GREGORY HODGE A FABLED GESTURE
ZOE KIRKWOOD THE SCREEN SET
AMELIA ZARAFTIS ROOM
GREGORY HODGE A FABLED GESTURE
ZOE KIRKWOOD THE SCREEN SET
AMELIA ZARAFTIS ROOM
GREGORY HODGE A FABLED GESTURE If one were to describe the work of Gregory Hodge in one word, ‘imposing’ immediately springs to mind. Vibrant colour and volatile form projects works off the walls and into the gallery spaces they command with uncompromising authority. Much more than a variant of abstract expressionism, Hodge’s paintings with their highly charged edge of raw physicality, inflate the impetus of artists like Pollock, de Kooning and Johns. While there may have been quieter, darker moments, in his increasingly distinguished oeuvre, A Fabled Gesture sweeps the audience into a maelstrom of tightly controlled madness that sees the act of painting magnified to a point where the stroke of a brush becomes the work itself. At the centre of Hodge’s work is a love affair with paint, what you can do with it, what it can do for you. Each piece vigorously steers the brush into unknown places and spaces that test its abilities to render anything resembling comprehensible form. While Hodge demonstrates a significant mastery of his medium, this has never been manifest in complacency where ability generates a certain laziness of vision. On the contrary each new series is a movement reflecting a major shift in direction as he continually turns process and technique upside down. His early trompe l’oeil paintings of collages made from painted paper cut outs, organized and taped to walls were replicated on canvas and paper, reproducing the original objects with precision. These works acknowledge every detail of the initial template, overlaps, transparency, construction and order.
A Fabled Gesture reverses Hodge’s early processes. Rather than presenting a document of the original idea/collage, new works are in fact collages; strips of paper that amplify his energetic gestural practice. Developing new techniques that enable work on very thin paper usually employed for digital printing, Hodge’s flamboyant marks trace a series of actions requiring speed and fluidity. The silhouetted streaks of seething pigment are cut out, focusing attention away from the paper medium and onto the stroke entirely. In a process of laborious reconstruction, Hodge composes his marks to produce works of unearthly lightness, unbound by the conventional frames and rectangles that have dominated painting for centuries. Overlapped or overlayed, he generates illusions of transparency as each stroke of the brush seems liberated from its paper medium and 1mm PVC support. Thus, A Fabled Gesture gains its overwhelming sense of weightlessness - both physical and metaphysical. While abstraction is a close relative to Hodge’s practice, his interest in 17th Baroque composition opens the possibility for multiple viewing angles or ways of approaching the work. Dramatic religious narratives of divine transcendence with intense depictions of agony and ecstasy inspired the artists of this period to produce works of extraordinary theatrical grandeur. During a residency in Rome,
the cast shadows and painted architectural friezes in ceiling frescoes by Giovanni Battista Gaulli impressed Hodge. Tumbling stucco figures interwoven with clouds and drapery over decorative gold architectural elements generated an atmosphere that Hodge attempts to emulate via the oblique transference of an illusionistic Baroque picture space into his abstract field of vision. The monumental energy of Hodge’s imposing works can be attributed to Baroque influences that have intensified the idiosyncratic abstraction of his earlier work. David Broker May 2015 Gregory Hodge is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
LEFT: Untitled, 2015, acrylic on paper mounted on PVC, 183cm x 147cm
RIGHT: Untitled, 2015, acrylic on paper mounted on PVC, 183cm x 145cm
GREGORY HODGE Untitled, 2015, acrylic on paper mounted on PVC, 183cm x 147cm
GREGORY HODGE Untitled, 2015, acrylic on paper mounted on PVC, 183cm x 145cm
ZOE KIRKWOOD THE SCREEN SET When looking at Zoe Kirkwood’s earlier installations such as The Neo-Baroque Spectacle (Installation with strung resin attachments) (2013), playfulness is immediately striking, and although Kirkwood has decided to transition between high key colour and monochrome in The Screen Set, it is obvious that her practice has not become any less playful. The work flies around the room with her innovative use of hanging, placement, materials and space, none of which submit to the conventional restraints of the gallery wall. Kirkwood here emphasises the power and structure that underlies all of her installations
ZOE KIRKWOOD The Painted Fold Series, 2013, Installation, dimensions variable, acrylic, oil on canvas, stainless and mild steel, wood, enamel (photo Che Chorley)
by using a subtler yet more diverse palette, showing that her work is more than just decorative. The Screen Set also takes this a step further by integrating 2D and 3D painting, sculpture, design and installation into an amorphous medium culminating in this unique installation. For Kirkwood, Baroque influence is key - in particular, Bernini and his concept of “bel composto” (translating to “beautiful whole”). The unity of architecture, painting and sculpture combining to form a singular experience - mainly observed in and applied to chapels - undeniably obvious in The Screen Set; an abstract, pop chapel for the contemporary age aiming to bring the paintings “off the wall and into our space.” This exhibition constantly transitions as we walk through it, Kirkwood referring to it like a stage set, with the screens as theatre props that transform the audiences view - reminiscent of the idiosyncratic costumes from Dadaist theatre. The Screen Set is like a visual Baroque remix, paintings of targets and delimited colour drips, geometric lattices and sculptural rays of divinity appear at random in our real-world space. Contemporary Pop Art from a society where religious divinity is replaced with the all-truthful screen. Kirkwood is not pleased with simple illusion - so instead, she literally brings her installation into our world. She frequently refers to the work as “invading” our physical space, which it does - but in a (juxtapositional-y) non-invasive way. Amongst all this excitement, the making, hanging and placement is so eminently considered, which is how and why the work maintains so much energy without descending into chaos. Kirkwood displays her skills as an artist and artisan, showing consistency and structure to be pivotal in her practice. The Screen Set is like interpretation of our unwavering faith to the digital screen, websites like backdrops to the present day theatre of life. The pieces refuse to exist separately from us, and although in reading it may seem that this is “hard” artwork, it’s the opposite. The enjoyment and playfulness is undeniable, Kirkwood herself saying “I don’t think there is anything wrong with people just enjoying art.” Angus McGrath May 2015
ZOE KIRKWOOD Pouissin’s Frame 1632, 2014, 122cm x 92cm (each panel), acrylic and oil on canvas
AMELIA ZARAFTIS ROOM The word “motel” entered dictionaries in the late 1940s and is a portmanteau contraction of motor and hotel. As highways expanded and the motor vehicle industry developed throughout the 20th century motels provided inexpensive accommodation (with parking) for weary travellers. Ubiquitous on roads across the globe, motels prevailed during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, becoming an unsettling icon of popular culture: the Bates Motel in Pyscho (1960), The Tropicana, site of Andy Warhol’s Heat (1972) and the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King jnr was assassinated in 1968. While the motel has lost some of its tawdry gloss the reductive notion of the generic motel/hotel room is enduring. Rooms are generally small, have a TV that looks down on a bed, basic bathroom facilities, a nondescript to ugly framed picture, and occasional other accessories such as a bolster cushion. These rooms are paradoxically public spaces that satisfy a desire for transient privacy for travellers outside their customary zone of comfort. Amelia Zaraftis’ Room focuses on common elements of the ‘home away from home’ with a view to destabilizing its prevalent conventions and to some extent satirizing its attempts to feign comfort at a reasonable tariff. She is guided by her personal experience of nights in cheap digs producing a minimal, largely monochromatic installation, comprising timber slats covered by a white doona, a towel rack, a bed head, a bolster cushion and in one corner of the room a flatscreen TV. She has also added the obligatory unexceptional picture, framed by its minimal effort to provide decoration, rarely admired, never remembered. At first it seems curious that Zaraftis has created a ‘T’ road sign from the bed head leaning against the wall. Strange until it becomes clear that road signs dominate each object with arrows pointing in opposite directions or pointing to nowhere in particular. The signs are often extraneous elements of life that, like the omnipresent motel picture, we see but don’t really notice. Signage throughout cannot be obeyed because it doesn’t belong there – it is out of context and redundant. The point at which Zaraftis gets serious also reveals a wicked sense of humour, a sardonic comment perhaps on uncritical obedience. In the broader scheme she questions the degree to which decisions are made consciously, especially in the light of conditioned responses to certain artificial or synthetic stimuli. In Zaraftis’ Room the imaginary liminal space between inside and out is collapsed and just as the word motel suggests, motor and hotel become one. On the TV we see an image of a three-tiered road where cars and cyclists pass casually, intermittently, before the ‘guests’ eyes. Working with elements (of things such as rooms and roads) Zaraftis generates a sense of harmonious coexistence from diverse
objects, images and ideas. Structure and composition play a leading role in her elegantly constructed installations where even the road view itself might be her construct. It is perhaps unintended, but undoubtedly the final irony, that Zaraftis’ sheets, towels, picture and bed head adorned with road signage could in their new context reflect contemporary (bedroom) design. Thus the Room becomes a zone that is ultimately occupied by what lies beyond the door, where alien and extraneous symbols entering in the guise of modern dÊcor complete the cycle. David Broker May 2015 Amelia Zaraftis was the recipient of the M16 Artspace EASS Award, 2015
AMELIA ZARAFTIS Two Way (Installation Photograph), 2015, 12cm x 160cm x 195cm, recycled timber, doona, constructed fabric covering
ABOVE: AMELIA ZARAFTIS Two Way (Installation Photograph), 2015, 12cm x 160cm x 195cm, recycled timber, doona, constructed fabric covering LEFT: AMELIA ZARAFTIS Two Way (Installation Photograph), 2015, 12cm x 160cm x 195cm, recycled timber, doona, constructed fabric covering
GREGORY HODGE A FABLED GESTURE ZOE KIRKWOOD THE SCREEN SET AMELIA ZARAFTIS ROOM
FRIDAY 29th MAY - SATURDAY 4th JULY 2015 CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE GORMAN ARTS CENTRE, 55 AINSLIE AVE. BRADDON Tues - Fri 11 - 5 & Sat 10 - 4 www.ccas.com.au
CCAS IS SUPPORTED BY THE ACT GOVERNMENT, AND THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNNENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, IT’S ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY.