Sullivan+Strumpf Contemporary Art Gallery Sydney & Melbourne, Australia & Singapore – Sep-Nov 2023

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Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf

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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.

Front cover: Gregory Hodge Garden II, 2023 acrylic on linen 200 x 160 cm

Back cover: Gregory Hodge in his studio, 2023.

Photo by Olivier Seignette.

A book for every interest, beautifully designed and expertly curated.

Editor's letter: Springtide

Quick Curate: Spring Warmth

What's On

Naminapu Maymuru-White: The Milŋiyawuy Series

Gregory Hodge: Through Surface

Story, Place

Polly Borland: Metamorphosis

Marion Abraham: My Candle Burns at Both Ends

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr: Little Barks

Studio Flack: BOLD MOVE

Last Word: Claire Jackson

Up Next

Springtide

Ursula Sullivan+Joanna Strumpf

Spring announces its arrival with a flurry of activity. Trees erupt with birdsong, gardens heave with new life and layers are gradually shed in favour of feeling the sun on our skin. Embodying the sentiments of the season is our first cover by Gregory Hodge with his luminous work Garden II (2023) for his debut S+S Naarm/Melbourne exhibition, where ribbons of colour appear to ripple and bloom within a flourishing greenspace.

Charged with abundance and opportunity, this springtime we are delighted to present a busy calendar of anticipated exhibitions and offsite projects both here in Australia and abroad. This issue, for Quick Curate our Gadigal/Sydneybased Client Manager Mariia Zhuchenko visualises a vernissage of our booth for Sydney Contemporary, one of our most beloved art fairs, featuring several artists whose new works we can’t wait to show in person.

We announce our forthcoming exhibition Story, Place, co-curated by Tony Albert and Jenn Ellis that explores land, ancestry, and belief within the contemporary context of Frieze London. Celebrated by our second cover, featuring the exhibition’s title work by Tony Albert, new works by Lindy Lee, Naminapu Maymuru-White, Angela Tiatia and Jemima Wyman will together nurture a powerful and important dialogue. We are so proud to be a part of this significant international project.

Other highlights include essays on our exhibitions with Naminapu Maymuru-White; Marion Abraham; Polly Borland; and new artist from Yirrkala, Marrnyula Munuŋgurr.

Sending warmth and happy reading, Jo+Urs

Quick Curate: Spring Warmth

After concluding my day at the gallery, I embarked on my trip home. With the days now extended, the velvety spring sun lingered in the air, making my journey home so much more enjoyable. As I turned the corner, my attention was drawn to the youthful vine leaves unfurling upon the previously barren walls of our local café. Continuing my stroll, I was met with a hubbub of cheering and shouting. The Matildas were in full swing, drawing a crowd of spectators around the outdoor screening near the station. Nearby, a group of girls wearing pink and glitter had congregated around a bar (probably kicking off before Barbie). Every facet of this evening felt bubbling, as if roused from a winter slumber, brimming with vitality and life.

For the art world, a change of season is a wonderful time for bustling gatherings, new beginnings with the anticipation of warmer weather; our minds and bodies are eager to engage and explore. Spring brings an exciting new roster of exhibitions, festivals and, of course, Sydney Contemporary – an event of great importance in the Sullivan+Strumpf calendar and one of our favourite fairs. For this issue of Quick Curate, I am channelling this warming, bubbling, blossoming energy, and drawing inspiration from the promise of sun-drenched afternoons to come and the prefair excitement.

Mariia Zhuchenko, Client Manager

From top: Glenn Barkley, sendintheclowns vessel with sticks, 2023, earthenware, 41 x 24 x 26 cm; Natalya Hughes, Franzi/Marzi, 2022, hand tufted rug (cotton yarn, primary and backing cloth, tape, adhesive), 125 x 90 cm; Dawn Ng, I hope you had the time of your life, 2022, archival pigment print, 123 x 123 cm each; Daniel Crooks, Static No.13, 2010, video, 04:01 min, 16:9; Lara Merrett, up close and personal, 2023, ink and acrylic on cloth and linen, 220 x 150 cm; Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Gold Figure with Elephant Legs, 2017, 24k gold plated bronze, 50 x 38 x 15 cm.

Photo: by Mark Pokorny; and Michael Lindeman, Regression Painting (Anyone Who is Anyone), 2023, finger painted acrylic on mirror, 31.5 x 43.5 cm. Photo: Mark Pokorny.

What's On:

ACT

National Gallery of Australia

Haegue Yang: Changing From From To From

Until 15 October 2023.

Know My Name: Making Modern. Until 8 October 2023.

New Collection: Nan Goldin. Until 28 January 2024.

Janet Fieldhouse: Sister Charm

September 2023 – September 2024.

Deep inside my heart. 25 November 2023 – 19 May 2024.

National Portrait Gallery

Gulgawarnigu: Thinking of something, someone

Until 2 October 2023.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

Until 2 October 2023.

Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize

Opens 20 October 2023.

NSW

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2023

Until 3 September 2023.

Laurence Edwards: Walking Men. Until 8 October 2023.

Pandemic Days: Arts Books form the National Art Archive. Until December 2023.

brick vase clay cup jug. Until January 2024.

Brett Whiteley: Chapters 1959–69. From August 2023.

Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line

2 September 2023 – 21 January 2024.

Kandinksy. 4 November 2023 – 10 March 2024.

Georgiana Houghton: Invisible Friends

4 November 2023 – 10 March 2024.

Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? 25 November – 28 April 2024.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Steve Carr: In Bloom (IndigiGrow), 2023.

Until 2 October 2023.

Zoe Leonard: Al río / To the river. Until 5 November 2023.

MCA Collection: Artists in Focus. Until 10 March 2024.

Primavera 2023: Young Australian Artists

9 September 2023 – 4 February 2024.

Tarek Atoui: Waters’ Witness

15 September 2023 – 4 February 2024.

VIC

National Gallery of Victoria

Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi

Until 8 October 2023.

Rembrandt: True to Life. Until 10 September 2023.

Takahiro Iwasaki Reflection Model (Itsukushima)

Until October 2023.

Jewellery and Body Adornment from the NGV Collection

Until September 2023.

Richard Mosse: Broken Spectre. Until October 2023.

Photography: Real and Imagined.

Opens 13 October 2023.

Watercolour Country: One Hundred Works from Hermannsburg. Opens 27 October 2023.

NGV Triennial. Opens 3 December.

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Paul Yore and Albert Tucker: Structures of Feeling

Until 3 September 2023.

Beneath the Surface: Behind the Scenes

Until 22 October 2023.

Nadia Hernández: Palomita/Soledad

Until 19 November 2023.

Always Modern: The Heide Story. Until 4 February 2024.

Paul Boston: Stone Clouds

9 September 2023 – 10 February 2024.

ACMI

Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion

Until 1 October 2023.

Angela Tiatia: The Dark Current

5 September – 12 November 2023.

Emile Zile: We Are As Gods. From 1 November 2023.

ACCA

Between Waves. Until 3 September 2023.

James Nguyen: Open Glossary

16 September – 19 November 2023.

From the other side. 9 December 2023 – 31 March 2024.

Angela Tiatia The Dark Current, 2023 Exhibiting at ACMI, Melbourne

SA

Art Gallery of South Australia

Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution

Until 17 September 2023.

Misty Mountain, Shining Moon: Japanese landscape envisioned. Until March 2024

Liam Fleming: Light and colour

1 September – 3 December 2023.

Tarnanthi at AGSA. 20 October 2023 – 21 January 2024.

WA

PICA

Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson: Virtual Architecture of Empathy. 19 – 24 September 2023.

Sancintya Mohini Simpson: ām / ammā / mā maram.

Until 22 October 2023.

Wu Tsang: Duilian. Until 22 October 2023.

Sriwhana Spong: This Creature. Until 22 October 2023.

AGWA

Against The Odds. Until 10 September 2023. Spaceingout. Until 17 September 2023.

Özgür Kar: Good Night. Until 5 November 2023.

Exquisite Bodies: Bruno Booth. Until 4 December 2023. The Antipodean Manifesto. Until 18 February 2024.

QLD

QAGOMA

Michael Zavros: The Favourite. Until 2 October 2023. eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness. Until 2 October 2023. Gone Fishing. Until 21 January 2024

I can spin skies. Until 23 Jun 2024.

North by North-West. Until 29 September 2024. sis: Pacific Art 1980 – 2023. Until 8 September 2024.

Isaac Walter Jenner: A feeling for Light

2 September 2023 – 28 January 2024.

Natalya Hughes: The Castle of Tarragindi

9 September 2023 – 14 July 2024.

Small Figures. 16 September 2023 – 17 August 2025.

Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction

23 September 2023 – 11 February 2024.

TAS

MONA

Heavenly Beings: Icons of the Christian Orthodox World

30 September 2023 – 1 April 2024.

Jean-Luc Moulène and Teams

30 September 2023 – 1 April 2024.

Jónsi: Hrafntinna (Obsidian)

30 September 2023 – 1 April 2024.

Aggregrate

Left: Natalya Hughes The Castle of Tarragindi, 2023 Exhibiting at QAGOMA, Brisbane.

Right: Jemima Wyman

Icon (Kaleidoscopic Catchment), 2014 Exhibiting as part of Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction at QAGOMA, Brisbane

Naminapu Maymuru-White: The Milŋiyawuy Series

Sitting at night on the shores of Blue Mud Bay, away from that world where electrical energy casts a veil between people and the stars, the Milky Way appears brightly as a river flowing through the night sky. Naminapu’s Milŋiyawuy paintings are a condensation of this experience of looking at the Arnhem Land night sky and provide a window through which we can experience it at a distance.

By Howard Morphy

Howard Morphy is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at The Australian National University. He previously held the chair in anthropology at University College London, following 10 years as a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. He has written extensively about Indigenous art including his general book Aboriginal Art (Phaidon, 1998). His most recent books include Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols (Routledge, 2020), and Museums, Societies and the Creation of Value (eds Howard Morphy and Robyn McKenzie), (Routledge 2022).

Naminapu Maymuru-White, 2023.

Photo by Dave Wilkens.

Milŋiyawuy is the Milky Way. It is also the name of a river that flows into the north of Blue Mud Bay. This dual reference is an important sign that Naminapu MaymuruWhite’s paintings of Milŋiyawuy come out of that dialogue between the universal and the particular that lies at the very heart of Yolŋu art. Her paintings are the Milky Way, viewed and conceived of from a very particular place. For people living in cities the lights of urban life cut them off from the luminescence of the night sky, allowing only the brightest of stars to shine through.

Sitting at night on the shores of Blue Mud Bay, away from that world where electrical energy casts a veil between people and the stars, the Milky Way appears brightly as a river flowing through the night sky. The sky has a density, diversity, a dynamic brilliance that never ceases to amaze, and it draws you into its depths. Naminapu’s Milŋiyawuy series of paintings are a condensation of the experience of looking at the Arnhem Land night sky and provide a window through which we can experience it at a distance. And ‘condensation’ is the right word. For it certainly is not simple representation.

The night sky does not look precisely as it does in her paintings, although they seem to evoke its presence. Art creates its own reality. It is imagination, coupled with the deceptively complex structure and vibrant patterning of Naminapu’s imagery that enables the viewer to expand each painting into a universe with its constellations, exploding nebula, shooting stars and the occasional black hole.

But how do Yolŋu see the Milky Way and how is their vision reflected in Naminapu’s paintings? Yolŋu art involves a continuous dialogue between abstraction and representation – a dialogue connected to the deep meanings of Yolŋu life and coming out of an intimate relationship with the natural world. The Milky Way is not a distant phenomenon – the extended boundaries of our galaxy – but is closely connected to the world in which Yolŋu live.

“Art creates its own reality. It is imagination, coupled with the deceptively complex structure and vibrant patterning of Naminapu’s imagery that enables the viewer to expand each painting into a universe with its constellations, exploding nebula, shooting stars and the occasional black hole.”

Naminapu Maymuru-White Milŋiyawuy, 2023 bark painting 90 x 60 cm

Naminapu’s Milŋiyawuy series has developed out of a lifetime of training as an artist in a number of different media. At one level her paintings come directly out of the artistic heritage of northeast Arnhem Land. Her father Nanyin Maymuru and his brother Narritjin Maymuru were leading Yolŋu artists. The themes and iconography of her paintings are greatly influenced by their work and represent designs associated with her Maŋgalili clan. Milŋiyawuy is the river on earth where Maŋgalili people have lived for countless generations and is a source of the spiritual identity of the clan. The Milŋiyawuy in the sky is one of the homelands of the dead, where spirits go.

A design feature of many of Naminapu’s Milŋiyawuy paintings, curvilinear lines running through the work which often create a frame within the whole, represents both the banks of the river on earth and the boundaries of the Milky Way in the sky. Neither is rigidly fixed since the river bursts its banks in the wet season and becomes part of a great inland lake or sea, and the Milky Way merges with the night sky as a whole.

The curvilinear design also has another meaning. It is a Maŋgalili clan design that refers to the ŋaraka, the bones of the clan, its spiritual identity. The design alludes to the relationship between the passage of life on earth captured in the flow of the Milŋiyawuy river, and the spiritual passage to the afterlife reflected in the flickering appearance of spiritual identities in the Milky Way. In some of her earlier paintings Naminapu elaborated on details of the mythology of the Milky Way, on the presence of different ancestral images in the constellations – the freshwater crocodile Ngäw, or the canoe of the ancestral

fishermen – and on the passage of spirits of the dead from earth to the sky. She has consciously returned to this classical figurative representation of elements of the epic song cycles in some of the paintings here.

In the non-figurative Milŋiyawuy series these meanings are implicit in the core design, and evoked by the scintillating imagery of the stars shining in the night sky. It is a characteristic of Yolŋu paintings to represent complex ideas through condensed imagery and use aesthetics to guide the imagination.

However while Naminapu’s Milŋiyawuy paintings have their foundations in Yolŋu art practice they also reflect other influences in her artistic career. She has for many years been an accomplished printmaker and the present series of works reflects her experience working on etchings with artists from the print workshop at Canberra School of Art during her Creative Arts Fellowship at the ANU in 2000. She also learnt batik dying at workshops in the 1980s and used it to produce Maŋgalili designs on cloth.

The layered technique of etching engages the artist in a reflective process that looks towards the final image through a sequence of reversals that adds depth to the image. There seems almost to be a synergistic relationship between Yolŋu art, with its layering of form and meaning, and non-Yolŋu techniques such as etching and batik. Naminapu’s present work thus reflects a combination of influences acquired through her engagement in art practice over a period of fifty years.

Naminapu Maymuru-White working on Yolŋu Country.

The Milŋiyawuy series takes Naminapu’s work in a new direction, synthesising her past experiences and demonstrating the technical mastery she has achieved through working in different media and on different surfaces to create powerful aesthetic effects. Her paintings continue the dynamic trajectory of Maŋgalili art and their depth and expressive power communicate powerfully across cultures and contexts. The works seem to pulsate with energy. The paintings on bark, board and on the surface of the larrakitj (memorial poles) allow us to experience the Milky Way as it exists in her mind’s eye –Milŋiyawuy in the Arnhem Land sky as it stretches above and seems to be echoed below in the waters of Blue Mud Bay; Milŋiyawuy as a great reservoir of the spirits of the Maŋgalili clan. Her focus is on the transcendent and evanescent nature of the spiritual dimension—people moving in space and time, linking individuals across generations, sensing the presence of the dead in Country, in the passage of the seasons and in the night sky. Yet equally in her paintings she captures characteristics of the night sky that map onto other cultural imaginaries, whether in reflecting on the aesthetic beauty of the sky at night or reflecting on the nature of the universe, on our Galaxy and the infinity beyond.

“The works seem to pulsate with energy. The paintings on bark, board and on the surface of the larrakitj (memorial poles) allow us to experience the Milky Way as it exists in her mind’s eye”

Left: Naminapu Maymuru-White Milŋiyawuy 5, 2023 Larrakitj, earth pigment on wood 185 x 18.5 cm

Right: Milŋiyawuy 4, 2023 Larrakitj, earth pigment on wood 168 x 19 cm

Gregory Hodge: Through Surface

By Tony Curran

Gregory Hodge is a master of “mimicking surfaces in paint”.1 Throughout his oeuvre, he’s explored strategies of trompe l’oeil – tricking viewers into believing they’re looking at taped-together collages gestural relief paintings and more recently tapestries.

Hodge’s practice is rooted in artisanal practices that reach back to antiquity. Ancient Greek artisans mimicked masonry, landscapes and objects to make estates feel grander and livelier, developing systems for convincingly imitating marble, metal, cornices and windows. These faux-finish practices have been applied in decorative-arts but overlooked by contemporary, post-internet, postconceptual painting practices. This clears the ground for Hodge to revisit historical approaches using contemporary materials, processes and sensibilities.

The development of Hodge’s oeuvre sees an expanding repertoire of different types of “surfaces” that complement the dynamic swirls of colour that have become signature to his paintings. As early as 2010, Hodge was mimicking the translucency of layered tracing paper, masking tape, paper folding, patterned fabric and lighting gels. By 2012 the surfaces of gestural paint strokes. From 2014, concrete textures emerged as a ground for still life paintings of textural assemblages, later to re-emerge as faux-marble frames in paintings such as his Another Matter (2017).

Whenever Hodge hones in on a material to mimic, he invents a succinct way of describing it, so he can efficiently execute multiple textures and their contrasting elements. The slickness of his ribbonous gestures take us on a rainbow slip-n-slide, while the softness of his more recent faux-tapestries comforts after the adventure and re-grounds the viewer between fragments of the artist’s interior and exterior world. The result of the artist’s brevity are a tableaux of rich visual experiences, where the viewer

is held by the tension between being deceived and observing the mechanics of the deception. It’s within this balancing act that Hodge’s surfaces remind us that when we look at a painting, we look at it with our whole body.

What has characterised the artist’s work to date is a charisma powered by sprezzatura 2 The gestural marks feel quick and nonchalant, but, as the artist has discussed in interviews, his process comprises great care and consideration – databases of gestures, rehearsed markmaking and the carefully crafted masking techniques that build the pictorial space.3

“The slickness of his ribbonous gestures take us on a rainbow slip-n-slide, while the softness of his more recent faux-tapestries comforts after the adventure and re-grounds the viewer”

In his latest bodies of work, Hodge has paired back his bold gestural marks to allow the more figurative qualities of the paintings to come into focus. By combing streaks of acrylic across the painting, a simulated gauze merges the background elements into the image and fuses them to the tapestry-like space that we see come to the fore in Through Surface

It’s impossible to ignore the influence that Paris has had on Gregory Hodge's work, since he moved there in 2019. Each development in his visual language comes from how paint acts as a metaphor for the world around him. Through his practice we can see how timeless painting can be, while still being very much of its time and of its place.

Previous page: Gregory Hodge in his studio, 2023. Photographed by Olivier Seignette.

Gregory Hodge in his studio, 2023.

Photographed by Olivier Seignette.

Right: Gregory Hodge Room II, 2023 acrylic on linen 200 x 160 cm

Through this veiled effect, Hodge has produced a new scale of his gestural forms. The marks move to the same frequency of the brush but are expanded – where the brush-marks were figures, the veil is ground. Made from customized squeegees, the gauze forms an all-over field of optical energy making the marks feel massive yet buoyed by their overall finery and translucency. This is Hodge’s pictorial language expanding like a fractal, where elemental forms are symmetrical to the broader, macro movements.

There are new textures appearing too. The chromatic black line-work combed over the composition is so optically charged that information below has to be abbreviated even further. The colours underneath are more intense, so that when combined with the dark lines over the top, the surfaces glimmer like stained-glass windows. Look through the warp and weft of paintings such as Landscape 1 (2023). The trees are described by polka-dotted marks that are too large to be pointillist or pixel but appear like magazine ben-day dots that interact with the gauze, producing moiré interference patterns.

It’s impossible to ignore the influence that Paris has had on Hodge's practice since he moved there in 2019. Particularly with respect to colour. In 1839, French engineer Michel-Eugène Chevreul was the first to write about “The Law of Simultaneous Colour Contrast”4, which inspired a radical shift in painting that we now know as French impressionism. Hodge’s approach to colour and his abbreviated descriptions of objects (in paintings like Morning Walk, 2023) feel like an homage to Monet, Manet, Degas, Caillebotte and Delacroix.

The radial shimmers in Landscape 1, (2023) shape light in a similar way to Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889) or Sonia Delaunay Electric Prisms (1913) – both artists who, like Hodge, migrated to Paris and let the city enchant their studios.

The approach to bright adjacent and threaded colour used by Hodge also plays into the visual language of tapestry, which relies on simultaneous colour contrast to “mix” the limited coloured threads available. This colour logic combined with tapestry’s abbreviated approach to imagery adds further weight to the artist’s attentiveness to surface. Like the tapestry, Hodge employs imagery constructed like a cartoon: shapes of flat colour articulate the picture while the lustre of the fabric fills both aesthetic and informational gaps.

Each development in Hodge’s visual language comes from how paint acts as a metaphor for the world around him. Techniques applied from a studio in 21st century Paris perform differently than they do in the Illawarra in New South Wales, and Canberra where Hodge had previously made his home. This is a testament to painting’s ongoing relevance, and Hodge’s commitment to the form – a commitment that resists devolving into obedience. Instead, through Hodge’s practice, we can see how timeless painting can be, while remaining attuned to its time and place. When the world is undergoing and recovering from social upheaval from multiple directions, the adaptability of Hodge’s visual language indicates that we’re likely to see our own changing world reflected back to us as we look back in years to come.

1 Gregory Hodge and Richard Morecroft, “Greg Hodge’s exhibition “Every Day” June 2020”. Exhibition with Richard Morecroft, Youtube, June 3, 2020, interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OptDALAOuRc

2 Paolo D'Angelo, Sprezzatura: Concealing the Effort of Art from Aristotle to Duchamp (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

3 Hodge and Morecroft, “Greg Hodge’s exhibition “Every Day” June 2020”.

4 Michel Eugène Chevreul, De la loi du contrasate simultané des colours et de l’assortiment des objets colorés: considéré d’après cette loi dans ses rapports avec la peinture, les tapisseries des gobelins, les tapiseeries de Beauvois pour meubles, les tapis, la monique, les vitraux colorés, l’impression des étoffes, l’imprimerie, l’enluminure, la décoration des édifices, l’habillement et l’horticulture (Paris: Pitois-Levrault et cie, 1839) cited in Alexandra Loske, Colour : A Visual History (London: ILEX, 2019).

Top left: Gregory Hodge Window with Birds, 2023 acrylic on linen 70 x 50 cm

Bottom left: Later Abstraction, 2023 acrylic on linen 70 x 50 cm

Top right: Study for a Vincennes Tapestry II, 2023 acrylic on linen 70 x 50 cm

Bottom right: Small Tapestry Study, 2023 acrylic on canvas 50 x 40 cm

Story, Place

Curated by Tony Albert and Jenn Ellis

9 Cork Street, London

Opening October 5, 6–8pm

Exhibition October 6–21, 2023

Participating artists: Tony Albert, Shiraz Bayjoo, Edgar Calel, Gunybi Ganambarr, Lindy Lee, Naminapu Maymuru-White, Angela Tiatia, Jemima Wyman.

Bringing together a group of preeminent contemporary artists from around the globe, Story, Place is a collective consideration of creation, resilience, and regenerative spirit.

Curated by Tony Albert and Jenn Ellis, the exhibition presents a powerful dialogue of Indigenous and diasporic voices, each exploring land, ancestry, and belief within the contemporary context of Frieze London.

An exhibition in three parts, Story, Place begins with a consideration around earth, materiality and our relationship with our places or origin. Setting this tone upon entrance is the work of Naminapu Maymuru-White, of the Maŋgalili clan, which references the ‘outside’ or public version of the Maŋgalili. Using the miny’tji or sacred clan design for the sandscapes of Djarrakpi, Maymuru-White’s bark piece and forest of larrakitj in the heart of the exhibition place the night sky and sea at the centre, evoking the soul’s journey from life to death to rest to rebirth as conducted through water. Consciousness and connection to the night sky and Milky Way is also explored by the work of Lindy Lee, a second generation Chinese Australian artist who reflects on our understanding of the cosmos using elements of fire and water. Presenting an intricate golden wall-based installation that conveys a splatter gesture, Lee’s work embodies the Buddhist act of renewal, where all that is held inside oneself is released. Developed by throwing searing molten bronze onto the foundry floor, Lee’s mark-marking emphasises one’s presence in the moment.

Similarly thinking about our relationship with ancestry, land but also materiality is the work of Gunybi Ganambarr of the Ŋaymil people. Beginning his artistic career painting on bark and larrakitj, Ganambarr has extended his practice with an experimental and innovative use of reclaimed materials. Presented in Story, Place is an intricate wallhanging work made of a reclaimed aluminium road sign. Fusing clan designs with his own visual vocabulary, Ganambarr sets out to capture the distinctive dynamics of a living landscape. Serial notches gouged into the surface create a vivid geometry that refers to the sacred waters around Gängan, the land of his mother’s people. Equally thinking about the reworking of available material is the work of Jemima Wyman, a palawa woman, with paternal descendants from the pairrebeener people of tebrakunna, and poredareme. Presented is a work from her Plume series, which are created by collecting hundreds of images of protest, referenced and collaged to create the visual of a cloud. Focusing on patterns and masking to investigate visual resistance, Wyman uses camouflage as a formal, social and political strategy in negotiating identity.

Gunybi Ganambarr Buyku, 2023 mixed media 120 x 90 cm

Tony Albert in his studio, 2023. Photographed by Rhett Hammerton.

Jenn Ellis, 2023. Photographed by Olivia Herring.

Moving to conversations around origins, place, subjugation and hope is the work of Edgar Calel, of the Mayan Kaqchikel cosmovision. Edgar Calel's new series of works is titled Runojel xa xti jotayimpe, Runojel xa xti tzolimpe, chuech ri ruach’ulew (Everything Will Blossom, Everything Will Reappear Before the Face of the Earth). In these canvases of varying scales, the artist - in conversation with his family - has painted a series of landscapes, objects, relics, concepts, and experiences, which are of spiritual importance to them and to the wider Maya Kaqchikel peoples. The paintings are then covered almost entirely with clay collected by the family in a forest surrounding their hometown Chixot (San Juan Comalapa) which they consider to be sacred, revealing only some minor brush strokes to the viewer’s eye, but not enough to make out the images altogether. And it is Calel’s intention for the earth in the paintings to fall off bit by bit over time, only revealing the depicted images - and the knowledge embedded within - when we are ready to fully grasp its significance.

Naminapu Maymuru-White Larrakitj series , 2023 earth pigment on wood

Dimensions variable

Photo by Aaron Anderson.

Continuing the conversation around systems of power and possession is the work of Angela Tiatia. An artist of Samoan and Australian descent, Tiatia explores representation, gender, neo-colonialism and the commodification of the body and place. Presented in Story, Place are two performative films on loop, Holding On (2015) and Lick (2015). Holding On created in 2015 on Funafuti - the main atoll of Tuvalu, an archipelago halfway between Australia and Hawai’i - shows the artist lying uneasily on a cement slab as the surrounding ocean laps and washes over her. Capturing the struggle between the body of the artist and the body of the ocean as the tide rises, it intends to highlight the plight of Pacific people holding onto their lands in light of global warming.

Tying these considerations around land, history and crucially hope are two major installations by Tony Albert and Shiraz Bayjoo. On the foremost wall in the gallery is a monumental work by Tony Albert of the Kuku Yalanji people. Albert’s installation, his first to ever be presented in London, engages with political, historical and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history, and his fascination with kitsch “Aboriginalia". Drawing on both personal and collective histories, Albert’s practice considers the ways in which optimism might be utilised to overcome adversity.

His work poses crucial questions such as how do we remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories. Equally reconsidering histories is the work of Shiraz Bayjoo, a Mauritian artist based in London. Exhibiting an installation first shown at the 2019 Sharjah Biennial, Shiraz Bayjoo presents an amalgamation of photographs and paintings, working with repurposed archival displays. With a focus on unearthing the history of the Indian Ocean, especially its island archipelagos such as Mauritius and Madagascar, Bayjoo reworks Western narratives and orientalist tropes.

Ultimately, the exhibition is a collective moment, bringing together various voices with distinct yet shared experiences to reflect and respond to the narratives created, prescribed, passed on, around the places they are from. Story, Place is an ongoing exploration of tales and their origins, from earth to humanity, and a conscious moment of where we are going from here.

The exhibition is a collaborative initiative by the artists, Sullivan+Strumpf gallery, Indigenous community art centre Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory and Apsara Studio. Additional support has been provided from Creative Australia.

Opening October 5, 6-8pm

Exhibition October 6-21, 2023

Presented

Jemima Wyman Haze 15, 2023 hand cut digital photo collage 122 x 91.5 cm STORY, PLACE. CURATED BY TONY ALBERT AND JENN ELLIS, OCTOBER 6 – 21, 9 CORK STREET LONDON

Story, Place curated by Tony Albert and Jenn Ellis 9 Cork Street, London

by Sullivan+Strumpf with support from Creative Australia

Shiraz Bayjoo Aldabra No. 2, 2023 acrylic, resin, wood 22.5 x 17 x 2 cm

Polly Borland: Metamorphosis

Polly Borland's unsettling, misshapen forms have long been threatening to break free from the picture plane. Her famed lenticular prints and tapestries were already testing the limits of two dimensions years ago. Now, in the leadup to her upcoming exhibition at Sullivan+Strumpf Eora/Sydney in November her work has taken on a monumental shift, finally morphing into life.

By Claire Summers

Polly Borland's BOD, in progress at UAP's New York Foundry, 2023.

Polly Borland is a force. Not one that oppresses, but one that propels forward. The artist has spent her celebrated career crafting a distinctive and disruptive visual language, one contradictory in its ability to simultaneously shock and soothe, disturb and exhilarate. Encountering Borland’s work is to be met first with a kind of obscurity. It is not her intention or desire that what you see can or should be immediately understood. Rather, she encourages the viewer’s inquisition, their participation in the work’s essence through questioning, tracing the edges of the puzzle to find how they fit a larger narrative of meaning. Borland’s work is intentionally unsettling, at least initially. Turgid, morphed, misshapen, globous, almost alien forms stand or slump before us. The urge to flinch is as strong as the one to prod. Yet beneath the skin of her creatures, both in her imagery and sculpture, stirs something deeply human. The artist’s invitation to look further inevitably generates questions not only of the work but of ourselves, of the self we see reflected to us. It is this lingering hint of the human that draws us closer, and closer still.

Attempts to interpret Borland’s work through logic or rationale are futile. The anatomies before us have placed one foot in figuration, the other in abstraction and asked us to navigate the tension between the two with instinct, rather than reason. Neither the figurative nor the abstract elements of Borland’s work offer a neat or absolute answer to the work’s meaning. Borland’s practice bears several motifs–disrupting the traditional portrait, surrealist composition, taboo inclinations–and her recent work across both photography and sculpture meditate on the body. Borland flirts with the edge of what the body is capable of, what is possible when it is abstracted further and further beyond recognition. It feels defined by an attraction to (rather than avoidance of) limits. They function not a as deterrent, but as motivator. The prelude of Borland’s work, the creative logic that precedes the making of the work itself, ruminates on the body’s vulnerability. “In all my work, I don't censor,” she states. “I don't censor or limit how far I'm prepared to go in order to achieve the end result.” Borland’s work ultimately is an act of defiance, honouring vulnerability by harnessing it as strength.

“In all my work, I don't censor. I don't censor or limit how far I'm prepared to go in order to achieve the end result.”

Polly Borland

Polly Borland at UAP's New York Foundry, 2023.

In recent bodies of photographic work, notably the Morph and Nudies series, Borland makes proposals on the body through her decisions on what is concealed and what is revealed. Each of these series, though distinct from one another, bear the same sculptural qualities that define her 3D works today. In the Morph series, the artist encases her subject–a human figure–in stocking and begins the process of abstracting them, of defamiliarising the viewer with their form. Borland reduces and rebuilds, filling the stockings with bulbous growths or padding them out into contorted silhouettes until they almost depart all semblance of their original form. In this sense, the artist is already a sculptor, uses her hands to shape and mould her subject.

In Nudies, Borland reveals all, photographing her own naked bodies, in a manner that dispenses with both modesty and the desire to flatter. Here, Borland uses her own flesh to use the language of abstraction and the gestures of sculpture. In discussing this body of work, Borland directs me to Lana Turner Journal, a smallcirculation magazine out of California that publishes “poetry & opinion” – two forms of writing so often at odds with one another. Issue 15 features an interview between Borland and the journal’s editor Cal Bedient. Bedient’s questions to the artist dispense with the need for brevity, luxuriating in language (as poet’s often do) to create an astounding visual sense of Borland’s recent photographic work, of the inherent challenge the artist posits, of the poetics in the grotesque. The effect is ekphrastic1: “‘Nudie’ […] advertises in advance that the nudes are not classical examples of the genre (far from it), but instead, bypassing any pretense of opulence, display heavy flesh with almost a spotive show of confidence, an in-youreyes self-display, menacingly squeezing this or dangling that. The photographs are like sections of some hardly imaginable whole. They do not so much defamiliarize the

nude as mock its intention to charm, cutting a zone of unidealized flesh across it, female matter not female beauty. So, they require a difficult adjustment. They command and crowd the frame and are formidable in not holding anything back while ambiguating what is put forward.”

Borland notes that both these series–Morph and Nudies–are the templates for the sculptures that appear in her forthcoming exhibition with Sullivan+Strumpf, written with the same visual language but spoken through different materiality. Today, her figures have stepped out of the frame to stand before us. “I'm exploring,” she says. “I don't want everything to look the same. I'm trying to create and develop as I go along.” As with the Morph series, Borland encases a human figure in stockings and proceeds to distort them with growths and misshapen appendages. It is here where she pivots. Rather than photographing the creature, she creates a digital 3D model–the blueprint from which the sculpture is built. This move into sculpture seems predestined on reflection: Borland was realising her photographs in 3 dimensions long before the shift was defined, even to her. The artist’s famed lenticular prints2 and tapestries–presented not mounted on a wall but in the centre of a room so that one could circle them–were already exercises in escaping the two-dimensional.

It was once suggested to me by a lecturer at university that to stay the same is to experience loss. This moment in Borland’s practice is monumental. The sense of forward momentum, the resistance to the loss of staying the same, is profound. This new body of work, forthcoming to Sullivan+Strumpf Eora/Sydney in November, presents both new sculptural forms and images that deepen the artist’s relationship to working in the third dimension, propelling her ever forward.

Polly Borland

BOD, 2023 installation view, Marfa Invitational. Marfa, Texas.

Marion Abraham in her studio, 2023.

Photo by Grace Chia.

Marion Abraham: My Candle Burns at Both Ends

Over the course of a painted day, Marion Abraham’s paintings move from darkness to light and back to darkness again. Life and death is inscribed into the very arrangement of her work. In her upcoming exhibition at Sullivan+Strumpf, the paintings are placed in a precise coded sequence that function like a memento mori, spelling out a simple, yet stark, reminder.

By Tai Mitsuji

There is a conspiracy that hums beneath the painted surface of Marion Abraham’s new exhibition. The artist describes it as “the conspiracy to live”. We might also think of it as a radical plan to keep moving through our world, even after it has been indelibly altered by loss, even after its fragility has been revealed to us. “I never took into account what happens when you take something big away,” Abraham explains, reflecting on the conceptual underside of her paintings. “It's like a gravitational force disappearing. And suddenly everything is completely altered.” How do you continue on, when gravity falls away? Therein, lies the conspiracy.

The fact of death—its silent presence in our lives—is inscribed into the very arrangement of Abraham’s paintings in the gallery. The artworks at Sullivan+Strumpf are not hung randomly, but are placed in a precise coded sequence. Abraham uses space to create morse code, by playing with the proximity between her paintings: a solitary canvas represents a dot, whereas two paintings together indicate a line. When brought together these dots and lines function like a memento mori, spelling out a simple yet stark reminder: “A Death.”

In their own way, Abraham’s paintings each subtly suggest these existential stakes, which hide in plain sight, taking cover within a seemingly eclectic mix of painted scenes. Over the course of a painted day, her artworks move from darkness to light and back to darkness, and are populated with an assortment of figures from Abraham’s life and the history of art. Here, we find a wood chopper in a moment of quiet contemplation; there, two women whispering conspiratorially in an orchard; in another painting, a copse of cedars from the artist’s ancestral home in Lebanon; and, just a little further on, a girl who turns away, covering her face. Each scene carries stories and memories, which soak into the canvas below.

“Abraham uses space to create morse code, by playing with the proximity between her paintings: a solitary canvas represents a dot, whereas two paintings together indicate a line. When brought together these dots and lines function like a memento mori, spelling out a simple yet stark reminder: A Death.”

In this last painting of the girl turning away, for instance, Abraham borrows her protagonist from Joseph Wright of Derby’s famous 18th-century painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. In Wright’s 1768 painting, an audience gathers around a candle lit table, watching a white cockatoo, which is trapped within an elevated glass container. The crowd observes as the air is slowly pumped from the vessel and the bird begins to suffocate. In the midst of this violent scene—which is dressed up as a scientific experiment—only one figure turns away in anguish. It is this figure, this girl, who Abraham takes and pulls into her painting. It is this figure whose presence recalls the idea of death, even as the spectacle of Wright’s scene recedes into memory.

Marion Abraham’s studio in lutruwita/Tasmania.

Photo by Grace Chia.

There is a kind of undeniable immediacy to Abraham’s work, which emerges not only out of her subjects, but also out of the paint itself. This feeling finds a grounding in her very process of creation, as Abraham typically begins an artwork by sketching out its structure with a brush, before abandoning the formal tool altogether and replacing it with her hands. “I was a potter for a long time, so I love treating paint a bit like clay,” she says. “I'll use the brush roughly and then I'll go and find all the anatomy, all the best details, with my hands.” While every artwork indexes some element of its creator, in Abraham’s canvases there is something beyond this—an almost direct bodily expression of the artist.

When speaking with Abraham, I am struck by the fact that her paintings all seem to sit at the intersection between control and release. In the case of the former, we sense her formal artistic training in the structures that define the early phases of her painting. Yet at some point there is a shift towards the latter. As Abraham explains it, she reaches a stage where “every painting starts to bore [her].” This is the critical point of release. “I have this moment where I'm allowed to just let the image of the person slip away,” she says. “And I get to be free in the last hour of my painting.”

Marion Abraham Cowboy Boy #1, 2023 oil on board 46 x 61 cm

Right: Marion Abraham Study for 'Secrets', 2023 oil on board 50 x 40 cm

Left: Marion Abraham For The Love Of It All, 2023 oil on linen

Yet this freedom is not without complication. The artist finishes each of her work days in the same way, by sitting and staring at her paintings. “When I'm working on something I can't really see anything,” she explains. “When I finally stop is when I get to know the paintings.” While no physical work takes place in such a moment, the act of painting very much continues. “Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, you put nothing into the work.’ And sometimes I find something awesome,” Abraham confesses. “I’m learning to go back and back and back until I find that something.” It is this search that lies at the heart of each of Abraham’s paintings. The search for that intangible thing, which brushes insistently against our unconscious, and pulls us into her conspiracy.

“It is this search that lies at the heart of each of Abraham’s paintings. The search for that intangible thing, which brushes insistently against our unconscious, and pulls us into her conspiracy.”

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr photographed by Kate Davis

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr: Little Barks

Taken from the exhibition catalogue Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting, Yolŋu artist Marrnyula Munuŋurr tells the story in her own words of her family, her introduction to bark painting and her kinship to the land.

Words by Marrnyula Munuŋgurr.

Translated into English by Bree Blakeman

My name is Marrnyula Munuŋurr. I am going to tell you a story about my painting practice. I was born at Yirrkala, and I grew up at Yirrkala, and then my family and I moved from Yirrkala to a place named Garrthalala.1 We stayed at Garrthalala together with the old men, with our fathers. After staying there for a while, we moved to Wäṉḏawuy, where we stayed for a long time, and I went to school there. It was while I was at school at Wäṉḏawuy that I learned about my clan’s paintings.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I started painting. I would sit with the old people, my fathers and father’s brothers at Wäṉḏawuy. We would sit close and I would watch them and ask questions. “What is that? What are you painting?” And I would get the story from them. In the old days, men and women helped one another. It was like this: if a woman’s husband was an artist, and he got tired, he would give the painting to her, or to one of his other wives, and they would help. It is the same as today. If you were an artist, my child, even if your wife was not an artist, you would give her the brush and say, “This is your work, helping me, making it easy for me.” And while your wife is helping, at the same time she is learning, sitting close and learning. Like a child will sit close to learn the story for a painting. The father or mother will tell them the story about that bark painting. All our fathers were artists and we learned from them.

My father, Djutjatjutja Munuŋgurr, helped establish the homelands at Wäṉḏawuy. And while he was doing it, he was teaching us. He gave us the bark and told us, “You draw the Shark, or the fish net or waterspout.”

Or he would tell us, “This is a painting of Bol’ŋu, the Thunderman.” And then he would give us the brush, saying, “First, take hold of the brush and start drawing those designs. Second, apply that white clay. And then use hair for the fine brushwork.” This is our ŋanapurru, our inheritance: it belongs to us. There are other designs that belong to other clans.

I used to cut small barks and work alongside the old men. I worked and I learned. And then I taught the younger children about bark painting. I taught them at school. We would go out and cut bark for painting and then work on it together. And I would tell them the stories about each different design. But while I was teaching the young children, I was still learning myself. My father was still teaching me to paint. Now I work alone, so I will stay with this style that I learned from my father. My mother, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, also works alone, now that my father has passed. She creates her Yirritja paintings, and I create my own Dhuwa paintings.

In 1990, I had my first solo show at Framed Gallery in Darwin. I was not painting clan designs. Instead, I painted all the things that go on in our community—just everyday things. It was different from what other people had done before. A lot of those paintings went to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Then I worked at the craft shop [Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka]. I did my first linocut with Basil Hall, just a little one. I worked in the print space, where I also learned about printing techniques. I learned how to make screen prints, collagraphs and etchings, and I helped other artists print their works as well.

1 Garrthalala was one of the first homeland communities built by Yolŋu. Although located on Gumatj Country, it is cared for by the Djapu’ clan.

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr

Ganybu 1, 2023 natural earth pigments on bark 70 x 41 cm

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr Ganybu 2, 2023 natural earth pigments on bark 86 x 52.5 cm

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr Djapu Miny'tji 1, 2022 natural earth pigments on bark 124 x 51 cm

“This is our culture. Yolŋu culture is passed down through songs and paintings. The movement of the dancer and the sound of the keening song that we cry for people who have passed away, or we cry for Country and the places these songs come from.”

I worked there for quite a while until, then I fell ill, and I stopped. Then, because I was working at home, I started working with small scraps of bark. And I started to cut into the bark and tried to develop a different style. That is how it was. I started working with the small scraps like these. That was my idea. I did not work with large barks; I would just go around the craft shop, collecting all the small bits, the scraps of bark that other painters had left.

Now, I work with small pieces to make big works, puzzlework paintings. I did the first one at the art centre. It was small, just five or six little barks. Kade McDonald saw it and said, “Hey, sister, that’s a great painting with those small barks. We want that bark painting, with the small barks. Can you make some more?”

That first small bark painting is now in the museum in Melbourne [National Gallery of Victoria]. It is ganybu, the fish trap. And still, Kade was asking me, “More work, sister! More small barks!” Yes, that is my work: small barks. Easy, but still hard. It is a lot of work to produce that many barks like that.

I create these small bark paintings to tell a story. The small paintings I create show the good, healthy water at Wäṉḏawuy. I paint the freshwater where the Shark ancestor rushed up and hit its head at the place called Wäṉḏawuy. These are the designs for those waters. Can you see the white clay design? That is the water, the clear water. And the black design in the middle, that is the muddy water produced by the shark thrashing about. And this design goes straight toward Wäṉḏawuy.

This is our culture. Yolŋu culture is passed down through songs and paintings. The movement of the dancer and the sound of the keening song that we cry for people who have passed away, or we cry for Country and the places these songs come from. There are many songs. Yes, it is like this: men sing manikay and women cry milkarri (keening songs). And each one has its own actions: we might sing the pelican (galumay) song or the Catfish ancestor whose name is Gaṉŋal. Or the men might sing the Shark song while the women do the actions, moving like the Shark. It is the same as in the paintings. Or when the Morning Star rises, the men sing and the women wake up and begin crying for Baṉumbirr (the Morning Star ancestor). Just like that. It comes up and they cry, accompanying the Baṉumbirr song.

Gurruṯu (kinship) is truly important. In the white person’s way, you’ve got another system of kinship. Country is part of our kinship—for instance, Country like Yilpara, which is my mother’s country (Maḏarrpa clan), and Gurrumuru, which is my children’s Country (Dhaḻwaŋu clan). Dhuḏi-Djapu’ clan’s country of Dhuruputjpi is my great-grandparent Country, because it is our father’s mother’s mother’s Country. And my mother’s mother, her Country is at Garrimaḻa (Gälpu clan). So, our kinship is in the land. We are joined, lots of kin, through Country and our system of gurruṯu.

Taken from the exhibition catalogue Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, published by Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia and DelMonico Books | D.A.P and distributed in Australia by Books at Manic.

BOLD MOVE

Flack Studio brings life and meaning into this beachside Tamarama home with vibrant colour, intelligent design and textural richness. An assignment the studio met with enthusiasm and aplomb, Flack brings to this project what they do every space in their care: a keen eye for energetic design and a firm belief in the place of art in the home.

Photography By Anson Smart

Lynda Draper, Blue & White II, 2022 Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Head with Braids II, 2023 Tim Silver, Untitled (Heartbeats), 2022 Sanné Mestrom, Coffee Table, 2023

Curated alongside Stephen Ormandy, Spinning Top, 2019, courtesy Olsen Gallery, Nabila Nordin, 55th Art Cologne, 2022, courtesy Neon Parc, Gaetano Pesce, Black and White Nugget, courtesy 506070, and Nell, Who Are You, 2021, courtesy STATION.

Sanné Mestrom, Coffee Table, 2023

Tim Silver, Untitled (Heartbeats), 2022

Glenn Barkley, everythingigotbelongstoyou, 2022

Tim Silver, Untitled (Oneirophrenia) (blue) #6, 2015

Darren Sylvester, To Live 02, 2016 and To Live 03, 2016

Yang Yongliang, Lone House, 2016

Curated alongside Nabila Nordin, 55th Art Cologne, 2022, courtesy Neon Parc and Nell, The Ghost Who Walks will never die, 2022, courtesy STATION.

The house reveals itself through layers and textures, levels and atmospheres, an ode to craftsmanship and enduring personalities within each space, detail and material.

Often in a home by the ocean, the view becomes the only focus. Our aim was to create a home where each room commanded its own personality and ambition.

—David Flack

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Red Figure with Human, 2020

Sydney Ball, Chromix Lumina #15, 2017-2018

Curated alongside Dale Frank, Commissioned work, left, courtesy Neon Parc and Tony Clark, Nilotic Landscape 2, 2021, right, courtesy STATION.

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Multi Legged Figure with Red Mask, 2020

Michael Lindeman, Regression Painting (Friends...), 2022

Curated alongside Caroline Rothwell, Proplift fern, NZ (after Banks Florilegium) 1, 2022, courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Claire Jackson Last Word:

Interview with Claire Summers

Claire Jackson, Curator at Tramway (Glasgow, Scotland) chats with Claire Summers about Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s ambitious upcoming exhibition, Idols of Mud and Water.

Claire Jackson, Curator, Tramway Glasgow.

Claire Summers / Tramway is devoted to showing works of innovation and ambition. Idols of Mud and Water will indeed be a work of immense scale and intricate engineering. What unique qualities of this work define it amongst the history of curation at Tramway?

Claire Jackson / Tramway is one of the largest galleries in Europe and is a beautiful, cavernous space described as an ‘Industrial Cathedral’. The venue was originally built in 1893 as a Tramway depot and the gallery has retained many unique architectural features such as several sets of Tramlines criss-crossing the space and vast skylights, so you experience weather and light conditions in the space - it feels like an indoor/outdoor space like a botanical glasshouse or a huge train station. It is the antithesis of a classical white cube gallery, and we very rarely hang any works on the walls as artists tend to imagine proposals for

our huge void! Tramway’s unique architecture really lends itself to large scale, experiential installations and artist’s practices who are exploring ideas of worldbuilding and site-specifity. Over the years Tramway has commissioned major works of scale, supporting artists to realise immersive and interactive works of scale that respond to these qualities, working collaboratively with artists to support the production of major new bodies of works.

CS / Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s work mediates on idolatry, worship and religious symbolism through a lens that considers both their impact going back millennia as well as their place in our current cultural psyche. How did your approach to curating this work handle or observe the interplay of the ancient imbedded in a contemporary context?

CJ / The ideas behind this work and Ramesh’s previous

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran in his studio, 2023.

Photo by Henry Lou.

work seem to reflect the ways in which the past, present, and future fold in on each other. At Tramway, Ramesh will dramatically populate our vast gallery with a giant, omnipresent Guardian figure and an ambitious architectural structure resembling a temple or ruin filled with terracotta figures. The performative aspect of the sculptures will be heightened by the introduction of a fountain, water pools and mist into the space creating an ephemeral space which evokes an archaeological dig or a flooded ruin. Read together as an installation, these works explore ideas of history, idolatry, imagery and culture that are non-linear and syncretic, in Ramesh’s own words, creating ‘a buzzing mythological playground’.

In this way Ramesh’s work could be seen to present a counter-narrative to dominant, Euro-centric and colonial narratives which often present history from a fixed, linear position, reflecting ideas that are nonlinear and polyphonic, allowing for new readings and perspectives. His work champions non-centric, nonconforming positions and diasporic identities which feels very urgent to our present moment.

CS / Art is a crucial tool tasked with expressing and provoking with the most urgent ideas of our time. Ramesh’s work is known for bringing life to issues of social, political and cultural importance. What are the most vital ideas propelled by Idols of Mud and Water?

CJ / Ramesh’s wider practice make me think about the way art can picture other possibilities for being in the world through its speculative and imaginative potential. Idols of Mud and Water manages to be both optimistic

and speculative, whilst also tracing problematic relationships between climate change and colonialism. At Tramway Ramesh will present transfigurations of mud and water, re-imagining the vast main gallery as an immersive sculptural installation which takes the flood as a motif in various mythologies as its premise. Natural disasters related to the mixing of earth and water are common occurrences with the impact of climate change, and the installation looks to symbolic and mythological instances related to these elements. In this sense, the space will feel both apocalyptic and optimistic.

CS / Idols of Mud and Water is comprised of a vast number of elements, both in terms of concept and craft, making it the most ambitious project Ramesh has undertaken to date. What is the greatest challenge in curating so many elements to create one cohesive work? What is the greatest reward?

CJ / There are lots of different, layered processes running in tandem across the studio and in Glasgow, from how to build a 21ft mud spewing deity sculpture, to the precision of material choices of a scaffold, theatrical lighting, a step or a display detail. The details of everything that goes into realising an exhibition that is both spectacular and otherworldly but also authentic and tangible.

Works in progress in Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s studio for Idols of Mud and Water, 2023. Photo by Mark Pokorny.

Works in progress in Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s studio for Idols of Mud and Water, 2023. Photo by Mark Pokorny.

CS / What is the greatest reward?

CJ / The thrill of realising Ramesh’s audacious vison for his exhibition’s at Tramway and also thinking through the audiences encounter with the exhibition. Ramesh thinks like a curator and wants to explore different possibilities for audience interaction with the work. The larger sculptures will be kinetic, with simple gestures such as lighting and mist activated by motion sensor. Audiences will be invited into playful choreographies which encourage them to explore, inhabit and interact with the exhibition.

CS / At the time of this interview, you are a few months out from the realisation of this project. The entire process of realisation stands before you, following a lengthy period of conceptualisation and (ongoing) creation of the many elements of the work. What excites you most about where you currently stand in the course of the project?

CJ / In many ways this is the point in the exhibition process where we can best apply our curatorial care and craft. Where we reward the trust and faith that Ramesh has placed in us as temporary custodians of his insightful, curious and thrillingly ambitious ideas and artworks, and begin to tailor the materials, research production, find space for ideas, look at scale, positioning and begin to imagine the experience of the visitors to the gallery. Mapping all these elements onto the physical realities of the space of the gallery and collaborating closely with Ramesh to think about the audience journey – it’s a really exciting moment in the process.

Artist render for Idols of Mud and Water, 2023.

Up Next

Tony Albert

Sullivan+Strumpf Eora/Sydney

February 2024

Dhopiya Yunupiŋu

Sullivan+Strumpf Naarm/Melbourne

February 2024

Art SG

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

17 – 21 January 2024

Melbourne Art Fair

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre 22 – 25 February 2024

dressing starts with a good pair of trousers

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SULLIVAN+STRUMPF

Ursula Sullivan | Director

Joanna Strumpf | Director

EORA / SYDNEY

799 Elizabeth St

Zetland, Sydney NSW 2017

Australia

P +61 2 9698 4696

E art@sullivanstrumpf.com

NAARM / MELBOURNE

107-109 Rupert St

Collingwood, Melbourne VIC 3066

Australia

P: +61 3 7046 6489

E: art@sullivanstrumpf.com

SINGAPORE

P +65 8310 7529

Megan Arlin | Director, Singapore

E megan@sullivanstrumpf.com