Dark Edges of the Collection

MAITLAND REGIONAL ART GALLERY

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Within the imposing 100 year old Gothic building, that announces Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) to its audience, is an art collection with a dark side. Surrealist collages, tormented animals, threatening landscapes, disasters of war, skulls, wreaths, coffins and funerary urns can all be discovered within the MRAG Collection.

All of these artworks represent a broad range of mediums and artistic practices and, as most are works on paper, they also reflect the focus of the MRAG Collection.

The artworks in this exhibition can be disturbing in subject matter and in many cases also dark in their imagery yet, despite the estranging sense of unease that may be felt when entering this exhibition, they still intrigue and entice the visitor into a corner of the collection that reveals the intimate investigations of the artists into their own dark worlds.

It is an unusual human trait that we derive a strange pleasure from watching a bleak drama unfold or thrill at listening to stories of evil or ghostly hauntings. The same applies in art - the viewer can be as attracted and enchanted by a mysteriously dark landscape or an image about death. Francis Bacon is frequently quoted as saying that ‘the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery’, and many artists over time have heightened a sense of mystery in their work by exploring the subject matter of death and spirituality, grief and horror, darkness and shadows.

There are a number of mysterious and dark landscapes in the MRAG collection. Louise Hearman is well known for her strange, dreamlike landscapes. In her painting, Untitled #491, Hearman has optimised the glossy, richness of oil paint to create her landscape; featuring a mysterious, moonlit, hair-covered, ambiguous shape. Hearman has said that she tries to tap into a sense of the universe in her work with no direct intent to create a mystery within, but in doing so she manages to disorientate her audience with an image such as this, with no clear explanation in the subject matter or the title.1,2 Andy Devine is a UK born and now Newcastle based artist who creates dark and descriptive landscapes drawn from a personal narrative of displacement and a need for a sense of belonging. In his lithograph, The curtain call, Devine has devised the threatening storm as a metaphor to express a personal melancholy in his ongoing feelings of isolation and disconnection since migrating to Australia in 1999. This was his first foray into lithography and the lithographic processes enabled Devine to ‘play’ with the ink on stone, using unconventional tools, such as feathers, to produce the veils of rain and the surface of a tennis ball in sections of the clouds with the outcome being a dramatic and electrifyingly charged bleak, beauty.3 In contrast to the more descriptive seascape by Devine, Adrian Lockhart has created dark and moody seascapes using pools of ink filled water, washed over areas of the paper. The essence of a stormy sea and sky is formed by tonal effects created with varying amounts of water separating the warm from the cool pigments in the ink. Lockhart has created these wash drawings to express the feeling of fear and excitement that he experiences while surfing alone at an isolated beach. The horizon line is both literal and symbolic of the line between known and unknown.4 Jason Brooks is a British artist best known for his oversized, monochromatic, photorealist portraits. (One such portrait was featured in MRAG’s grand opening exhibition in August 2009). In this work, the flower burdened Cross, Brooks has pushed watercolour to its limits in density and scale, working the paint to saturation point in the shadows with the finely detailed flowers providing an ethereal contrast. This painting is an example of his earlier practice whereby he used his own photographs as his original source. The subject matter, the wreathlike cross, reflects his fascination with mortality and the funereal aspect of photography in capturing a frozen moment.5 Many artists over time have explored the theme and emotional impact of death. The intersection of death and dying and personal memoir has been a consistent thread in Fiona Davies, work since her father’s death in 2001.

In the video work, Memorial/time of death, flowers, so often a witness of death, have been filmed over a period of time, slowly deteriorating. Projected onto a dark wall this work becomes emotionally potent as the edges of the image become ambiguous, conveying the concept that the ‘time of death’ is fluid and there is often no one particular moment in which we can determine the moment of absence.6 It is somewhat odd that this personal and intimate experience - grieving the death of a father - features twice in the MRAG Collection. It seems that there may have been some sort of catharsis for Davida Allen in the creation of her pictorial essay about the loss of a parent, in the Death of my father series. The intimate nature of the content is reflected in the intimate size of the works and the use of mixed media emphasises the multiple layers of events and emotions in her story.7 Illustrating not only death but also mutilation and the horrors of man’s innate cruelty are the two Francisco Goya etchings from the MRAG Collection. Goya’s paintings depicted life in late 18th and early 19th century Spain, ranging from portraits of the aristocracy to recording gruesome aspects of war, and later his own inner phantoms from ill health. The two works in our collection are from Los Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War), a series of more than 80 prints he created as a personal commentary on the brutalities and mass executions of Spanish citizens that occurred during of the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814) and the Civil War that followed.8 The two beautifully crafted, glazed porcelain funerary urns in the collection were donated to MRAG in 2005. The urns were created during the 13th Century Song Dynasty in China and represent the southern Chinese tradition of ‘burial of the summoned soul’. Such vessels were produced for burial to contain the remains or even the spirit of the dead. The urns are decorated with dragons and gods for protection and a bird on the lid represents the phoenix, a symbol of good luck and happiness.9 Surreal imagery is often dark, challenging and provocative. James Gleeson is known as one of Australia’s most prominent surrealist artists. In his works, his use of collage elements – medical apparatus, machinery and mysterious internal body parts – create an unsettling, yet beautiful imagery that ultimately succeeds in combining the two states of reality and dreams.10

Mike Parr has a long and multi-faceted art practice. It is clearly evident that his provocative, and often violent, endurance performance works inform his drawings and etchings. One could conclude that the extreme nature of some of his performance pieces could only be endured, not only by conviction, but also considerable introspection. This introspection is then evident in his self portraits. In the etching, Untitled #2, the likeness is clearly present yet we envision more of the artist in the execution of this work than just his face.11 Being able to read an object past its surface qualities is a common goal for artists. The photogram is a simple photographic technique that has been used by artists to question reality and material presence, a tool intrinsic to the practice of many surrealists. Anne Ferran has used this technique to illuminate a child’s gown in this untitled work. The result is a ghostlike, negative shadow, eerily highlighting the absence of the child, evoking a feeling of loss and provoking the imagination of the viewer to create a narrative, or history for the life of the child no longer.12 The quirky pencil and pen drawing on paper by Laith McGregor has a dark reality beneath the lightly drawn surface. McGregor drew this study during an artist in residence program in France, where he was given access to the collection of the La Rochelle Natural History Museum. His focus at that time was to study and draw busts and preserved heads from different cultures around the world. This work is a life study of a Polynesian skull, which was incongruously decorated with a European sailor’s jacket as a head dress and buttonhole panel, from a French sailor’s waistcoat, as a nose covering, juxtaposed with more culturally traditional adornments. The museum had no explanation of the story behind this object, so McGregor has presented this image of an incongruous combination of tribal and colonial cultures to provoke our own thoughts on colonialism and the moral question of retaining and returning remains which are still held in ethnographic collections around the world.13 Another incongruous juxta-positioning, this time initiated by the artist, is illustrated in nell’s work, Where there are human’s you’ll find flies. Combining words from the poem of Japanese haiku master Kobayashi Issa and an image of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, nell has subverted an iconic image and verse to develop new meaning to both works. Using flies, the first creatures to capitalise on death and decomposition, nell has produced her own visual commentary on spirituality and decay in this multi-media work.14,15 It seems in all of these works of darkness, death, mystery and melancholy the artists are seeking to draw the viewer into their work – to invoke an emotional or visceral response, provoke questioning, or expand the imagination.

Shadows are not just a darkened surface or absence of light but an elementary tool used by artists to craft a fully formed shape and visual description for the viewer. Similarly these dark works contrast with the rest of the MRAG Collection and, combined, they form a multilayered yet unified, compositional whole. Indulge in the beauty of the darkness, the melancholy of the shadows and the ugliness of the sinister for, as you would agree, without darkness we cannot fully appreciate the light.

Cheryl Farrell Collection Management Curator Maitland Regional Art Gallery

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IMAGES

Art Nation interview available online (12/8/2013): http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3222661.htm 2 Untitled #491, 1996, was donated to the MRAG collection in 2012 through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, (in future only written as CGP), in memory of Joan K. Milne.

3 The curtain call, 2006, was donated under the CGP in 2009 by Janis Wilton.

4 Sea level, 2010 series, was gifted to MRAG by the artist in 2010.

5 Cross, 1999, was donated under the CGP by Geoff Ainsworth AM in 2012.

6 Memorial/time of death, 2008, was gifted to MRAG by the artist in 2013.

7 Death of my father series, 1982, was donated under the CGP by Denis Savill in 2009.

8 Nada. Ello dira and Estragos de la Guerra, 1863, were donated under the CGP by Geoff Ainsworth AM in 2012.

9 Chinese funerary urns, 13 century China, were donated under the CGP in 2005.

10 What is surrealism?, 1976, and I do not attribute to nature, 1978 were donated under the CGP by Ray Wilson OAM in memory of James Agapitos OAM in 2012.

11 Untitled #2, 1995 was purchased by MRAG in 2012.

12 Untitled, N.D. was donated under the CGP by Patrick Corrigan AM in 2009.

13 La Rochelle study, 2009, was donated under the CGP by Heather and Marshall Farrer in 2013.

14 Olivia Sophia, press release for the exhibition nell, GRAVEST HITS, 2013, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

15 Where there are human’s you’ll find flies, 1949/2013, was purchased

by MRAG in 2013.

1. Mike Parr, Untitled #2, 1995 etching on paper, 113.5 x 85.4 cm.

2. James Gleeson, What is surrealism?, 1976 mixed media on paper, 94 x 73 cm.

3. Laith McGregor, La Rochelle study, 2009 pencil and (biro) pen paper, 32.8 x 24 cm.

4. Anne Ferran, Untitled, ND photogram, 48.5 x 56.5 cm.

5. Adrian Lockhart, Sea Level 17, 2010 ink on paper, 29.4 x 20.8 cm.

6. Francisco Goya, Nada. Ello dirà, 1863 etching on paper, plate 69, edition of 500, 15.4 x 20 cm.

7. Davida Allen, Death of my father, 1982 mixed media on paper 42 x 50 cm.

8. Jason Brooks, Cross, 1999 watercolour on paper, 269 x 178 cm.

9. nell, Where there are humans, you’ll find flies, 1949/2013 book, stickers, 55 x 73 cm, Photo by Jessica Maurer, image courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

10. Chris O’Doherty, Zombie Gums, 2010 charcoal on paper 48.5 x 57.5 cm purchased by MRAG 2011.

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CREDITS ISBN: 978-0-9874919-5-4 Essay: Cheryl Farrell Education material: Michelle Maartensz Design: Clare Hodgins All images copyright of the respective artists © Maitland Regional Art Gallery

DARK EDGES OF THE COLLECTION Dark Edges of the Collection, presents artworks from the MRAG Collection that have an edge of darkness presented in various ways. Look at the artworks in this exhibition and think about what makes a work ‘dark’. There are a few things that are common amongst these artworks - such as the sinister, the unknown, the strange, surreal, a sense of mystery and the just plain scary. Each of these characteristics promotes a type of emotive quality that makes you feel the darkness the artist was trying to portray and this is what makes the work a success.

Your imagination can create a frightening situation just from being in the dark and hearing an unknown noise or seeing a shadow move across a window. Darkness opens your mind to the things that lurk in the subconscious that can be far scarier than the reality you exist in. Darkness can be something that evokes fear or lack of understanding.

An obscure abstract work allows the mind to create ideas and stories; an added darkness inspires the imagination to wander. There are also works in this exhibition that are not necessarily dark in tone but have a strangeness that takes the imagination into the realm of what is feared.

ACTIVITY: K - 12 Write a list of things that you think are important in making a dark art work.

GLOSSARY Decalcomania: is a process of spreading thick paint upon a canvas then, while it is still wet, covering it with further material such as plastic, paper or aluminium foil. This covering is then removed and the resultant paint pattern becomes the basis of the finished painting.

Frottage: is the process of taking a rubbing from a rough surface, for a work of art.

Photogram: an image produced without a camera by placing an object on photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. Filmless photography.

Surreal: strange; not seeming real; like a dream.

JAMES GLEESON What is surrealism? In this work James Gleeson has used various techniques and mediums including decalcomania, collage, ink, charcoal, pencil and text. Look closely and you will see negative images of a chain and other random hardware items. Gleeson has combined collaged images with soft negative images and textured areas to create a strange landscape for the objects to be placed. Gleeson created the negative images by using a high pressure atomiser to spray ink onto the paper while the the object sat on top of the paper.

There is another work in this exhibition that was created in a similar way - Anne Ferran’s photogram, Untitled, was made by placing a baby’s dress on top of photographic paper in a dark room, then exposing the paper to light. The paper is then processed to create the photogram. Photograms are known as filmless photography.

ACTIVITY: K - 12 Try using some of the techniques Gleeson used in his work to create your own surreal landscape.

Start by creating the background and then add some collage elements to populate your landscape.

Try the ‘disruption of scale’ technique by making some of the elements in your work appear to be miniature and some giant.

ACTIVITY: 9- 12 Try using negative space in a drawing. Start with a simple object and draw in the space around it so your original object remains white. Try drawing more complex or multiple shapes using negative space.

The title of the Gleeson work sits in an egg shaped orb with the name Andre Breton who was the founder of the surrealist movement. Research surrealist art and Andre Breton and the effect the surrealist movement had on James Gleeson’s art.

CHRIS O’DOHERTY In Chris O’Doherty’s work, Zombie gums, the title personifies the trees by cueing the viewer into looking at them as zombies. In the bark patterns there appears to be faces. It is a human instinct to search out faces and identify the familiar within a vague shape or random pattern, this phenomenon is known as pareidolia.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote about pareidolia as an artistic device. ‘If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills,’ he wrote in a passage in one of his extensive notebooks.1 ACTIVITY: K - 12 Find a tree or another natural surface that has marks or patterns and see if you can find anything you recognise and then draw your own version.

If there are clouds in the sky, see if you can make a character from the shapes they are forming.

Draw a picture with faces hidden in patterns.

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http://www.livescience.com/25448-pareidolia.html

MAITLAND REGIONAL ART GALLERY