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A Natural History, 2010 |
oil and acrylic on canvas
600mm x750mm
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Amphora, 2010 | oil and acrylic on canvas
600mm x 750mm
Private collection, Sydney |
<i>A Natural History and Amphora are from the series of paintings entitled Interlacing. These paintings are about the pleasure and sometimes discomfort of looking. The series suggests a conjoining or unity of opposites, even an interdependency – between the real and the imagined; between sensory experience and abstract thought; and variously through other means which arise. It does this by staging elements of a naturalistic landscape within an abstract space. It describes two antithetical pictorial apparatus that here coexist within the physical form of the painting.
The abstract ‘space’ is created from interwoven lines, and so the notion of interlacing is signaled at an elemental level. Although rendered as a two dimensional space, the optical effect of the moire that results is intended to signify a spacial ambiguity, capable of suggesting volume and depth without recourse to the use of perspective. In spite of – or because of - the retinal pleasure/discomfort that the interlacing can produce, the optical play is both repelling and compelling, a feature of the sublime.
The landscape vignettes are suggestive of recessive space through familiarity, choice of colour, layering and the scale and irregularity, even wildness, of the elements. The light is from behind, casting the foreground ambiguously in silhouette or as shadow, that ambiguity implying that it is perhaps early morning, a new beginning. It floats bubble-like in an amorphous space, not anchored to a specific position of spatial depth. It is at once recessive and foregrounded, volumetric and flat. There is an organic torsion between the shape of the enclosures and the rendering of the habitat. There are definable 'places' within the landscape, viewpoints which suggest a duality of subject positions or pathways.
The painting becomes a vehicle to couple the viewers perception between the 2D scopic flicker of the background and three dimensional depth of field of the landscape, and back again at frequencies quite involuntary. The experience of the work is as an intertwining of conceptual opposites shared across diverse form, bound together in the pictorial space by the physical properties of paint, and the act of looking.
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B from a group of three titled RGB, 2010
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oil and acrylic on canvas
400mm x 300mm
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One of a group of works from 2010 which combine a silhouette and an outline to create 'flicker' as the viewer 'reads' the elements separately and as one image. That they are not aligned and yet share common features, compels the necessity of 'looking' to create the resolved image, if indeed it is resolveable.
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Section of a body, 2010
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oil and acrylic on canvas
750mm x 600mm
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An aid to memory, 2010
| oil and acrylic on canvas
300mm x 400mm
An image about resistance and fulfilment |
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By way of introduction
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I like to draw with paint, I like to sculpt with paint. The chemistry of paint is suggestive of transformation through its plasticity, its capacity for change — in a physical sense its infinite variety and potential to be combined into new colour, and its transformative powers of plasticity from liquid to solid states. It is a three-dimensional body applied two-dimensionally, often to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. This mobility has given me an emotional and philosophical attachment to paint as a means of picture making.
When I attempt to define who I am I am confronted by displacements and multiplicities — both introspectively as a mind within a body, and publicly as a citizen and social entity. My historical sense of place originates from elsewhere, no longer really known, and my 'connection to the land' — a defining bond of identity, is mitigated by other competing influences and histories. These include our relationship to indigenous Australia; the spiritual divide between a secular ethics and faith-based paradigms; what it is to be 'Australian' in our evolving multicultural society; and further, the impact of globalisation on difference — each shaping the nature of subject matter and discourse on identity. Whilst these present or potential outcomes and the factors contributing to them may be confronting, they also provide great creative opportunity.
Visualising the landscape or the built environment is a form of naming and ownership, and through this a means of defining self. In post-colonised Australia this relationship to the land has been formulated and reformulated pictorially many times by competing interests and continues to the present day. The idea of the landscape as a contested site has great appeal to me both aesthetically and politically as I try to make my own connection to it. So my idea of self commences from a position of multiplicity and ambiguity, and my compulsion — if not to resolve this, is to somehow partake of it by representing it in painted form, and thus insert myself into it.
There is usually a self consciousness in my response to these rules and boundaries. As I question myself I also question painting and the role and power of art. This may be expressed through the choice of subject or the means by which it is rendered in painted form. It usually involves the use of logic and contradiction (often sophistry), and some form of exploration of pictorial structure and conventions, the physiological impulse to look (scopic drive), the material properties of paint, the relationship of word and image, the collision of the prosaic and poetic, humour and play, the counter-intuitive, amongst many tactical devices.
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A drawing of a line, 2004
pencil on paper
148mm x 210mm
Private collection, Sydney
A semantic topography
A line, 2005
ink on paper
148mm x 210mm
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Becoming, 2004
acrylic on canvas
200mm x 250mm
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Thoughts of Sorts, 2004
acrylic on canvas
400mm x 600mm
I take a line and change it from a one-dimensional object to two- and three-dimewnsional states - I give it the appearance of a living thing. The spacing of its twists and turns suggest a self awareness and an a priori existence.
The line is a loop further suggesting an enclosed circuit. The 'action' is centred and is employed to fix the viewers subject-position with some
intensity. Instead of being traceable to the artist by conventions such as brushstrokes I employ the chemistry of paint itself — surface tension,
fluidity, evaporation, viscosity, opacity and transparency, gloss and matt surfaces.
Remembering and Forgetting, 2005
ink on paper
100mm x 150mm
A drawing about the shapes of loss and retention.
Three Streams of Consciousness, 2005
oil and acrylic on canvas
400mm x 500mm
A harmony from chaos; stasis and movement
A Vantage Point, 2009
acrylic on canvas
600mm x 900mm
Private collection, Sydney
This work uses a dia-grid to imply a 3 dimensional landscape space. Within this float anonymous entities from which the grid
is set off. The optical flicker this creates is suggestive of an aura, and overall there is a sense of balance, further enhancing
the presence of the unknowable. The known is not a precondition of beauty.
The Path, 2008
oil and acrylic on canvas
300mm x 400mm
Private collection, Sydney
This work is inspired by a pool of water on a bush track, and juxtaposes flat and recessive pictorial spaces. It creates a transitional space
where the viewer moves between one and the other. It foregrounds the material qualities of the paint, particularly the lensing effect of the
transparent media suggesting the metaphor of the looking glass.
Indeterminant Object, 2008
oil and acrylic on canvas
400 x 500mm
Private collection, Sydney
The object's presence is conventionally implied by its shadow, which here is merely a shape made from a line.
This painting challenges the viewer to define one by the other.
On the Forest Road, 2009
oil and acrylic on canvas
300mm x 400mm
Private collection, Sydney
This painting continues a theme which juxtaposes flat and recessive pictorial spaces.
The title conflates the twists and turns of a country road with the torsion in the paints surface.
Pastorale 2, 2009
oil and acrylic on canvas
400mm x 500mm
Private collection, Sydney
This painting suggests multiple subject positions where the viewer is within and outside the pictorial space.
Creating a context where flat and volumetric spaces intersect, this landscape is anything but bucolic.
For all this the work captures a sense of immersion and sublime beauty.
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Biography
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Born Melbourne, Australia 1956
Lives and works Sydney
1975-77 Art School, Sydney
1977 March, Drawing team Sol LeWitt 'Wall Drawing' Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
1977 Shepherd & Newman building, Darlinghurst, studio and artist-run space
1977 installation and artist's book 'Shapes from Randomly Placed Lines'
1977 Billboard Project, concept exhibition East End Art Gallery, Darlinghurst
1978 The Walkway Project, installation, Faculty of Architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydney
1978-79 Side f/x, studio and artist-run exhibition space and venue, former School building, Darlinghurst
1980 Travelling Art Scholarship finalist exhibition, Farmer's Blaxland Gallery, Sydney
1980-86 Publisher 'Art Network' contemporary art magazine
1983 Group exhibition Images Gallery, Glebe
1989-97 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Publications Manager
1992-95 studio practice, painting series 'End of the Rainbow' and 'Books of Numbers'
1993 Curator 'Birth of Blue Boy' exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
2000 Group exhibition Maudespace, Glebe
2010 February, solo exhibition, At The Vanishing Point gallery Newtown
2010 November, Erko Art 2010 group exhibition, Erskineville Public School, Sydney
2011 November, exhibition First Draft Gallery, Sydney
[Links to individual entries to be added progressively]
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Contact
Interested in enquiring about my work?
Contact Peter Thorn at peterthorn@optusnet.com.au or call me on 0413 646 971.
Go to  portfolio
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