Mid-line
Five Walls September 2023
This exhibition of work continues my ongoing enquiry and explorations into seriality, measurement, and perceptions of space in object-based painting. The formal simplicity of the work pays homage to modernist abstraction while the wooden supports, protrusions and extensions create gaps and spaces that pose slippery questions about our relationship to the real, the imagined and the abstract.
These works have been developed from existing measured pre-cut ply and reassembled wooden off-cuts. The reformation of these off-cuts creates a visual counterpoint between the planar surface, edges and spaces of the rectilinear forms and creates a conversation between intent and unexpected outcomes in the production of work.
Measurement is an important tool in the development of the work as it defines the boundaries of the constructed shape and retains an element of control and predictability. However, these constraints and limitations stimulate my perceptual enquiry in the overall development of the object’s embodied architectural and psychological spaces referenced in the realisation of the final work.
Mid-line conjures associations to the box-like structure of the body’s core stability. The proximity and placement of the works in Midline reference this core stability while generating an engagement with a broader framework of ideas associated with containment, division, and displacement. The works require slow viewing from multiple perspectives and engage the body in an intimate and ambiguous conversation between the viewer and the surrounding architectural space within the gallery.
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ABSTRACTI♀︎N
Five Walls, February 1 - 18th 2023
Five walls present the work of fifty Australian abstract artists in an expansive exhibition across four gallery spaces. This endeavour attempts in some way to redress the gender imbalance in the art world, but moreover, it signals the continuing presence and ongoing practice of women artists in Australia and around the world.
Curated by Missy Ueda and Emma Langridge.
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Attachment
Five Walls
09 – 26 February 2022, 1/119 Hopkins St, Footscray Victoria 3011
Attachment continues Susan Andrews’ ongoing practice of making serial and geometric paintings that explore and suggest ambiguities present in the perception of space. The spatial referents in these recent works begin with but eventually overflow the pictorial space of painting, moving into space as it is architectonically referenced within each piece as well as its placement in the room. Significantly for our contemporary time of containment and isolation, attachment also alludes to psychological space. It is there, in between the many spaces and potential readings, that Andrews’ spare, intimately scaled, brightly painted constructions hang, cling, straddle, contain, lean on, and otherwise attach to support.
Operating within predominantly rectilinear geometries of the square and the rectangle, edges, planes, lines, colour, and paint assert themselves through finely calibrated nuances so that small differences become expansive. Edges become ledges, sometimes holding on to a single strip of colour. Delineated sections of white wall are contained and embraced, or just slightly extended into. Corners give way. Complementary blues and oranges vibrate as they abut each other. A square plane of pink jostles retinally inside an analogous orange frame. Acrylic matted surfaces flatten alongside glossier oil-brushed ones. Systems of form, colour and spatial organisation concentrate the perception of the viewer.
And yet, and this is often present in Andrews’ work, there is an antidote to the perfect operation of structure and geometry, and that is the wobble. It is a geometry for living. Within the mould of expectation, perfection is not to be. Small traces of body and chance are evident in the handmade details of the works. It is observed in the tremulous sweep of a brushstroke, and the trace of body used as a measure. There, beyond the systems, is that delightful wobble, a calculated frailty, the gentle operation of chance and a flexible rule.
Lisa Pang
January 2022.
Theory of Colours
Articulate Projects Space, 26 October - 6 November 2022
Curated by Beata Geyer, ‘Theory of Colours’ exhibition presents new works by six artists, Beata Geyer, Linden Braye, Mark Ryan, Naomi Oliver, Susan Andrews and Tom Loveday who focus on colour and its conceptual potential as an integral component in their practice.
Shaping our everyday experience, colour underpins how we relate to the world. Our lives are saturated by colour, and yet we know surprisingly little about it despite the fact that the question ‘What is colour?’ has been asked for quite a while now.
The title of the exhibition, borrowed from Goethe’s 1840s Zur Farbenlehre is a provocation and a starting point for the conversations about colour, and a concept of ‘colour theory.’
Every act of seeing leads to consideration, consideration to reflection, reflection to combination, and thus it may be said that in every attentive look at nature, we already theorise. Goethe, 1840
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, a poet and philosopher presented his Theory of Colours as a response to Newton’s findings on colour. Most unimpressed with a theory that neatly packaged all colour spectrum into a black and white ‘colour’ wheel divided into seven mystical sections, Goethe compared it to an “old castle built by a young architect”, suggesting that Newtown’s theory impeded a free inquiry into the phenomena of colours.
Instead, Goethe’s approach focuses on colour observation and immersion
in elusive colour experiences, resulting in presenting the theory of how colours are perceived by humans. Goethe’s legacy and contribution to art and philosophy is understanding colour as lived experience and as such colour is deeply embedded in everything that pertains to being human.
‘Theory of Colours’ exhibition brings into focus the complexity surrounding a discourse about colour and our attempts to theorise it. A futile attempt to answer ‘what is colour’, perhaps, but still nevertheless most enjoyable.
But in order to guard against the possible abuse of this abstract view, in order that the practical deductions we look to should be really useful, we should theorise without forgetting that we are so doing, we should theorise with mental self-possession, and, to use a bold word, with irony. Goethe, 1840
Beata Geyer, 2022
All quotes from ‘Goethe’s Theory of Colours’ published by Lector House
Exhibition essay Dr Tom Loveday
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Image_Object Mona Foma 2020
Poimena Gallery, Launceston Tasmania
Image_ Object examines the relationship between the visual and the physical in non-objective works. Most artworks, it can be argued, are fusions of imagery and objecthood. This exhibition reveals an increasing emphasis on texture and surface qualities. The predilection for large areas of undifferentiated or barely fluctuating colour, the exploitation of the edge, of the shaped or moulded support, and the physical juxtaposition of disparate or borrowed elements.
This survey exhibition brings together a broad range of mediums and approaches to abstraction and includes both local, national, and internationally recognised practitioners.
Exhibiting Artists
Jake Walker, Tineke Porck, Lev Khesin, Billy Gruner, Paul Moncrieff, Suzie Idiens, Sarah Keighery, Carolyn Wigston, Anya Pesce, Louise Blyton, Diane Scott, Stephen Wickham, Aaron Martin, Deb Covell, Lisa Sharp, Eloise Kirk, Steven Carson, Dan Rocha, Anne Mestitz, Terri Brooks, Pia Løye, Nicola Staeglich, Ivan De Menis, Ryllton Viney, Lisa Patroni, Michael Muruste, Paul Snell, Noah Spivak, Patrizia Biondi, Molly Thomson, Marlene Sarroff, Ian Wells, Monique Lacey, Paul Bishop, Ryan Sarah Murphy, Magda Cebokli, Michelangelo Russo, Jennifer Jabu, Pim Piët, Susan Andrews, Kevin Lund, David Marsden, Jamin Kluss, Ilkka Parni, Jeff Conefry, Brent Hallard, Louise Gresswell.
Construction/reconstruction: In Uncertain Times
Stacks Project Space
30 July - 16 August 2020
Construction/reconstruction: In Uncertain Times conjures a situation where systems and structures once familiar are thrown into a state of flux. While uncertainty is a constant throughout our lived experience in its current form it has caused us to reconsider our relationship between private and social space. The work developed for this exhibition explores how familiar and dissimilar perceptions of space might coexist to reform and create new meanings as old conventions are reframed and questioned