off French machine made lace, 58 cm × 48 cm (framed)
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #02 and Open and Close #10, 2024, installation view. Photography by Aaron Anderson. Opposite: Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #14, 2024, oil paint skin burnt and stripped off, French machine made lace, 83 cm × 64 cm (framed).
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close #27, Open and Close #16 and Open and Close #18, 2024, installation view. Photography by Aaron Anderson.
Soon after separation, the base layers of lace are discarded and only ghostly impressions of patterns remain. From afar the pieces have a rugged, earthy texture that is at odds with their raw materials. Draw closer, and the impressions of leaves, tendrils and floral motives on paint skins reveal themselves. Much is lost in photographs of the work: the alluring glow, the tactility. Leaning into stereotypes of femininity, Kanchana has veered away from her usual industrial blues, grey and white to experiment with a softer palette of rosy tones, peach, cool lilacs and violet. These are paintings that float in space, without a canvas. Their display in clear glass box frames gives each work the aura of an archival object.
Through the controlled use of colour charts, an intricate schedule of painting and paint-drying across multiple pieces, and the laborious handiwork of cutting textile in her Singapore home studio, Kanchana develops a deeply haptic understanding of her material before subjecting it to the flame. Fire is also a central tenet in her belief system as a Hindu. “It is a both creator and destroyer,” she explains, “In cremation after death, the body is returned to fire to liberate the soul. It’s role as an agent of both purification and transformation is at heart of why I've been playing with heat and fire for almost 10 years now. Arriving at art later in life, the artist’s slow, deliberate process has offered an antidote to her fast-paced, corporate nine-to-five. As a self-professed “type A personality” the unpredictability of the final stage remains a test of patience. When I spoke to Kanchana, just five of the eighteen pieces from her latest round of firing had made the cut.
The earliest form of needle lace is known as ‘punto en aire’ or ‘stitches in the air’. The material’s openwork surface means that the pattern of open space is as important as its solid motif. 2 In Kanchana’s contemporary lace works, this open web of thread absorbs her bodily (and inherently feminine) labour and acknowledges the female lacemakers before her. In recording its impressions anew and discarding the base layers, Kanchana reclaims female agency of its fractured material history and associations. Humming with colour and history, each piece elegantly interrogates the intersection between collective and personal memory.
1. Mies, Maria. The Lace Makers of Narsapur, Spinifex Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=952666. Created from usyd on 2024-05-12 10:12:33.
Kanchana Gupta, Open and Close Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney, 15 August – 07 September, 2024
Gemma Smith
TEXT COURTESY THE ARTIST PORTRAIT BY JESSICA MAURER
A process-based approach to painting has led Gemma Smith’s exploration of abstraction for over two decades. She has continually pushed her practice in new directions, approaching painting through a variety of conceptual methodologies.
Gemma Smith, Collision and Improvisation (ceiling), 2012, Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law, Brisbane, Acrylic on concrete, 16 × 16m. Photography: John Gollings.
Sometimes, self-imposed boundaries set the terms of compositional games, while at others times she pits intuition and chance against analysis and control. A sense of discovery infiltrates each work, never moving towards a pre-determined composition but harnessing an infectious sense of potentiality. While the method may vary for different bodies of work, the embrace of the pleasure or sensation of painting is key to Smith’s practice.
Emily Cormack writes, “Smith’s practice is like an ecosystem unto itself, adhering to its own codes and systems that mutate willfully and with obvious pleasure.”
Colour is arguably Smith’s subject as a painter. She has long been interested in its theories and histories but is also attuned to its sensational qualities. Through relentless trial and error, she explores its interactions and dimensionality, creating complex visual puzzles that create deeply rewarding experiences for the viewer.
In Melancholia (five greens), 2020, from her threshold series, colour is used as a spatial tool. An ethereal and complex work, it pushes and pulls at our gaze, from the surface to the deepest layers of the composition. Minute amounts of colour are mixed into opaque white paint and smoothed together by hand to remove any trace of gesture or mark that would interfere with our perception. Upon first glance, these tonal shifts are almost imperceptible, yet with time luminous blooms of colour emerge to a point where “it [is] hard to imagine not seeing them so intensely.” Melancholia demands a patient kind of looking, rewarding the viewer with its chromatic nuance.
Smith’s recent glazed acrylic paintings mobilise a different game, seeing the artist add one singular ‘slice’ of translucent paint per day. With works such as Thrown Open (2022), each layer must dry completely before the next is applied. As if layers of cellophane, each prism contributes to a kaleidoscopic field of colour, a chromatic gestalt. Advantages to both (2023), deploys a similar methodology. Each new colour is mixed and applied in response to what’s already present. Almost immediately the artist makes the decision to keep the gesture, or wash it off if it doesn’t feel right. This
approach is repeated daily, sometimes for months. This methodical process allows the composition to evolve incrementally.
By contrast, in Zero (2016), acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2020, was executed rapidly in layers with the canvas lying flat, she obscured her view of the entire painting to allow for compositional surprise. The process is physical - the painting the extent of Smith’s arm’s reach. The work is repeatedly stood up, rotated, laid flat again, offering a different compositional take with each movement. Once again, Smith uses water to obliterate a whole layer, only to start again. Each tonal shift is tidal, in perfect balance with each new wash of colour. The viewer is caught in a riptide, pulled from one hue to the next, in a tumultuous whirl.
Smith’s painting is a celebration of chromatic dynamism, teetering the line between a focused methodology and improvised intuition. As Julie Ewington so aptly writes, Smith’s painting “takes a perverse pleasure in colour”, and it is truly the joy of colour that lies at the heart of her practice.
A leading figure in contemporary painting, Smith’s work has been collected extensively, and is held in major institutional collections across the country. Recently her works has been included in exhibitions such as Living Patterns, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2023), Know My Name Know My Name, National Gallery, Canberra (2020), and Wheriko –Brilliant!, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhet, Christchurch (2019). Smith has completed major public art projects such as Collision and Improvisation at the Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law (Brisbane, 2012), and Triple Tangle, the 2018 Foyer Wall Commission at the MCA. A major survey of her career, Rhythm Sequence (2019), was exhibited at UNSW Galleries in Sydney, and travelled to QUT Art Museum, Brisbane.
Gemma Smith, Advantages to both, 2023, acrylic on linen, 180 × 180 cm
Gemma Smith, Thrown open, 2022, acrylic on linen, 180 × 180 cm
Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise
Presented by Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
A national tour celebrating the natural beauty and wonder of the Australian Maratus spider. Opens 31 August 2024
Participating galleries include:
Cairns Art Gallery, QLD – 31 August - 24 November 2024
Tweed Regional Gallery, NSW – 10 May 2025 - 3 August 2025
Geraldton Art Gallery, WA – 23 August - 2 November 2025
Bunjil Place, VIC – 27 November 2025 - 22 February 2026
Orange Regional Gallery, NSW – 7 March - 17 May 2026
Canberra Museum & Gallery, ACT – 30 May - 23 August 2026
Tony Albert, Sarah Byrne, Matthew Griffin, Gordon Hookey, Maria Kozic, Ursula Larin, Michael Lindeman, Daniel McKewen, Amelia McLeish and Alex Seton.
Image credit: Alex Seton, Exercise ball (Dust collector), 2009. Statuario marble. Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2009. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Sullivan and Strumpf. Photo: Carl Warner.
RAMESH MARIO NITHIYENDRAN
GODS, ANIMALS, SOUTH ASIAN
TRADITIONAL dress, Hello Kitty and wildlife.
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Seated Figure with Blue Face II (in development), 2024. Photography by Bowen Arico.
BL Gods, animals, South Asian traditional dress, Hello Kitty and wildlife. What draws you to these seemingly disparate things? Is there a common thread here and in this new body of work?
RMN There’s excess in my work. Seemingly disconnected interests support my maximalist approach to artmaking. For example, I’m obsessed with vernacular sculpture from South Asia, particularly histories and practices associated with Hindu and Buddhist sculptural forms. I love CGI and other examples of wild animation. I’m also super engaged by the proposition of working with sculptural materials in ways that defy expectations. In circling back to this idea of ‘disparate things’, I quite consciously proceed with what I refer to as a kind of creative ‘flattening’ when I approach historical and cultural references and materials. I try to ignore elitist views that contemporary art needs to be self-referential, mystified and removed from life. You could frame this approach within a lens of postmodernism (or even different regional experiences of modernism). But working with suites of imagery and materials that traverse regional, time and experiential boundaries seems, perhaps counter intuitively, the most cohesive way to critically reflect on the conditions of life in 2024. In other words, and in relation to this body of work, I’m proposing that the chaotic synthesis of Hello Kitty, Gandharan Buddhist imagery, Asian water monitors, synthetic hair and all-knowing third eyes and many other things could be considered mundane. BL You’re also basically describing a lot of Asian childhoods and households with that collection of visual references: that cross-section of the holy and divine, and what others might regard as ostensibly trash. My childhood was shrines to ancestors, statues of Buddhist goddess and Doeraemon and Keropi, so it makes sense to me. At the same time, when it comes to writing, I know often asking myself, “Why this story, and why now?” Do you ask yourself similar questions when creating a new body of work?
RMN I’m not saying artists need to ‘critically reflect the conditions of 2024’, but it’s a creative and intellectual challenge that grounds my work. There are so many cliches about ‘unprecedent current times’ and the roles of ‘culture’ in the context of now. Philosophically, I see making art as an attempt to bend regional axes, develop practices that move beyond out-dated societal norms and think about cultural and environmental sustainability in speculative and imaginative ways. This act of imbuing spiritual or cultural significance into what could be considered ‘ostensible trash’ is interesting, as I still believe there is something magical about art. Something beyond language… BL There’s one sculpture in particular that’s already stopping me in my tracks. It’s you working at a different scale – like, well beyond our height – and also veering towards a realism in its facial features that isn’t common in your work. Tell me about this sculpture? Do they have a name?
RMN This is the central work in the forthcoming exhibition. In fact, the show gets its title from it! It’s a large, multi-part, painted bronze figure titled ‘Self Portrait with Masks’. I see him as a transcendent figure in deep contemplation. His eyes are closed! This narrative element is a new
development in my sculptural practice. In some ways, this work, as well as others in the exhibition, draws inspiration from the diverse regional histories and visual languages connected to the sculptural archetypes of the reclining and seated Buddha figures. This reflects new developments related to my explorations of religious sculptural iconographies connected to my Sri Lankan ancestry. Hindu, Christian and Buddhist cultures have coexisted and been intertwined in Sri Lanka since the introduction of Christianity in the 1st century and Buddhism in the 3rd. There are many examples of syncretism between these schools of thought and philosophies which I find endlessly fascinating and sources of creative inspiration. But to answer your question, its name could be RAMESH!
BL Which begs the question… the face is yours, right?
RMN Yes! We cast my face. I was horizontal on a metal table with my (trusted) friends at Mal Wood Foundry in Melbourne…My face was buried under a pile of alginate. We then peeled it off and embedded plaster into it. This created a realistic mask-like impression of my face. I wanted to maintain a self-consciousness to the realism or hyper-realism here. The seamlines are maintained. You can see the process of its construction. I’ve been practicing as an artist for ten years now. Upon reflection, it’s become clear that self-portraiture as both a genre and gesture has been a core interest artistically and culturally. Accusations of narcissism are sure to follow. But perhaps it’s more existential… self-exploration could be the only constant in life. I’m sure you’ve had many discussions around the politics of representation, and even self-representation within your work? Presenting narratives that are parallel to dominant discourses sometimes means you are burdened with representing more than yourself… queer or migrant communities so to say. There are ethical considerations that inevitably follow.
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Figure with Flat Mask II, 2024, earthenware and glaze. 75 × 45 × 26cm. Photography by Mark Pokorny.
BL
What was the process of making it like?
RMN Messy, intuitive, collaborative, emotional, cerebral, complicated…like life! Firstly, I made a large, mixed-media temporary sculpture or assemblage. This included my own 3D printed hands, costume-style masks from a party shop, play do, wet terracotta, kiln bricks and mixed-media cardboard masks. Throwaway capitalist culture - meets AI - meet life casting - meets ancient forms! The sculpture was then alchemically transformed into bronze through lost-wax casting methods with Mal at the foundry. It was given colour with a combination of hand-painting, automotive spray-painting and some patina!
The combination of surface treatments reflects my intent to impart a ‘synthetic’ element in the work that anchored it within a current, urban vernacular. The predominant colour is a radiant, reflective hot pink. The sculpture is doused in it! Why pink? Think, joy, humour, contemporary veneration, queerness, RGB and iconicity!
BL There are often jagged edges in your work, but there’s another sculpture that is so textural, spiky and delicate, it borders on fine coral. Tell me the story of what you wanted to convey with this piece.
RMN You’re talking about the big spiky durian or jackfruit-like heads. I’ve been developing these forms for years. They are large hollow forms hand-built from clay. Each spike is labour intensively hand formed and secured to the surface. I see these works as votive masks, shields or ceremonial or performative props. I’ve developed the mask motif in various new ways with this new body of work. There are references to Sri Lankan ‘yakka’ masks, throwaway costume props (ostensible trash), digital avatars and several other things. There are masks physically embedded into various larger forms and figures. You will also find ceramic and bronze masks on the walls of the exhibition. I haven’t done this before! On a related note, there is an exquisite corpse sentiment to the entire installation. Many works are modular, with interchangeable parts. These gestures to multiplicity, revisionist modes of thinking and perhaps some permeability to facets of identity connect to my belief that ‘sculpture’ can be inherently amorphous.
BL Your dad’s from a Hindu background. What I find so striking in the imagery of that religion is that it’s so visual and so multiple – and I see that multiplicity in your work.
RMN There is a polychromatic sensibility to South Asian vernacular at large. The dull palettes of grey and beige often aligned with Western austerity are seldom seen. Colour is not necessarily associated with occasion, but a default position. I see my sculptures performing the polychrome with some sense of hyperbole. I have been drawn to Hindu sculpture ever since I was child, roaming at the Hindu temple in Westmead for various cultural gathering. The shapeshifting, polymorphous sensibilities of these deities provoked my imagination in amazing ways at the time. I don’t identify as religious, but exploring the development of these representations, perhaps less naively as an adult, has provided endless material for creative exploration. Cross-cultural contact, repatriation, disputes of provenance, multi-pronged narratives…there is endless content. I don't know if you’ve had any religious experience…
The Self Portrait and the Masks, work in development in Nithiyendran's studio, 2024. Photo courtesy the artist.
BL
“I see my sculptures performing the polychrome with some sense of hyperbole. I have been drawn to Hindu sculpture ever since I was child, roaming at the Hindu temple in Westmead for various cultural gathering.”
Twelve years of hardcore Lutheran education. Also, I’m Chinese and we have “ancestor worship” –but that for me feels less like religion, and more like a code for how to live: you know your ancestors live amongst and within you. Your work captures the sense of the holy, but there’s also playfulness there. How important is fun and play in your work?
RMN This sense of ‘wildness’ is a highly constructed aesthetic register. I don’t deny that pushing materials to their expressive limits is enjoyable. However, making something seem exhaled with a heightened expressive energy is incredibly cerebral for me. This is especially the case when working with volatile materials like ceramics.
BL So what you're saying is your work is not fun to make. I've done ceramics class as an adult, and I found it really hard. So much can go wrong at every single moment. Things collapse! They shatter! They explode! It’s stressful.
RMN I feel my conception of fun might be different to most. Making my work is enjoyable, but it's hard. It's dramatic all the things that can happen during ceramic production. But there is also a philosophical pressure when you are working with this material. I feel this pressure when generally making art. I could expand, but I’ll leave it with the sobering note that as I get older, this feels heavier. Although, it is ultimately a generative feeling and encourages me to push boundaries and be braver.
BL So that’s where the idea of you as “the bad boy of ceramics” came from.
RMN I don’t think I’ll ever escape this title. It emerged from a time when I was younger and explorations of gender and sexualised imagery were more pronounced in my work. Now… I'm more mature. [Laughs] But I also don't feel like I make ceramics.
BL What do you feel like you make?
RMN Sculpture. Artworks. Art. Physical manifestations of ideas.
BL You've also worked with bronze, clay, concrete, neon, LED, fibreglass …
RMN I've worked with everything. I paint, draw, use human hair. Everything is fair game.
BL What's the most fucked material to work with?
RMN Emotionally or politically?
BL All of the above.
RMN Ceramics.
BL Of all the materials, there’s something about ceramics that especially reminds us of how art will outlive us. Someone I know recently phrased it really well: all art becomes artefact at some point. But the speed with which that happens now is so rapid. So when you see the span of your work and its evolution over the past decade, what do you see?
RMN There's what I'm hoping to see, and what I’m actually seeing. I'm hoping to see more complexity over time… whatever that means.
BL Your work’s scale has changed over time. Has the shape of your ambition changed too?
RMN Yes.
BL How so?
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Figure with Flat Mask I, 2024, earthenware and glaze, 76 × 44 × 26cm. Photography by Mark Pokorny.
“There is a polychromatic sensibility to South Asian vernacular at large. The dull palettes of grey and beige often aligned with Western austerity are seldom seen.”
RMN Do you remember when you were 30, and you’d just be happy? I feel I have more of a sense of death, finity and mortality in this moment.
BL Wait, how old are you now?
RMN 35.
BL Ramesh, you're still a sweet summer lamb.
RMN But now when you go to the GP, they're like, “Hmm …”
BL Well, I’m in my 40s. The words “arthritis” and “agespot” have come up.
RMN “Blood pressure.”
BL Death is not abstract anymore.
RMN Connecting the artwork in the forthcoming exhibition with this idea of death is an interesting proposition. You’ll notice many of the eyes are closed in this new body of work…deep contemplation, reflection, asceticism. It’s a new era! I’m more aware I can only make a finite amount of artwork. When I was a bit younger, I was like, “I can make anything I want to make!” But I feel a clearer purpose now. There can be a cultural pressure for artists to operate as these somewhat enlightened, moral beacons. Also, I don't know what your childhood was like? Mine wasn't defined by wealth; I emerged from a standard migrant refugee context in Western Sydney. I often can’t quite believe that in some ways I get to live the dream I always had as a child…to live as an artist and remind myself “I get to do this all day?”
BL Are there any bucket-list works you have in mind before you cark it?
RMN I want to make a big narrative-based working permanent fountain, where there are lots of figures interacting. That's one big idea. And I also want to be able to build lifesized terracotta sculptures – which is harder than it sounds, because terracotta is a very fine material. But my mind’s full of ideas.
BL Final question. All art is trial and error. What do your errors look like?
RMN [Laughs] Awful!
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, The Self Portrait and the Masks, Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney, 20 September – 12 October, 2024
Above: Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Black Spiky Head II, 2024, earthenware and glaze, 85 × 64 × 30cm. Photography by Mark Pokorny. Opposite: Ramesh Mario Nithiyendra, Bi Self Portrait, 2024, earthenware and glaze, 90 × 55 × 35 cm
Figure Holding Ground
Marion Abraham, Mia Boe, Jo Chew, Sam Field, Brent Harris, Pat Hoffie, Helen Johnson, Jelena Telecki and Nicole Zhang
Curated by Fernando do Campo and Michael Edwards Contemporary Art Tasmania 9 August—21 September 2024
Image: Marion Abraham, So Easy (detail), 2022. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan and Strumpf.
28 Aug to 11 Nov 2024
Sophia Al-Maria (QT/US) , Peggy Ahwesh (US) , Daniel Boyd (AU) , Jessie French (AU) , and Jemima Wyman (AU/US)
Curated by Amelia Wallin latrobe.edu.au/art-institute
Image: Jemima Wyman , Haze 16 , 2023 , Hand cut digital photo collage , 122 × 91.5 cm
The Weight of Colour
Sydney Ball
curated by David Flack
David Flack interviewed by Claire Summers
Photography Tim Salisbury
CS: Can you describe your first encounter with a Sydney Ball work?
DF: The very first encounter would have been through studying Ball’s work in secondary school. However, it was when I became reacquainted with his work through The Field: Revisited in 2018 at the National Gallery of Victoria, a major exhibition of Ball’s work that my relationship to his work deepened; it was an immediate connection. From there I began curating his work into clients’ collections and the Flack Studio’s collection.
Sydney Ball, Zamitex, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 107.5 × 122 cm
CS: A body of work as vast and as varied as Ball’s it’s difficult to isolate the works that fill this exhibition let alone a single work, but can you name a distinct work of his that causes you to pause?
DF: My first selection for the exhibition was Oceania –a large painting from the late 70s. This work is where I began contemplating what would be the title of this exhibition – The Weight of Colour – in more depth, allowing it to inform further thinking in the curation. Experiencing the scale of the work, the layers, the colours–each made me question his decades of practice and how he approached years of colour studies, shape, volume, depth of field and abstraction.
Sydney Ball, Ticondera (after 1968 version), 2002, acrylic on canvas, 152 × 232 cm (diptych)
CS: What was the governing curatorial thinking that informed your selection of works for this exhibition?
DF: I thought deeply about the artist Sydney was, about his modes of working through daily practice and commitment to on-going exploration or revisiting ideas to push their scope ever further. Through tracing the trajectory of all the decades of exhibitions and studio experiments, I started to see and feel his process and how this related to my own creativity and instinctual feeling about colour, form, volume and space. A curiosity of scale and shape has informed this curation, and an interest in seeing works from across the years and across his various distinct series in concert with one another. I took particular pleasure in placing works from the original Modular series alongside works from the Infinex series, with the latter being informed by the former, separated by 40 years.
Top: David Flack at Sydney Ball's studio, 2024. Photography by Tim Salisbury. Below: Sydney Ball's studio, interior, 2024. Photography by Tim Salisbury.
CS: For this exhibition you visited Sydney's home and studio in Glenorie, Sydney, which remains in the care of Sydney's wife and fellow artist Lynne Eastaway. How did experiencing that space influence the way you feel for and understand Sydney’s work?
DF: This was the moment the curation of the show became clear. Visiting the studio and home where Sydney and Lynne shared both their personal and creative lives lived really informed and clarified the direction I wanted to take with the exhibition. Access to archival works in a studio space such as Sydney’s is a unique privilege: it offered a new understanding of his process, and imagining him in this space painting, the incidental moments, the simplicity of the home by Glenn Murcutt and how this engages with the landscape, the bravery and sense of discovery that Syd endured each and every day.
Top: Sydney Ball with Stain 2 in his studio, Oxford Street, Sydney, 1975. Publicity photo for ABC TV Documentary Ten Australians. Below: Sydney Ball's studio, exterior, 2024. Photography by Tim Salisbury.
Sydney Ball, Oceania, 1977–78, enamel and acrylic on cotton duck,
CS: Sydney Ball's facility with colour earnt him renown in his lifetime. In what way’s did colour guide or influence your approach to curating this exhibition?
DF: Colour is everything in this exhibition–the title is testament to that. To greater understand what is evoked by the idea of the ‘weight’ of colour–which is in reference to a quote from Sydney . 1 I asked posited several questions, such as: How do you interrogate the colour? How does it make you feel? How do different colours relate to one another? The complexity of Sydney’s work is steadfast. When you then survey his decades of practice you see it more clearly. I wanted to show this process, to capture a sense of gravitas to each colour choice he made throughout his career.
CS: The works Sydney produced in his later career saw him err towards a hard-edge abstraction of form and a rationale of colour. His Modular works show a kinship to architectural dictates and geometric pattern languages. Your own career is defined by spatial sensitivity, by an acute awareness of the effect of colour and form. How do you feel your own ideas of space, colour and form are met by Sydney’s oeuvre?
DF: While my work is actualised through spaces created for other people, it has a strong connection to my personal perspective and innate feeling. Spaces make you feel something; they’re not transactional or two-
dimensional. They’re living and breathing homes that are layered, alive with memories and imbued with sentiments of the people that live within them. Sydney’s work does indeed have an architectural and spatial quality, particularly his later works in metal. In my own work, I see colour as something intuitive; there is a guiding instinct that informs the tonal direction of a project. This is felt in all of Sydney’s work–this strong, instinctual perspective on colour. Sydney was also an artist who worked on a continuum–he revisted theories, ideas and explorations, looking for new ways to apply them as his work progressed throughout his life. This resonates with me deeply; I have spent the last ten years exploring this in my own practice–it’s a mode of world building, of creating a distinct visual language that can be both self-referential and also inspire self-development.
1. “Well, it starts from the idea. The noumenon. In those early days I used little colour swatches… to give me an idea of a colour range that I should use; the weight of the colour that I should use; whether it’s going to be strong lighting or whether it’s going to be a deep colour process. From there I start to do little sketches and [to decide how I could] sustain it over a whole range of work.” – Sydney Ball interviewed by Gillian Serisier in Artist Profile, Issue 21, 2012
The
Naarm/Melbourne,
Sydney Ball:
Weight of Colour, curated by David Flack, Sullivan+Strumpf
29 August - 05 October, 2024
Sydney Ball, Infinex #45 , 2019, in-situ at the home shared by Sydney Ball with wife and artist Lynne Eastaway. Photography by Tim Salisbury.
Sydney Ball, Chromix Lumina 14, 2017-2018, automotive enamel on aluminium, 240 × 260 cm. Photography by Aaron Anderson.
INTERVIEW BY TIFFENY FAYNE
PORTRAIT GEORGIA CRANSTOUN
BARING THE BOWERBIRD
Sam Cranston, Superstructures VI, 2022, oil on linen, 213 × 137 cm
Intended as an art of the mind, Conceptual Art generally emphasises cognitive rather than aesthetic value. When it comes to Sam Cranstoun, however, we are presented with work that appeals to both the intellect and the eye. Working across a wide range of media and prompted by his many research interests, Cranstoun’s work can appear divisible but when considered as a whole, interrelated strands emerge—such is the subtlety of his lead. In essence, Cranstoun’s practice to date has been largely concerned with image culture and its bearing on our understanding of the past. Moreover, Cranstoun’s methodology takes an alternate approach that offers a broad view and sheds light on lesser-known stories of our fellow man.
Eager to gain a deeper understanding of this enigmatic artist, Tiffeny Fayne fired a few questions Sam’s way. His thoughtful, sometimes controversial responses only sparked further intrigue and excitement for what is to come.
TF: Looking over your body of work, it is evident you have an inquiring mind and many interests which could have led you down several different paths. Can you share a little about what led you to pursue a career in the arts? Was there a defining moment in your life or was it more a more gradual realisation?
SC: The realisation happened gradually, then suddenly—to borrow a phrase. I have always wanted to make and knew from very early on that was the only thing I wanted to do. However, it took time to know exactly what that would look like. It wasn’t until art school that I realised making images and objects could feed off my interest in history, culture, design and philosophy—the two interests didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
TF: Ideas, histories and stories are intrinsic to your work. Are these centred around events, eras and characters or are you guided by unanticipated events, encounters or research that provokes interest?
SC: I think it’s all of those things. I think about my approach to history and popular culture as almost like a close up: bowerbird. I’m drawn to something, taken by it, held by it and on occasion consumed by it – and often I’m not yet thinking of it as something that can be incorporated into my practice. I’m led to a subject or a narrative or a moment in time via a chance encounter in a movie or a book, or through an anecdote told by a friend or family member, and if it really grabs me, it might end up in my work five or six years later.
TF: Your practice is largely concerned with the way in which popular culture and mass media shape our understanding of our past and present-day narratives. In an image-saturated multimedia age, what images have you found to be the most impactful?
SC: The use of narrative itself is what I am most fascinated by. We may not even think of the role of narrative in our understanding of history, of our collective identity or even of ourselves. This has always been the case, but we now live in a moment where the support material used to tell those narratives is so rich and complex and easily accessible. What does it mean to have those resources at our fingertips? That’s what I’ve been returning to a lot lately.
TF: Your approach to historical (often lesser-known) figures and events tends to eschew sensationalism and instead offer an alternative approach – one that more deeply considers meaning, consequence and the individual. Can you talk a little about this? For instance, how do you hope viewers will respond?
SC: Really, it’s about empathy – I’m deeply interested in the act of restoring humanity to historical figures and events. People fail, often in big ways, and those failures can shape the world significantly. But I’m curious about how small a role malice plays in the acts of individuals. History, as a narrative device, can easily turn people into villains or heroes. When all you have at your disposal is a few paragraphs in a textbook, it is impossible to avoid. But what happens if we recognise the failure of many of history’s actors as existing without malice? To err is human, after all.
TF: How do you think your research ‘pilgrimages’ to relevant sites and sources deepen your understanding of people, places, and events? Can you tell us about some of these experiences and how they permeate the work?
SC: I’m interested in the power or authority conferred to someone through acts of pilgrimage. By travelling to a specific destination, touching a holy stone, or drinking from a sacred stream, the pilgrim is elevated. They are taken more
seriously or seen as more committed to a specific cause. I see fandom as a type of contemporary pilgrimage. Collecting or consuming or directly engaging with a specific subject matter is the modern act of dedication and devotion. It toes the fine line between high and low culture, between sacred and profane. If I bought two small pieces of JFK and Jackie O’s hair from a ‘reputable’ online source, does that make me an authority on the subject, or a slightly unhinged fan? I’m happy to live in that in between space.
TF: Your interdisciplinary practice has meant that you have not been confined by genre, style or materials. Is this a result of your inquiring mind or more about choosing the most suitable materials and processes to realise each project?
SC: Again, I think it’s both. I certainly didn’t set out to make sure the work was difficult to define or avoided classification or a specific style. It simply came out of that interest in narrative. Different narratives require different images, different forms, different materials. I have always been happy for the subject matter and the research to determine materials, mediums and processes.
TF: A large part of your artmaking process typically begins with an image – either pre-existing or photographed by you. Could you explain some of the adaptations that occur when transposing an image into a painting or drawing?
SC: This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, actually. I used to think that an image existed, and through the act of painting or drawing, it was reconstituted and existed in a new, slightly different form. Simple as that. Now I understand how much exists in that in between process. Whether I’m using photoshop to scale up an image, painting from a .jpeg on a screen, or drawing from a printed image, whether the reference image is larger or smaller than the final work, it all makes a difference. Things change and shift from one surface to another. I’ve found myself wanting more and more to live in those changes lately.
TF: You work in 2D, 3D and 4D art forms, do you have a preference?
SC: It changes from day to day! Often, I will finish a series of large drawings and crave the touch of oil on canvas, or the nerve-wracking feeling of applying the first stroke of watercolour to paper. Or the high-pitched squeal of a drop-saw…
TF: What does your dream project look like?
SC: I feel most at home in archives –whether that’s physical or digital, part of a large institutional collection, or just an array of someone’s personal items. I have always wanted to do make work about the UN headquarters in New York – so I’d love to be let loose in their archives. But really, any dream project would involve unfettered access to an archive of images and objects, and no pressure around how they are to be used. I remember going to the archive in Athens of the Greek town planner who designed the city of Islamabad from scratch. So many researchers would come to access his plans for neighbourhoods in Iraq, cathedrals in Ethiopia and cities in Pakistan – but I was consumed by the folders containing receipts for tomato and cucumber seeds he bought at Brisbane hardware stores in the 50s. Those weren’t particularly popular folders, I was told…
TF: If you had a time machine, what historical event or art period would you want to experience and why?
SC: This is a tough one! Depending on what you believe, I would love to go back and witness either one of the global gatherings of people after the first moon landing, or the studio in London where they filmed it with Stanley Kubrick. I’m easy either way…
Top: Sam Cranstoun, Installation view of You Are Neither Here Nor There at UniSC Art Gallery 2023. Photography by Timothy Birch for Horizon Festival. Below: Sam Cranstoun, Red Osprey in Ikea Livery, 2023, oil on linen, 121.9 × 152.4 cm.
KERAMEIKOS THE POTTERS’ QUARTER
Idil Abdullahi Glenn Barkley Kirsten Coelho
Janet Fieldhouse
Juz Kitson
Monica Rani Rudhar
Vipoo Srivilasa
New exhibition opens 24 August
Kirsten Coelho
Elegy for Twelve Maidens 2024 12 Porcelain objects
Satin Glaze - 35 x 60 x 60 cm
Photograph Grant Hancock
SEPTEMBER 6–8
TONY ALBERT’S APPROPRIATE ABORIGINALIA
Renowned Australian painter and printmaker Margaret Preston’s (1875-1963) was one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to incorporate and center Aboriginal life and culture and position it into a national visual language. Working in the early 20th century, her still lifes were bound with the ideas and aesthetics of Modernism, which included, as it did for her contemporaries in Europe (she studied in Munich, Paris, and London), appreciation and appropriation of nonEuropean art.
Working a century apart from Preston, acclaimed Aboriginal artist Tony Albert, appropriates her still lifes of native flowers to enter into a dialogue not only with Preston’s artistic legacy and that of Modernism, as do many of his contemporaries, but also reckons with the tradition and inheritance of Aboriginalia, which Preston’s work inadvertently quickened, and challenges our understanding of appropriation, contemporary Australian and Aboriginal visual culture, and Indigenous sovereignty.
Like many a modernist artist in search of primitivism and other art forms from colonized or exotic places and cultures, Preston had also traveled throughout Asia, where she was heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock prints and Chinese landscapes. A student of Aboriginal art and design (she had traveled extensively throughout Australia), at the time she held progressive beliefs about the depth and intricacy of Aboriginal art and what it meant for national Australian identity and expression and world art. Preston's views reflected developments in European art influenced by colonial expansion and extraction, while they were also paralleled by the Australian government's assimilation policies in place at the time. Unlike her European counterparts—living and working in the context of a settler colonial state (founded on the premise that Aboriginal people were primitive and intellectually inferior people either be eliminated or assimilated) hers seems to have been as much a nation-building project as about Australian art’s unique contribution to Modernism, namely Aboriginal art’s flat design, solid colors, and symbols.
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
DANIEL SHERINGTON
TEXT BY ERIOLA PIRA
Eriola Pira is a New York-based curator and writer. She is a curator at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School.
Aboriginal art was not only a subject matter and style to be adopted and freely appropriated by white Australians like herself, but also applied widely to all aspects of Australian life, from the decorative arts to home décor. Aboriginal flora and fauna and Indigenous motifs, designs, and earthy colors became the defining element of Preston’s hand colored woodcut still lives of native flowers, distinguished by striking geometric forms and defined by prominent black outlines. A lowly regarded genre in the hierarchy of high art, still lifes allowed Preston to explore different styles, colors and compositions and bridging the gap between art and craft, but also, on account of her gender, her prints were dismissed by critics as decorative. Still, she saw potential in the decorative arts and crafts for their mass appeal and reach beyond the traditional art world.
Establishing Australia’s national aesthetic on craft, she believed, would put women at its forefront and safeguard that Indigenous art and design remained vibrant and relevant in a modern, cosmopolitan Australia. Preston’s success as an artist and encouragement inadvertently also paved the way for the cultural pillaging and extractive economy that followed as Aboriginal designs and motifs were plastered on everything from tea towels to ashtrays, fabric design, biscuit tins, figurines, ornaments and prints , all of which have become Albert’s primary materials.
Albert’s practice has long centered around his vast collection of Aboriginalia, Aboriginal cultural designs and figures in souvenirs, bric-a-brac, and home decor, which he’s amassed since childhood. Trafficking in racist stereotypes, these objects and designs were easily recognized, commodified, and imitated. They became widely available and accessible, perhaps achieving the totalizing effect if not the spirit of Preston’s project. At least since 2021, Albert, in his signature use of Aboriginalia, has been in dialogue with Preston and the legacy of her work taking up her call and vision for an Aboriginal national visual identity. For his Sullivan+Strumpf booth at this year’s Armory Show, Albert presents his third series in this body of work, “Unpacking History”, which began with “Conversations with Margaret Preston” and later with “Remarks.” As in these earlier series, in some 7 new paintings, Albert appropriates Preston’s work and signature style to engage with Preston and her ideas and through her with a contemporary public about art, identity, and their interrelation. Retaining Preston’s stark and geometric shapes but filling them in with scraps of fabric from his collection, Albert uses the very same imagery of exploitative tropes that Preston’s work spawned to disturb and complicate their reading and reception today. Colorful vintage fabrics full of text, figures, designs that literally and figuratively read “Aboriginal art” is meticulously composed to evoque or mimic Preston, while offering a dialectical juxtaposition of high art and mass-reproduced culture that is a hallmark of post-War contemporary art.
her argument and work of positioning Aboriginal art within Modernism and extends it into the present and within contemporary art, where for better or for worse it exists alongside Aboriginalia.
For Albert, much like for Preston for whom still lifes were ‘really laboratory tables on which aesthetic problems can be isolated,’ the quiet radicalism of still lives, the prosaic nature of the subject matter, allows for experimentation with form and meaning and way to explore broader question about genre, gender, self (determination), and cultural appropriation. Nesting Aboriginalia’s troubling presence within Preston’s flowers and domain of domestic respectability, can also be understood as a queer gesture of sorts and part of Albert’s ongoing investigation of visibility and invisibility. But Albert doesn’t hide or conceal Aboriginalia so much as contextualizes, interprets and recasts it from an Aboriginal perspective, underscoring its role in the erasure and subjugation of Aboriginal people.
Removing these harmful images and objects, remnants of a violent and oppressive history, as he does, from circulation and their intended use in white homes, cutting up, remixing and resetting them in Preston’s outlines of Native flora, Albert enters them into renewed conversations about Australian Aboriginal identity and contemporary art.
Albert’s practice has long centered around his vast collection of Aboriginalia, Aboriginal cultural designs and figures in souvenirs, bric-a-brac, and home decor, which he’s amassed since childhood. Trafficking in racist stereotypes, these objects and designs were easily recognized, commodified, and imitated.
Less interested in decrying her appropriation and inappropriate use of sacred images without acknowledgment or respect, which goes without saying and has been rehearsed by many other artists who have also taken Preston to task, Albert’s intentions are to reconcile her aims of promoting Aboriginal art within Modernism and the unintended outcome of reducing it to kitsch caricatures and commodity objects. The double appropriation, Preston’s modernist iconography and pop culture’s Aboriginalia, stages the tension between the two in Albert’s work, while reclaiming and returning both to their origin, an Aboriginal maker and rightful inheritor and custodian of the legacies of Aboriginal art, in Modernism and in Aboriginalia. Albert’s approach, that is an earnest conversation with Preston and her legacy, both engages with the premise of
Albert’s with Preston and his reclamation of Aboriginalia enacts the principles Indigenous self-determination, which includes how to deal with and reconcile pernicious legacy and presence of Aboriginalia in contemporary Australia. Turning nineteenth century European landscape and still life genre on its head, Albert’s still lives are similarly bound with ideas of conquest, ownership, and possession but this time of taking back and making one’s own and make proper Aboriginal art, design, and life (including its misappropriation) by and for Aboriginal people. Owning and using Aboriginalia, as Albert and other Aboriginal artists have, restores these objects and images to whence they came from and to those most impacted by their reproduction as racist tropes. That Albert, and other First Nations artists, now critically appropriate, quote, and parody Aboriginalia in their art, where these images and objects now circulate for sale in the contemporary art market as Aboriginal art on its own terms, is a means of reconciliation by way of restitution and reparations. Albert doesn’t stop there: his repurposing and reclamation of Aboriginalia finds its way back into tea towels, coasters, or wearables, making Aboriginal art and design accessible and available outside of the traditional art world, much like Preston had envisioned and perhaps closer to the national visual identity she’d imagined.
Tony Albert, The Armory Show, Javits Center, New York 06 September - 08 September, 2024
Clockwise from top left: Tony Albert, Unpacking History (Disbelief), 2024, acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas, 101.5 × 101.5 cm; Unpacking History (Disarm), 2024, acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas, 101.5 × 101.5 cm; Unpacking History (Disappear), 2024, acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas, 101.5 × 101.5 cm; and Unpacking History (Defoliate), 2024, acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas, 101.5 × 101.5 cm
TIFFANY LOY
INTERVIEW CLAIRE SUMMERS
PHOTOGRAPHY JING WEI
CS: Can you speak to your application of or techniques with colour to create dimension in your work?
TL: It’s very medium specific. There are so many ways of mixing colour, right? A painter might mix two paint colours together or put two colours close together. For textile artists, it's quite similar, except that we're talking about a completely different level of resolution. When you work with threads, because they can be very, very fine, you are working with a very tiny surface area of colour, and that changes everything. Your perception of the colour diminishes, and that allows us to test many things related to what the human eye can actually perceive. The way I work with colour is to really exploit the fineness of it in terms of that dimension, and to observe the limits of what can be observable.
CS: There is a complex dimensionality created by your technique with thread, particularly in your augmented waffles series. The effect is rather hypnotic, especially at scale. Can you speak about what it is you are exploring with this technique?
TL: I think the technique of waffle weave is infamous amongst weavers because it's known as the low hanging fruit. It’s something that is effortlessly three-dimensional and has existed for a long time, but at the same time it is challenging and still expandable through exploration. Different artists or craftspeople have had their own interpretations of it, and as a weave structure, it is something very fundamental to which you can add many things or augment in different ways. The way I see it is, because of my obsession with fineness and very certain threads, I have augmented it in such a way that I've made it very fragile, which is the opposite of what you may expect the application of waffle weave to be. The waffles that I create are so fragile, they're almost barely held in place, because they are stretched beyond their usual scale. When it's presented that way, I feel like I'm almost trying to capture space itself within those very thin lines through a skeleton of threads. For me, that's what's been fascinating.
Loom in Tiffany Loy's studio, 2024
Tiffany Loy in her studio, 2024
Material study in the studio, 2024.
CS: What role does cultural practice play in your work? Are there any traditional patination you refer to, or a particular history of the textiles that you work with that have been adapted for contemporary practice?
TL: When I was studying at the Royal College of Art in London, I came across this gauze weave structure that that has been practised for thousands of years. Nobody really knows who invented it, but the idea of a gauze weave is one that is extremely loose. It's stretchy, but it's structurally very sound and very strong. I'm fascinated by how all these very thin threads that look like they're barely held together are still strong and stable. That’s the starting point for many of my explorations about lines and space, about lines in or around space, about the fragility of lines. To see textile, not just as a surface, but to see the line that precedes that surface. After that, it spins off into something quite philosophical.
CS: The sense of geometry in your work, both in the ways your pieces are installed in a space and within the pattern languages in a single work, takes on both linear and fluid qualities. Is there a different feeling or atmosphere you are reaching for when you employ a straight line over an organic one, and vice versa?
TL: I'm glad you're asking that, because what you’re alluding to is the product of an invisible force: tension. All weavers are very sensitive to tension. It's like the way a guitarist would tune strings– you need to be very sensitive to how much tension there is holding on to that string. With my Waffle series, because there's such a great amount of tension, and the threads are packed really tight, everything becomes really, really strict. The reason why a waffle weave is three-dimensional is because of differential tension–the longest line that's popping out the most is the least tense, and the shortest line is the tensest. That difference causes some lines to pop out and others to recede. And with the loose, more organic lines in my work, it's the lack of tension that allows the lines to work in such a way. When I see threads being straight or loose, I don't see them as a painter
would where the artist is drawing it and dictating it to be straight or wavy, but I'm seeing how much tension there is on the thread. There's an invisible force that I am quite aware of.
CS: What themes or techniques are holding your focus at present? What can we expect from your practice as we move forward together?
TL: I’m meditating on the idea of perception, but not optics in a traditional sense. If I use the word optics, it would be related to things like perspective and that's perhaps more the domain of painters. When I think of perception of colour, volume and scale, I’m curious about the limitation of our eyes, which are easily confused–I even get confused by my own work. I'm curious about this disconnect between what the eyes are seeing and what the brain is knowing, and the physical limits of seeing. When something has such fine resolution, you can't help but move closer to see it. But then our eyes also have another limit in that once we get too close, we need to move further away again. There is a physical experience when looking at something very, very, very small. It also requires a lot of confidence to show things that are very small or have very small details. It demands the viewer’s attention and effort, and it's something I'm quite excited about exploring in the next one or two years.
Beckett Rozentals. Courtesy NGV. Photographed by Narelle Wilson.
BECKETT ROZENTALS
Curator, Australian Art,
National Gallery of Victoria
Interview Claire Summers
CS You were part of the curatorial team that presented The Field Revisited: a 2018 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) that recreated The Field exhibition for its fifty-year anniversary. What was most notable about the experience of updating this extraordinary exhibition for a new audience?
BR The 1960s saw a new generation of artists emerge in Australia, with many beginning to embrace international artistic styles, such as hard edge and colour field painting. The Field artists were the face of this new generation and were referred to as the new abstractionists. Small contemporary galleries such as Gallery A (Melbourne and Sydney), Central Street Gallery (Sydney), Strines Gallery (Melbourne), Pinacotheca (Melbourne) were vital hubs of avant-garde activity and supported many of The Field artists.
This was also a momentous time for the NGV, as it opened the doors to its St. Kilda Road building, designed by Sir Roy Grounds, in August 1968. The Field was the inaugural exhibition of the new premises, and the works featured in stark contrast to the NGV’s predominantly historical collection. To mark the 50 th exhibition of The Field, the NGV mounted The Field Revisited. It was both a privilege and a joy to co-curate The Field Revisited with our director Tony Ellwood. In the lead up to the restaging, I dedicated countless hours in the attempt to track down all 74 paintings and sculptures included in the original exhibition. At the time of the opening of The Field Revisited, the fate of only six paintings and six sculptures remained a mystery.
The NGV stayed as faithful to the original presentation as possible, despite some challenges, such as the original gallery space no longer existing and having fewer than 10 images depicting the interior of the 1968 exhibition. What was most notable about the experience of restaging the exhibition 50 years later for a new audience was how contemporary the exhibition looked! The works looked so fresh!
CS Both The Field and The Field Revisited featured works by renowned artist Sydney Ball. To your mind, what enduring element of his work makes him so important to the history of Australian art?
BR Sydney Ball was a pivotal figure in Australian art history, and central in the development of abstract art in Australia throughout the 1960s. He lived in New York between 1963-65 and 1969-70. During his time in New York, Ball fostered his own refined yet complex style of colour-based abstraction, as demonstrated in his series Canto which he commenced in the mid-1960s.
Ball brought back innovative ideas and techniques to Australia from his time abroad, which he disseminated to his peers and students. His career was marked by constant evolution, with the experimentation of colour and symmetry at the heart of his practice. Embracing colour over form is perhaps the most enduring element of his practice, and the foundation of his legacy.
Before his passing in 2017, Sydney Ball reflected that The Field still maintains great importance, and its restaging allowed a “reappraisal of the period that liberated Australian art from its provincialism to a ‘Golden Period’ of work by emerging artists of the time determined to take on not only the best Australia had to offer, but to excel on the world stage.” 1
CS In your time as a curator at the NGV, a tenure defined by several landmark exhibitions, which exhibition stands out in your recollections as particularly significant?
BR During my time at the NGV, I have had the privilege of curating numerous exhibitions on key Australian artists, including Robert Jacks: Order and Variation and Found & Gathered: Rosalie Gascoigne & Lorraine Connelly Northey
Most recently, I curated Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson, which is currently open at NGV Australia. Grace Crowley and Ralph Balson were instrumental in the development abstract art in Sydney, and their collaborative practice resulted in two of the most compelling bodies of work in Australian art history. The exhibition charts their move into pure abstraction in the 1940s, and the significant role they played in shaping the modern art movement.
I have also had the pleasure of being part of the larger curatorial team for standout exhibitions, such as Melbourne Now in both 2013 and 2023. Highlighting the extraordinary work of Victorian-based artists, designers, studios and firms, these were truly landmark exhibitions!
CS We rely on art to express and or respond to the most urgent ideas of our time. Can you name a work of contemporary art that has resonated most strongly with you for its reflection of the time in which it was made?
BR I had the pleasure of working with Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison for their contribution to Melbourne Now 2023. As artists and wildlife carers, their practice addresses conservation and biodiversity. Gracia and Louise’s largest installation to date, The remaking of things, 2023, occupied an entire gallery space at NGV Australia and was an immersive collage depicting a pocket of restored eucalyptus forest habitat by the bank of the Birrarung for the Grey-headed flying fox. Constructed using a series of one hundred images drawn from the NGV Collection, this epic work was a message of the importance of restored habitat, and placed an emphasis on what we can grow, rather than what has been lost. Their work reminded viewers of the significant role flying foxes play in our local environment, and that we cannot afford to lose this threatened species.
In their roles as wildlife carers, Gracia and Louise fostered a number of grey-headed flying fox pups in late 2022 and early 2023, with the duo’s practice extending well beyond the gallery walls. This is work by such inspirational artists which such an important message.
1. Sydney Ball to Beckett Rozentals, 2015
Irfan Hendrian
18 Oct -27 Oct
The Arts House, Singapore
Natalya Hughes
12 Sept – 12 Oct 24
UP NEXT
Frieze London 2024
09 Oct – 13 Oct | Regent’s Park, London
Gregory Hodge, Lindy Lee, Naminapu Maymuru-Whit
Sullivan+Strumpf Naarm/Melbourne
Marion Abraham
17 Oct – 09 Nov
Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney
Jemima Wyman
17 Oct – 09 Nov
Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney
Art Jakarta 2024 4 – 6 Oct 2024 Jiexpo Kemayoran
Glenn Barkley 14 Nov – 14 Dec
Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney
Lara Merrett 14 Nov – 14 Dec
Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney
Naminapu Maymuru-White, part of 17 panel installation, forthcoming to Frieze London 2024.
