Looking at Painting Catalogue
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LOOKING AT PAINTING WWW.CASULAPOWERHOUSE.COM ARTISTS: NELL, CARMEN GLYNN-BRAUN, HAYLEY MEGAN FRENCH, JODY GRAHAM, ROCHELLE HALEY, KIRTIKA KAIN, CLAUDIA NICHOLSON, JUDY WATSON AND NYAPANYAPA YUNUPINGU 2021 1 CONTENTS PRELUDE 1 Powerhouse Rd, Prelude 1 nnovative painting is built into the architecture of Casula Powerhouse Arts Casula NSW 2170 Centre. The ‘Koori Floor’ is a public artwork covering 357 square metres of the (enter via Shepherd St, Introduction 2 Centre’s Turbine Hall. It was designed by Judy Watson and launched in 1994 Liverpool) I to coincide with the transformation of this building from a disused 1950s power Nell: Relationships 4 Tel 02 8711 7123 station into the Arts Centre we know it as today. The floor was designed based on reception@ Carmen Glynn-Braun: Intricacies of Identity 6 a watercolour that Watson especially created for this purpose. casulapowerhouse.com Hayley Megan French: The Pipeline 8 The ‘Koori Floor’ artwork is predominantly orange, red and yellow in colour, casulapowerhouse.com it features seven glass light pools, silver swirls, a bronze fishing spear, a Jody Graham: Mark Making Tools & After the Rain 10 witchetty grub and a river, all embedded into the concrete along with the words ‘gandangarra’, ‘tharawal’, and ‘dharuk’. The reason the floor has such a unique Rochelle Haley: Double Veil & Double Column 12 colouring effect is because it translates the inherent nature of the original Kirtika Kain: Idolatry, The Solar Line XXIV 14 watercolour where colour blends and bleeds together. To transform her plan & The Solar Line XXVII into a public artwork, Watson engaged a range of artists and a large team of tradespeople and specialists who brought together their crafts skills to realise © Copyright authors, artists, Claudia Nicholson: Dream Map 16 contributors, and Casula Watson’s original watercolour through processes and materials relevant for Powerhouse Arts Centre. Judy Watson: waterspout & 18 creating a usable and lasting floor. The intention of the floor is to map and No material, whether written or photographic can be water sky spine on ochre nets acknowledge an Aboriginal presence on this site predating European settlement reproduced without the and the construction and operation of the power station. When we stand on permission of the artists, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu 21 authors and Casula Powerhouse this floor, the industrial building acknowledges that you are on what was, is, and Arts Centre. Opinions expressed in the publication are those of Public programs 24 always will be Aboriginal land. the authors and not necessarily those of Casula Powerhouse Acknowledgments 24 While the artists in LOOKING AT PAINTING are not directly responding to the Arts Centre. ‘Koori Floor,’ this artwork is a useful starting point that acknowledges how Casula Published by Casula Powerhouse is a space informed by boundary-pushing art. Powerhouse Arts Centre, June 2021 We would like to acknowledge the Cabrogal Clan of the Darug Nation who are the traditional custodians of the land that now resides within Liverpool City Council’s boundaries. We acknowledge that this land was also accessed by peoples of the Dhurawal and Darug Nations. Cover image: Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, untitled, 2018, 5861-18, paint pen on clear acetate, 86 x 82 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. 2 1 INTRODUCTION LOOKING AT PAINTING features Glynn-Braun is composed of five large ‘Double Veil’ and ‘Double Column,’ her training as a printmaker. The contemporary artists who push the rectangular hanging paint panels, not featuring a large scale wall mural paintings are often initiated by laying boundaries of the painting form. It supported by any canvas or backing. and sculptural elements responding the un-stretched canvas on the floor features a mix of emerging, mid-career The panels are mixtures of paint to the Hopper Gallery’s unique and letting the initial wash of paint and established artists from different and make-up foundation that recall architecture. She has used shape, reveal marks of what was underneath. geographic and cultural backgrounds. skin tones of First Nations women to light, shadow, movement, lines, rhythm She then builds on this print through While they each have a unique story to acknowledge colonial devastation. and striking colour to expand the mark-making. The paintings remain un- tell, they are unified by an approach to Hayley Megan French, who grew up in physical experience of a painting, and stretched, with frayed edges, and hang innovative mark-making with painterly Western Sydney and has lived locally to encourage the audience to consider in the gallery with a unique physicality. materials. The exhibition presents their in Old Guildford since 2018, walks their own physical movements as a part In the early 2010s Nyapanyapa works together to showcase the range around suburbs where she feels a of how these paintings come into view. Yunupingu pushed her practice to new and potential of painting today. We connection and captures them using a Rope, reed, rocks, hair, tar and gold dimensions through the introduction encourage audiences to consider how polaroid camera. Back in her studio she are materials used by Kirtika Kain of clear acetate and paint markers. the material, process or installation paints layers over the polaroids using in the creation of her paintings. The She had previously built a formidable elements of these painterly artworks a palette reflecting nostalgic colours caste system in India forms the basis reputation for bark painting, but due inform how they are experienced and of the suburb. It is a process that of Kain’s practice, having been born to a shortage of her preferred bark, how this reinforces the themes and acknowledges how the memory of a in Delhi into the Dalit, previously began using these new materials. ideas that the artists are exploring. place is filtered through many stages of known as the ‘untouchables’, class. The As she continued to use markers on The nine artists featured in this the mind. For this exhibition, the artist materials that she uses directly recall acetate, she embraced make-making exhibition present recent works which presents work that subjects Guildford, and draw attention to the lives and in new ways and worked with a range give audiences new perspective on how Kununurra and Toowoomba. experiences shaped by caste. of collaborators working in digital and paintings are made, experienced and Jody Graham takes long walks through Claudia Nicholson presents a series moving image spaces. understood. The artists include Nell, the bush, hiking for up to 15 kilometres. of ink and watercolours paintings, For LOOKING AT PAINTING, we are proud Carmen Glynn-Braun, Hayley Megan ‘After the Rain’ is an ongoing series of which are the outcomes of recent to show new and pre-existing works French, Jody Graham, Rochelle Haley, paintings on paper capturing the look experimentations with airbrushing. by these nine artists who each have Kirtika Kain, Claudia Nicholson, Judy of trees after the rain. To create these Airbrush is a technique often used in strong ties to Sydney. The texts that Watson and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. paintings, she submerges paper in illustrative works but is less so used for make-up this booklet feature extended Nell presents a multi-panel and multi- water in the bush, but she also goes the kind of detailed watercolour works statements on each of the exhibiting layered work which contemplates the a step further by utilising natural and Claudia often makes. By combining the artists, which unpack their approaches to nature of relationships. ‘Relationships’ discarded materials found on her different techniques of watercolour painting and how material, process and/ uses phrases and iconography across walks. Jody exhibits these ‘Mark Making and airbrush, Claudia has achieved a or installation are used in their work to layers of paint and material to invoke Tools’ alongside her paintings as an unique dimension and dreaminess in communicate their themes and ideas. the feeling of trying to understand acknowledgement of how the process her paintings of figures in an exquisite We thank our lenders for enabling us to something amongst complex layers of of making is just as much a part of the landscape. showcase these innovative artists. words and ideas. artwork as the paintings themselves. Judy Watson is an artist who is inspired ‘Intricacies of Identity’ by Carmen Rochelle Haley presents two works, to use paint in a way influenced by – Ellen Hewitt & Luke Létourneau 2 3 NELL A golden lightning bolt flashes at the There is one more element in upper right corner, and there is a ‘Relationships’. A small painting of a Born in 1975 in Maitland, NSW bubbling of colour dripping upwards ghost, hung above and to the side of from the bottom of the canvas. These the piece of fabric. The ghost hovers anti-gravitational drips are in contrast above the earthly concerns illustrated to the dripping white paint that falls in the world below and stands in like downward from the text above. There’s an angel in a Renaissance painting. For LOOKING AT PAINTING, I am for wallpaper, T-shirts, and tote bags. a tension in that. The painting on Benevolently and empathetically presenting a layered and multi-panel The text on the print is a collage of the the right, ‘I KNOW why i LEFT’, also watching over the unfolding scene artwork titled ‘Relationships.’ books of the Old Testament, a long list has a dark ground, but is fizzing with below. And yet, removed from it. of musical genres painted in related I made ‘Relationships,’ about a year energetic starbursts, a kind of energy ago when most of the world, and fonts, with an interconnected web of that can no longer be contained. I used most of Australia was in some form of words pertaining to relationships and green dots in the painting to symbolise lockdown.