Gold Coast Bulletin (Australia)
July 9, 2005 Saturday
Life from a female angle
by Judy Anderson
A MIXTURE of styles and themes converge in the Gold Coast Art
Gallery’s latest exhibition Processing Narratives which showcases the
work of seven Gold Coast women.
The contrasting backgrounds and life experiences of artists Haya
Cohen, Sonya Peters, Anne Smith, Roya Butler, Virginia Miller,
Suzanne Boulter and Veronica Heard intersect in a rich and impressive
body of work.
Their mediums range from oil painting to photography, installation
art and video projection. The link is their shared interest in
process – the process of life as much as of making art.
These works tell stories which connect the viewer to the private
worlds of the artists. Humour, nostalgia, memory, sensuality and
desire, mixed with the joys and demands of motherhood; it’s all here,
the stuff of real life, re-imagined and offered back to the viewer.
The distinctly feminine approach of this exhibition derives not only
from the choice of subject matter, but also from the choice of
material.
In Knitting a Corpoself, Haya Cohen uses yarn, traditionally
associated with women’s craft, to knit a human form entwined within
the exhibition area.
The impact of the work is powerful and its sheer scale and complexity
inspire wonder.
The artist creates the yarns herself, a process which is captured on
video and installed with the work. Her process of knitting becomes a
metaphor for slowing down time.
Suzanne Boulter emphasises the richness of the everyday by
transforming the banal into a thing of wonder through the magic of
video projection.
Her moving images reimagine the ritual of washing clothes, by
emphasising the overlooked beauty of the movement of towels, sheets
and clothing blown by the wind.
The result is a sequence of compelling compositions of colour and
movement, and a narrative readily shared.
Watching Boulter’s video, I reflected on my own creative relationship
with the washing line many years ago as a young mother; consciously
or was it unconsciously, pegging out washing while synchronising
colours.
I also recalled the line the day I tie-dyed everything in the house
from bras to sheets. Highlighting the everyday is a recurring theme
in this exhibition.
Installation artist Anne Smith sources her materials from industrial
hardware suppliers and deliberately chooses disregarded spaces in the
gallery – corners, window recesses and columns to present her work.
Her work, Filter is deceptively simple. The tenuously joined veil of
dust-masks create subtle, abstract patterns of light.
Smith’s kaleidoscope filling the recess of the gallery is created
from a set of coloured protractors on an overhead projector. The
plastic shapes are able to be rearranged, allowing viewers to
interact with the work, creating their own shifting patterns.
The love of play and humour in her work contributes to its beauty.
Colour and pattern in Roya Butler’s work is drawn from traditional
designs found in Persian carpets reflecting her own Persian origins.
Armenian artist Veronica Heard also explores cultural displacement.
Her series of paintings draw on both history and her memories related
to her Armenian heritage.
Like Butler, Heard’s ethnic background and the challenges it has
presented, are reflected in her work.
There is a powerful sense of a long tradition of women’s histories as
well as nostalgia for past times and places, accessible now only
through memory, and all the more precious for it.
Painting continues to feature strongly in the exhibition in the
sumptuous, sensuous and velvety surfaces of Sonya Peters’ figurative
paintings.
Her triptych A Fine Line is irresistible, inviting the audience to
view it up-close. Using personal snapshots as inspiration, she
fragments and restates images to present new meanings.
Virginia Miller’s poetic configurations of floating emblems slide
between reality and fiction.
Her work Clouded Series challenges our perception through a suite of
photographs that deliberately mimic painting. The viewer, peering
closely, is pleasantly caught in the interplay between illusion and
reality.
All are graduates from Griffith University Queensland College of Arts
and the School of Arts. The exhibition continues until July 17.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress