2016 Jordan Grant : Free and Foreign Subjectivity Publication

FREE AND FOREIGN SUBJECTIVITY

Jordan Grant

FREE AND FOREIGN SUBJECTIVITY

Jordan Grant

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 16 December 2016 - 19 February 2017

Publisher Gallery Services

Gallery Services, Townsville City Council

PO Box 1268

Townsville Queensland, 4810 Australia

ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au

©Gallery Services, Townsville City Council and the authors 2016

ISBN: 978-0-949461-20-9

Organised by Gallery Services

Judith Jensen Acting Team Manager Galleries and Libraries

Eric Nash Curator

Erwin Cruz Exhibitions and Collection Coordinator

Louise Cummins Education and Programs Coordinator

Rob Donaldson Digital Media and Exhibition Design Coordinator

Jo Stacey Team Leader Administration Gallery Services

Holly Grech-Fitzgerald Collections Management Officer

Carly Sheil Digital Media and Exhibition Design Officer

Leonardo Valero Exhibitions Officer

Rurik Henry Exhibitions Officer

Sarah Welch Public Art Officer

Jess Cuddihy Education and Programs Officer

Sarah Reddington Education and Programs Assistant

Danielle Berry Arts Officer

Wendy Bainbridge Administration Officer

Damian Cumner Gallery Assistant

Nicole Richardson Gallery Assistant

Samuel Smith Gallery Assistant

Jo Lankester Gallery Assistant

Melanie Munnerley Gallery Assistant

Madisyn Zabel Gallery Assistant

Published on the occasion of

FREE AND FOREIGN SUBJECTIVITY

Jordan Grant

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

16 December 2016 - 19 February 2017

Curator

Eric Nash

Contributing Authors

Eric Nash / Peter Westwood / Jordan Grant

Publication Design and Development

Rob Donaldson / Eric Nash

Photography

All photographs by Aaron Ashley, unless otherwise noted.

Acknowledgements

Gallery Services would like to acknowledge the enthusiasm and dedication of the artist, Jordan Grant; the support and insightful analysis of Peter Westwood; and the contribution of Townsville City Council in the realisation of this project.

Cover Image: Decreation [detail] 2015

Oil and acrylic on linen

107 x 102 cm

Photo: Jordan Grant

Contact:

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Cnr. Denham and Flinders St Townsville QLD 4810

Mon - Fri: 10am - 5pm Sat - Sun: 10am - 2pm

(07) 4727 9011

ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au

www.townsville.qld.gov.au

@TCC_PercTucker

PercTuckerTCC

FOREWORD

Free and Foreign Subjectivity is the debut major solo exhibition of Jordan Grant, and it is with great pleasure that Perc Tucker Regional Gallery is able to present this body of work to the Townsville community.

The artist, while currently residing in Melbourne, is wellknown to Townsville audiences. Having attended secondary school in the region, Grant took his interest in drawing to another level through his participation in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His raw talent was evident to many in the community, and his often figurative works struck a balance between the brashness of his youth, and a certain romantic quality, particularly evident in the lyrical mark making that gave structure to his figures.

As well as producing a high volume of paintings, Grant gained further insight into the arts industry by completing a Traineeship with Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in 2010.

Having resolved that art – and specifically making art –provided him with the most career (and life) satisfaction, Grant sought an avenue to build on his raw talent, and moved to Melbourne to study Painting at RMIT. While the talent is still abundantly clear, many may not recognise Grant’s work as being by the same artist who once practiced in Townsville.

The figurative focus no longer remains, though figurative elements do feature in some works. Indeed, the artist has stripped back not only form, but also meaning, and is currently embarking on a journey of abstraction that challenges the audience to provide the works with their own meaning.

Free and Foreign Subjectivity is an important landmark in Jordan Grant’s artistic journey. As with any artist, Grant’s practice has evolved, and will doubtless continue to evolve, hopefully over many productive years.

In considering this latest body of work, Grant stated, “I don’t see myself aiming for an aesthetically unified practice at all. As I see it right now paintings are – to some degree – a culmination of thoughts, and a constant progression of thought exemplifies an intact sense of curiosity… [which] to me seems to be one of the most vital aspects of humanity, and to lose it would be pretty awful.”

I whole-heartedly encourage viewers to not only enjoy the artist’s seductive mark making and command of tone, but also to retain their own curiosity in considering how each work resonates with them.

ERIC NASH Curator, Gallery Services

Painting For Cascade [detail] 2015 Oil on linen 147 x 127 cm Private Collection

Photo: Jordan Grant

AN IDEAL WORLD

Jordan Grant’s paintings appear to reside somewhere between being vague transient spaces and changing, sometimes dynamic locations. They are formed through abstract gestures and stylized mannered fragments as pure material objects, manually worked with a sense of searching for something concrete, but where the tangible remains elusive. It is almost as though what has been formed in these paintings was first conceived through the misrecognition of something fleeting, caught in movement; something that may never have existed, something from the back of one’s mind.

The imagery in Jordan’s works forms through gestural sweeps of paint and accumulations of shapes that are informed by observations or recollections of half-remembered things: landscapes, plants, spaces, wind and water, along with fragmentary but intimate depictions of the human body, naked and held within something. These works form into a confluence of incomplete, fleeting and half known associations and forgotten memories. Here it might be relevant to consider Sigmund Freud’s idea of the emergence of the subconscious, forgetfulness, and ‘the return of the repressed’, a condition where that which has been repressed subconsciously must eventually in some form or other, be expressed1.

Interestingly, in conjuring an ‘unknown place’, as Jordan does in his paintings, one must work through what is known. Many forms of abstraction evolve in this way, where the artist may be founding their work in what they know, but attempting to express something that they may not quite know how to represent or to find. A painting of this type can be seen as the making or forming of an alternate place, providing us with an encounter involving familiar elements within an unknown space.

Through their layering Jordan’s paintings evoke a sense of embedding and revealing, forgetting and remembering, where the sum may be greater than the parts. And this memory and forgetfulness appears as a type of terrain, conjuring places where one is aware of shifting within time and through time. Therefore a feature of these works is that they chart transformation and time, along with recollection, arousing feelings of not really being ‘grounded’ in anything, and reminding us that at times within our minds, we exist within a type of indeterminate transitional vagueness and abstraction.

But equally Jordan’s works convey an external place, the unstable exterior world of today.

In our connected world, where we are only ever a click away from knowledge (where people dream of going ‘off grid’), we exist within a fluctuating network of infinite language, images and signs, a vast sea of information as fluid and profoundly deep as it is wide. Our world and our presence can only be described as multifarious. Jordan’s paintings equally relay things about our world and our times, where we often have to gain access to an understanding of things through a range of vantages, none of which might be declared as singularly authoritative; where one meaning may quite possibly be as relevant as another.

Cultural theorist Françoise Vergès2 confirms this by describing our circumstances today as being informed by diverse visions, somewhat like a projected palimpsest3, which despite being the product of erasures and re-writings also demands constant revision of the central ideas that underpin it. Today we are encouraged to replace ideas or thoughts that we may take for granted with new foundations. Vergès suggests that our times, marked by change and shifting vantages form as a type of cumulative palimpsest, where ghosts are evoked, where we do not fill gaps or mask disappearances, where absences may be visible, forming a web of layers that make it difficult to understand what we are held within. The character of our time is formed through swift, and ceaselessly layered accumulations of events, information and histories that seem to instantly become submerged and replaced, conjuring the notion that perhaps, as Vergès again indicates, we should acknowledge a symptom of these times being, again a type of forgetfulness, in order that we cope with our multifarious existence.

So while these ideas about our times could make it difficult to even know how to think about things, how to even grasp what the world is in the face of so much information and communication, it does form a rich and poetic space for fiction and the imagination, a terrain where nothing can really be predicated on one central truth or reality, where our sense of actuality has become a beverage of fragmentary perceptions. Coupled with this, our brains appear to process by remembering and forgetting through a cycle or loop that takes us through our lives, and in this we discard things that are no longer useful to us, while we hang on to others. We sift and sort through layers and our memories come to us, factually, as fragments, while memories also often coexist within atemporal framings, shunning linear realities.

Many of the places we go to in contemporary art these days are disembodied psychological spaces rather than physical places. However in the instance of Jordan’s paintings, while we encounter imagery that suggests our interior world, our minds, these works are also coupled with associations of the world we live in, a place of change, confusion and layering that nevertheless may be strangely beautiful within itself. Rather than representation, Jordan’s paintings are focused more on interpretation and feeling, evoking an almost ungraspable vision of ourselves and the world

I learned in my childhood that a work of fiction is not necessarily enclosed within the mind of its author but extends on its far sides into little known territory4 .

PETER WESTWOOD

Peter Westwood is an artist, writer and curator based in Melbourne, and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT University

NOTES

Freud, Sigmund. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, trans A.A. Brill (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914). Online: www.bartleby.com/284 Vergès, Françoise. Like a Riot: The Politics of Forgetfulness, Relearning the South and The Island of Dr Moreau, South Magazine Documenta 14, 2016

3. 4..

A palimpsest is generally an old document that has been through a process of erasure, where one set of writings has been replaced with new writing. Therefore the entire information that has occurred in the document is never available, while the document usually evokes diverse layers or aspects beneath the surface.

Murnane, Gerald. Barley Patch. Artamon NSW: Giramondo Publishing, 2009. p68

1. 2.

A Sheer Moment 2016 Oil and acrylic on canvas 152 x 152 cm

“Where science struggles for objectivity, art struggles for subjectivity, but the subjectivity of art is not that of an individual. It is social and collective.”

Nocturne I 2016

Oil on linen 122 x 117 cm

Opposite: Nocturne II 2016

Oil and cyanotype on canvas 168 x 148 cm

Photo: Sarah Welch

“A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.”

PAUL VALERY 2

Brockengespenst 2016

Oil and acrylic on canvas

168 x 148 cm

The Gestures Of The Ceremony 2016

Oil no linen 87 x 81 cm

“The necessary painting is a painting that could have failed. It grew uniquely and its final shape is one that the painter could not have foreseen at the beginning. And because it was discovered in good faith rather than predetermined and merely executed, its appearance registers, for both the painter and the viewer, as a surprise and something of a gift.”

JUSTIN PATON 3

Oil and acrylic on linen 107 x 102 cm

Photo: Jordan Grant

Joyous In The Strange, New State Of Hovering 2016 Oil and cyanotype on canvas 168 x 148 cm

Drinking About Dreaming 2016 Oil and cyanotype on linen 76 x 76 cm

Untitled II 2016 Oil on canvas 107 x 102 cm

Untitled III 2016

Oil on canvas 107 x 107 cm

Untitled IV 2016

Oil on linen 107 x 102 cm

“To paint in a way that elevated and replayed that intangible psychic grip; to combine images and, eventually, objects in order to synthesise emotional compounds from existing registers of affect.”

MARTIN HERBERT 4

Painting for Cascade 2015

Oil on linen

147 x 127 cm

Photo: Jordan Grant

From Albury To Wodonga 2016 Oil on linen 87 x 81 cm

Painting For The Deluge 2016 Oil and shoepolish on linen 147 x 127 cm

Photograph Of A Fiction [detail] 2016 Oil and acrylic on canvas 168 x 148 cm

“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.”

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY 5

Photograph Of A Fiction 2016

Oil and acrylic on canvas 168 x 148 cm

Messy, Isn’t It? 2016 Oil on canvas 107 x 97 cm

Sympathy For The Anthropocene 2016

Oil on canvas 148 x 178 cm

NOTES

Wark, M. (2016). Asger Jorn: Monsters of all lands unite! Public Seminar http://www.publicseminar.org/2016/09/jorn/#.WCG9_uF96Rs

[Accessed 8 Nov. 2016]

Valéry, P. Paul Valéry, An Anthology, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977

Paton, J. (2016). Do we still need painting? The Australian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/visual-arts/the-art-of-creating-a-senseof-necessity-with-paint/news-story/d080c849aa25a432833d922bf29967a2

[Accessed 8 Nov. 2016]

Herbert, M. (2014). The Uncertainty Principle. Berlin: Sternberg Press Shklovsky, V, Art as Technique, 1917. Russian formalist criticism, Lemon, L. and Reis, M. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965

The Thing About Wildfires 2016

Oil on canvas 152 x 152 cm

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Q&A

ERIC NASH

Describe your artistic development; what are the conscious or natural stylistic developments you’ve noted from your early interest in drawing to now?

JORDAN GRANT

I suppose early interest is always pretty hard to pick, I could repeat that classic line of “I’ve always drawn, always been interested” but that’s not entirely true. I used to draw fantasy figures with cartoonish muscular proportions wielding swords and casting spells, and this was normally to either kill time, or exercise small technical prowess to impress friends. I think my first inclination towards thinking of painting as an art form (and especially as something I might pursue) came when I began attending painting lessons with then-local Townsville artist Cary McAulay in early high school. He taught me how to properly consider the human form and render it in space, as well as laying down the foundations of colour theory and how to perceive and recreate light… Much later along the line there was a love affair with street art which was fostered by the incredible RUN Collective. In the year/s of living in the space and spending time with everyone at The Cot this culture preoccupied me, and my sense of aesthetics often relied heavily on the drawn line. This line remained my focus when I shifted back to the human form, and these were the kind of paintings I showed at Umbrella and Perc Tucker those years ago, with the desperately-trying-to-recreate-Egon-Schiele line work and the black or dark grey backgrounds with fleshy sepia tones.

For the first year at RMIT I played with a lot of different stuff half-heartedly as that was designed to be time to shake up your preconceptions and experiment. My ventures here tended to lack something, and I kept my regular painting practice at the core of my submissions. I kept the brown colour palette but began to at least critique my idea of the ‘expressive’ gesture. I was made to realise that my previous attempts at this notion had been totally affected, and simply mimicked aesthetic forms of the past which had actually carried meaning contextual to their time, i.e. German and Austrian Expressionism. This revelation that a replicated aesthetic is achievable but belies its own falsity, and only a painting created with freedom and a sense of informality behind each gesture can truly communicate its effect to the viewer, was my biggest hurdle in that first year. The struggle to be genuine, I suppose that’s the best way to sum it up.

In the second year, 2014, I began to properly consider colour in my work and in particular the Australian palette that the famous set of painters who preceded the modernists struggled to depict. I was obsessed with Arthur Streeton’s Spirit of the Drought because of its warm palette and violet shadows, and the (potentially problematic) allegory of the woman as a foreboding apparition. I wanted to strike at something in the heart of the Australian consciousness thematically too, or at least I thought I did, or could, or something.

Eric Nash in conversation with the artist, Jordan Grant

At some point toward the end of that year I began to speak primarily with Peter Westwood, the head painting lecturer at RMIT. Of particular influence was a text he introduced me to called Painting Beside Itself by David Joselit, which began to influence my practice significantly. This was also the first time I was wholly engaged in a theoretical approach to painting as opposed to seeing the theory more as something which sits in line with art history. The text focuses on how painting can respond to its new position in the sphere of images we all digest daily, belonging to a system of shifting, evolving networks. Peter often proselytised Joselit’s vision of contemporary painting, encouraging a kind of partial abstraction as the best means to reflect the state of permanent flux that characterises our time, one “of unending commencements” as I recall him once saying.

The final year saw a continuation of Peter’s guidance and a continued interest in painting beyond figuration. I became interested in using cyanotype chemicals in my paintings, the same mixture once used commonly in the making of blueprints. Once the solution is applied, any of the areas of the surface which are exposed to light turn blue. Rather than try to utilise this masking aspect of it, I turned my attention to its physical properties - the way it rendered a kind of filmic effect when mixed with gesso, or how it pooled when mixed with turps and oil mediums. My end of year works focused on this rather ‘provisional’ style of painting whereby the main focus of the work is in their material and the visual effects that are created in their interactions. I considered this strategy to be an attempt at an impermanent and intentionless gesture, as not only did I not divulge a didactic meaning to the work, I myself often had little to no idea of what the outcome of the work would be.

After graduating I have been readjusting and trying to evaluate what I want to take away from the experience, hence why I am now in this position of having multiple visions for my work, and no certainty of any one direction to take them in. One thing for certain is that I have returned to an appreciation of the gestural mark in painting, and to elements of drawing within the brushstrokes.

EN

As you work through having multiple visions of your work, is coming to a singular (though not restrictive) vision or style something you actually wish to achieve?

JG

I don’t see myself aiming for an aesthetically unified practice at all. As I see it right now paintings are — to some degree — a culmination of thoughts, and a constant progression of thought exemplifies an intact sense of curiosity. Curiosity to me seems to be one of the most vital aspects of humanity, and to lose it would be pretty awful. Having said that, maybe one day I will stumble upon a visual language which absolutely resonates with me and I will change my mind, deciding to explore different avenues of content rather than form. And I suppose that’s the most honest answer I can give: My current interest lies in the form and structure of the painting as an object, and so long as this still concerns me I will for the most part forgo intentional content and visual unification.

Then there are pros and cons to both approaches...In some ways I envy the days when I did feel secure in a certain ‘style’, as it affords you a level of productivity that is hard to match, and a confidence in your own practice which is absent when

you constantly question the method of communication. But I believe that the rewards that come from this constant self-doubt outweigh those that come from a resolution of content within a known framework; when you stumble upon something new even to yourself – that is pretty special. I think of artists like Gunter Christmann; forever inquisitive! And the span of his work is just incredible. I really admire that.

EN

You’ve previously produced smaller solo exhibitions, and been involved in numerous group exhibitions. How has working towards your first solo exhibition in a main space of a regional gallery affected your process over the past year?

JG

It’s been pretty daunting at times to be honest. It’s such a massive undertaking, especially when my paintings are given to very sudden changes from one to the next. I have struggled with maintaining a balance between keeping at least some small sense of continuity while also not negating the creative principles I aspire to. It would have been even more difficult had I been painting for the whole year out of my old shed in Brunswick, but I was very fortunate in being offered a residency outside the city, and the change has been so helpful it’s hard to think what I would have done without it.

EN

The Artist’s Studio is critical to the creative process. Can you describe your current space and how you think it influences your productivity? What are the ‘essential features’ of a Jordan Grant Artist Studio?

JG

My studio for the last five or so months has been generously provided by the Kyneton Residency of The Macfarlane Fund. Located above a vintage furniture store an hour north of the city, the residency is being established as a program for recent painting graduates. It’s intended to help painters live and work rent free away from the many distractions that can hinder productivity in the big smoke, and I was extremely fortunate in being offered the space just when I needed it. The building is an old 1850s general store and is loaded with charm, providing me with enough space to work on three or four paintings at once without forfeiting life things like a dining table. Another huge plus to having plenty of room is that stretching a canvas is as simple and straightforward as it can be, which saves a lot of frustration.

It’s hard to know what characteristics of my working space would be considered defining, but I know that I tend to wind up with a wide array of old tins, jars and recycled takeaway containers all over the floor, marked with pigment and turpentine, not to mention the rags. I also have a penchant for wiping off brushes on the drop sheets, so there’s a kind of cuneiform skirting the edges of the room. The most important things for me though are just a good selection of records and a bit of greenery. I listen to endless amounts of William Basinski, hence the titles in the show dedicated to his masterpieces Cascade and The Deluge. There is something comforting about the repetition of tracks like this that enables you to focus, sets a pace, and makes you feel dreamy. If there are any better preconditions for painting then I don’t know about them.

EN

How does it feel to be returning not only to Townsville, but to your former work place in Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, to present such an important exhibition in the formative years of your career?

JG

It’s been the cause for a lot of reflection for sure, I keep thinking about how if it hadn’t been for that year I spent with the team there I wouldn’t have had the confidence to apply to study in Melbourne and things would have panned out very differently. The gallery was so instrumental in my development and in that sense it feels humbling to revisit an idea of who I was and consolidate that with who I perceive myself to be now. On the other hand it also makes me feel a sense of satisfaction with where I’ve moved with my work, so it is both levelling and elevating, in that strange way that two conflicting sensations can be symbiotic.

On a side note via a slight segue, there is a painting in the show titled Aufhebung; a German word which has a few different (and ostensibly contradicting) definitions, from ‘abolish’ to ‘preserve’, and even ‘transcend’. Maybe in some slight way the feeling I have about returning to Perc Tucker is something like this word.

EN

Perhaps it is a hard factor to separate from the influences of your RMIT studies, but how do you think moving away from Townsville has shaped your practice?

JG

Absolutely, those two are so inseparable it seems impossible to try to dissect them… I got a much better grasp on the history and context of art, and especially painting, outside of the exposure I had up north. Not that your physical location should have any effect on your ability to learn about something, we all know that the internet has opened up those channels wide enough that tangible distance is basically negligible. Even still, the breadth and proliferation of events and discussions ensures a deeper engagement with your practice, and (yeah this is related almost entirely to study, but) having passionate lecturers and peers whose brains you can pick and hold discourse with is very encouraging. There can also be something liberating about a city like Melbourne that allows you to push yourself and your ambitions further than you might have in a smaller town, but again that is so closely tied to the experience I had at RMIT that I can’t be sure what I’m outlining. Ultimately, regardless of where you move the experience tends to clarify your sense of self, both previous and current. It could have been anywhere and maybe the further away the better in some ways, but Melbourne was ideal for me at the time.