The Surface of Painting, Horus & Deloris Contemporary Art Space, Pyrmont Sydney May 2008
‘To scratch the surface’ is to experience only a small taste of something containing great depth. Contemporary painting in Australia is a field enormously rich in terms of diversity of practice and intelligence of artists’ pursuit. Creativity, conceptual practice, aesthetic activity, inspired art making, as well as research related practice in the field, are all under way in artists’ studios, art schools, universities, galleries and museums. To see the six artworks contained in ‘The Surface of Painting’ by artists Peter Barnes, Meredith Frances Lynch, Bridget Minatel, Sarah Newall, Teong-Eng Tan, and Mary Wenholz is an exhibition that can be enjoyed as a survey, that is, a survey of the multitude of options for artists creating new work today.
To paint on a support surface is a traditional notion regarding the definition and making of a painting. Relating back through many centuries, the term ‘support surface’ refers to the material upon which artists paint. Linen, cotton canvas, and various types of board and paper are a selection of materials traditionally popular as support surfaces. More recently, say the last fifty years, artists from across numerous studio disciplines have pushed the boundaries and openly considered the essence of traditionally defined and divided schools of practice. Inter-disciplinary practices eventuated. Artists recognisable as painters, sculptors, installation, glass, as well as performance artists are able to create works multi-disciplinary in nature. Artists have the option to employ traditional as well as new materials and artmaking techniques in fresh and exciting ways, with some such results being exhibited on the occasion of ‘The Surface of Painting’.
Multitude of option is real for contemporary painters. The work by Barnes in this exhibition employs acrylic (a modern medium) on linen (traditional support). ‘My paintings are surfaces upon which references and relationships are put into play.’ (Barnes) Wenholz shares Barnes’ use of acrylic, but layers it over, amongst and between layers of vinyl; the vinyl behaves both as support and medium. ‘In my paintings I explore the notion of surface in relation to the modernist concept of medium specificity. My works on transparent vinyl incorporate the support into the composition of the painting, thereby creating a disruption to the two-dimensional image’ (Wenholz)
In the work by Tan paintings are built. The size and structure of his paintings is not dictated by the frame or edges of the canvas; many canvases are attached to one another: ‘Maintaining surface unpredictability by working between extremes; the paintings are “organically” grown to allow for the two broad types of abstraction (geometric and organic) to emerge in a single work.’ (Tan)
In Lynch’s work the concept of the surface of painting is addressed in creating multidisciplinary artworks that take shape from an understanding of the historic and contemporary positions for painting. This is both ‘painting’ as the object and as the act. ‘My visual artworks attempt to engage the rich tradition that abounds from the school of painting while also participating in the inspired act of artmaking.’ (Lynch) The artwork in this exhibition uses mirror to expand the artwork into illusionary space - illusion being an effect common to painting, only ordinarily the illusion is pictorial rather than reflecting a painting’s installation.
Minatel cuts abstract cityscapes into glass in ways that other artists might apply paint onto canvas. ‘My work is an exploration into the representation of systems that can appear to exist in our urban environment, visually interpreting these systems through layered linear grid formations to create elusive, symbolic 'cityscapes'.’ (Minatel) The artist continues - ‘The city can also be imagined as a field where many lines intersect, creating a complex physical and social grid of cultural representations and discourses, existing simultaneously across various points in time within the same space.’
In this exhibition Newall’s painting-come-storage unit boldly moves painting into functional object. Sheets with a rubber like consistency are in fact poured and peeled orange house-paint, a material used in new ways as ‘the surface of the painting for me is more than a surface, it is a material that fully contains colour’ (Newall)
This exhibition is not a restructuring of the definition of the studio term painting, nor specifically a question regarding the act of painting. ‘The surface of painting’ surveys a few of the options for artists undertaking the activity of painting today and presents the artwork of six artists, Peter Barnes, Meredith Frances Lynch, Bridget Minatel, Sarah Newall, Teong-Eng Tan, and Mary Wenholz, for public consideration. ‘The Surface of Painting’ attempts to scratch the surface of the potential for contemporary painting, today.
- M. F. Lynch, May 2008
‘The Surface of Painting’ will be open to the public at Horus and Deloris Contemporary Art Space, Pyrmont, Sydney, from 7th May to 8th June 2008.
