Lia McKnight – Drawings

 

Lia McKnight – Drawings

This  review of Lia McKnight’s drawing praxis is via the internet as there is no possible way at the moment to see the artworks live in Perth due to the corona virus. Even though there is a pandemic  at the moment which curtails travelling to see McKnight’s artworks, they can be reviewed via the internet  as current technology allows good visual scrutiny.

Plume, 2019

 ink, pencil, graphite, gouache and archival pen on 640 gsm Arches paper, 38 x 28 cm

I photograph natural patterns, strange tree forms, fungi and delicate orchids. Sometimes I take home small findings that sit beside me in my studio. These objects seem to stare back at me, asserting a kind of dignified and humble sacredness.

Lia Mcknight -Turner Galleries

The above artwork by McKnight titled: Plume, 2019 is a stunningly elegant drawing full of curiosity and charm with a hint of menace of something lurking. Even now living in Japan the remembrances of wandering through  the Australian coastal bush, with these  drawn motifs like Plume 2019 still resonate strong in my memory and they contain a  visually seductive alien quality to them, this is in most part due to the excellent observed analysis of the found object coupled with a drawing praxis sensibility that enable her to communicate these sensations (memories) through drawing onto paper.

Artworks like McKnight’s drawing titled; Plume tend to entice the viewer to observe carefully regardless of the consequences which may include being taken over by  a strange and mysterious phenomenon.

 In many ways McKnight is presenting a unique kind of visual praxis exploring what is not known within her local landscape. It is interesting to see how much Europeans and others don’t know about the Australian bush around their homes.

For example, in two thousand and fourteen on the ABC’s Fact check site, it revealed that Australia still didn’t know about seventy five percent of the species that live within the country which is a large amount of unknown.

Therefore, in some ways whilst researching McKnight’s artworks on the internet there may well be observed traces of unknown flora and fauna, so essentially it may well be deducted that she is aesthetically pathfinding within her local terrain .

When such motifs are bought into life by McKnight through her drawing praxis there is no doubt, they’re strange because they may very well be unknown to those who came in the second waves of settlement or even the first for that matter, humans do not know/can know everything.

tuft

ink, graphite + pencil on 638gsm saunders waterford watercolour paper

28.5 x 19cm

2018

McKnight’s forensic drawn inquiry reveals such a vast repertoire of tones, textures, strong and liminal tonalities and hues from a selection of drawing media, it reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of plant species in the sense that no one, it appears, has drawn living and the dead plant and vegetations specimens in the Fremantle terrain as well. She may well be recording motifs of unique, textures, shapes and tonalites that could be considered first visual encounters.

Filament 2016

ink, graphite + pencil on 638gsm saunders waterford watercolour paper 57 x 76 cm

More importantly, it seems there is a good opportunity now  that a drawing/biology course in the field and within primary, secondary and tertiary laboratories (with microscopes) may well be needed in Western Australia for, at the end of this decade the state will have had European settlement for two hundred years and, if one only knows about twenty five percent of what is unique within your local community in Australia in terms of flora and fauna, then such a policy would  certainly speed up and enhance the understanding of the environment humans in which live and how they work, how they need to be protected as McKnight appears to have kick started here within these drawings around her local community of Fremantle.

All images courtesy of the artist

Link to ABC

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-07/75-per-cent-of-species-unknown-fact-check/5649858?nw=0

Link to Artist's Website 

https://www.liamcknight.com/

The Western Australian Museum of Art

Kevin Robertson 

Bath painting, self-portrait
oil on canvas
30 x 30 cm
2019

Image courtesy of the artist 

Dr Kevin Robertson in between his busy life as painter and lecturer has generously through his own effort forged a very different kind of museum via the internet, it’s refreshing read with a variety of information as to what has happened from time to time by Western Australian artists.

The Western Australian Museum of Art started posting on its blog in 2011 and onwards intermittently since then and in doing so has created an idiosyncratic aesthetic history by a collection of WA Artists.

This particular Museum sits outside of the mainstream idea of what a museum is experienced as and that is a good thing because technology has now given the arts audience another way of engaging art for free at your fingertips, in your time, so in saying that please click on the link and enjoy some of the articles within this blog, thank you.

Link to The Western Australian Museum of Art 

https://westernaustralianartmuseum.blogspot.com/2019/?m=0

Pictures of Twilight - The Evening Scene in Modern Painting - Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art

Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art

Some exhibitions in Japan have a way about them in springing the most wonderful artistic discoveries upon you through revealing artists that are sublimely beautiful by the way they create artworks that the word painter doesn’t seem to do them justice. I am not sure what to call such artists but they sit not in a kind of academic or academy hierarchical  system but like poets of colour, line and form operating way out from the avant-garde boundary riders  only to be introduced into art world once they've left this planet and my guess is that is the only way this particular type of artist can exist is alone, ignored and mostly impoverished.

Such artwork discoveries within outstandingly curated exhibitions like the aforementioned titled one above are one of my great joys of going to museums where those faraway, tucked away, stunning images by outsider artists but seen a remembered by scholarly curators are bought into the public memory, its bliss and this show there is many to be seen.

The title of this exhibition is wonderful Pictures of Twilight that time of the day where long or momentary reflections take place as one gazes slightly skyward towards the horizon at the shifting nuances of the heavenly hues transforming into themselves into nocturne, this societal memory appears to be a universal moment, common to all peoples and if this show is anything to go recorded by its artists and poets.

For example, there is one smallish post card size water colour work in this exhibition by OSHITA Toijiro 1870 -1911 titled: Setting Sun n.d. 9.1 x 14.2 cm, it is a stunning example of grand small scale beauty of the artist's evening gaze out across a water-way towards the setting sun, its poetry in painting with an immediacy due to the size of the work and how that limits the influence of delay in praxis, the paper is imbued with delicately laid floods water colour in the evening lights of yellow ochres, merging into light purple magenta hues downwards and outwards towards the horizon with a contrast  of a low key tan purple distance landscape across the water as a boat gently drifts over the glassy magenta, grey, purple, olive-yellow aquatic stretch with a coral-red setting sun flickering off the water as the vessel sails though it into the nocturne, it’s a wonderful sensory experience to witness in paint.

Then there is the woodblock prints of KAWASE Hasui1883 – 1957 especially his image Twelve Scenes of Tokyo, Dusk at Kiba, 1920, 36.3 x 24.2 cm again the beautiful hues of evening reflecting on a glassy river silhouetting the growing urban heavy industrial terrain of Tokyo, its working-class beauty.

Other surprises in this show were some of the more obscure European works that were on show especially Alfred SISLEY’S painting titled: Riverside Reeds at Sunset stunning image and he must be one of most under-rated painters of all the impressionists and there is another great small painting on exhibit by John CONSTABLE titled: Trees on Hampstead Heath at Sunset, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 25.2 x 29.2 cm, these are just a few of the amazing array of wonderful images within this exhibition and if you're in Osaka or Kobe make sure you get to this exhibition at Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art it’s well worth the trip.

Takehiro Terabayashi - Small Life - Yoshimi Arts- Osaka

Painting by Takehiro Terabayashi  - courtesy of Yoshimi Arts 

Takerhiro Terabayashi painting exhibition titled:Small Life at Yoshimi Arts in Osaka is a series of small scale, very interesting, well painted canvasses of what one might call the humble apartment belongings of a hardworking Japanese salary man.

The Japanese are hard workers they're also very minimal in what they have within their household belongings being just a few utensils, some furniture and electrical appliances, its impressive to see coming from the west, especially Australia where people have big houses, cars and unbelievable natural resources that allows free entry into art galleries, museums and hospitals this doesn't happen in Japan. 

For all genders, its brutally tough in Japan and in this series of paintings by Terabayashi one gets to see a range of images that resonate the bare necessities attached to that hard work ethic, for many of the paintings don't exhibit opulence or the extravagances of a rich or overly comfortable existence. But a salaryman's life of existing in a smallish apartment with just enough room to paint, eat, work and sleep.

In some ways looking at Terabayashi's painted possessions (pots, old phones, stoves tops, door handles and latches)  executed with forensic detail and passion, reminds me of the painting by Vincent van Gogh titled: Bedroom in Arles (first Version 1888) who also  painted his meager belongs.

This is a great show but as I have said before it is time for  Terabayashi to travel to Europe or more specifically London and study at the National Portrait Gallery the surface qualities by the likes of Lucian Freud, Diego Velázquez,  Rembrandt etc..., for a least a year or two, for I think it will help him to be an even better painter than he is now.

Hearsay - Wanneroo Art Gallery - Western Australia

Michael Doherty: Moondyne Racing the Sun 2014

oil on canvas

20 cm h x 30 cm w

Image Courtesy of the artist 

Hearsay is a great exhibition at the Wanneroo Cultural Centre about twenty-nine kilometers north of Perth. During the nineteen seventies and eighties I remember driving through this area when it was dotted with market gardens run by Slavic, Italian and Vietnamese peoples along with a growing suburbia and intermittent areas of picturesque bush by the lakes. This exhibition takes the campfire stories from the local Wanneroo community and has turned them into a rollicking good exhibition.

One example of a family barbeque story goes back to my Melbourne Auntie’s car breaking down at the Wanneroo Lion Park with a car full of kids on a very hot day and she was too frightened to wind down the windows, is a true story still often recalled with stress to her!

There are many very good artworks within this Hearsay exhibition which are integrated with memorable period objects on loan from the museum nearby recording events that happened historically within the area of Wanneroo.

 As a kid Wanneroo seemed far away from the city and a long trip to get to this outer suburb town. Rebecca Dagnall’s  Digital Print entitled There is unrest in the forest there is trouble in the trees # reflects in some ways how the mind can alter what is actually out there. While more often than not it’s just bush with a few kangaroos loitering around for food, it’s a good artwork precisely because Dagnall’s image resonates with a kind of omnipresent menace of something unseen, swathing through the trees; as kids we used to think this invisible thing amongst the darkened trees was the Bogeyman which had  a real and terrifying presence for us.

Another particularly likeable artwork is Claire Davenhall’s Moon Boots with large heavy nails smashed into them, fixing them firmly in place; this artwork alludes to the convict escape artist Moondyne Joe, also known as Joseph Bolitho Johns. Moondyne was a robber and thief of minor scale but his efforts kept landing him prison and he kept escaping. In this artwork Davenhall has created an amusing ironic piece in that despite all the Prison authorities’ best efforts, he kept escaping custody and, in the last attempt, he did so in just in his boots.

If Davenhall leaves us with Moondyne's escape. Michael Doherty brings him very much to life in a smallish but savvy oil painting titled Moondyne Racing the Sun  2014 depicted with his fellow gang members in the distance almost as if they are about to go on a criminal jaunt around Perth or, alternatively, are they police trackers? Doherty’s painting reflects the harsh Australia light on a hot unending bush with its associated sands cooking the local plain between the coast and the hills in Perth. Doherty captures Moondyne’s criminal Alpha male personality well in paint and it fits into this well curated Hearsay exhibition succinctly. 

Other fascinating artworks are by Anne Louis Richardson, Ron Nyisztor and Christophe Canato which also merit closer analysis but instead do come and have a look at  Hearsay in the Wanneroo Gallery as it is well worth the trip.

Link to Gallery 

http://www.wanneroo.wa.gov.au/wanneroogallery

Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown January 21–May 6, 2018 National Museum of Art Osaka

Shinro Ohtake

The National Museum of Art Osaka is having its 40th year celebration with the Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown exhibition from January 21–May 6, 2018 and its a great show, it doesn't get any better than this to see cutting edge art that has a raw direct energy of curiosity and bewilderment resonating throughout the galleries.

For me, this is how critical art exhibitions should somehow be experienced as and affect ones full extent of sensory facilities, so that the human memory is taxed to its fullest with a range of textures, hues, contrasts, sounds and questions marks over ones ethics and humanity might be and this show is one mesmerising experience, its as good as it gets.

Shinro Ohtake side view of artwork

One of the artworks that appealed to one the most is Shiro Ohtake seen above is an astounding effort in human aesthetic sensibility, its stunning to stand in front of it for it holds together so well, the thin strips of torn paper pasted over thicker larger ones, then at times very liminal slices of cardboard are juxtaposed slabbish book like covers, it’s almost like some very strange symphonic score, quite wonderful, it may have been more interesting if one was allowed to feel the textures within these amazing artworks, maybe that's an idea for the future who knows.

 The extent of the materials used by Ohtake within his developing system of making art in studio praxis is impressive and one might suggest extreme which is a good thing to happen. For example, in the catalogue it states for the artwork by Ohtake titled: Time/Memory Feedback  2015 the materials used are Oil, acrylic, dye, gouache, copperplate, ink, coloured ink, sumi, pencil, printed matter, photographs, photographic film, transparency film, cellophane tape, cello tape, aluminium foil tape, cardboard, tissue paper, tracing paper, Japanese paper, wallpaper, stamps, newspaper, cotton cloth, hemp cloth, cheese cloth, cotton yarn, felt, balsa wood, paint brush, pearls, oil paint tube, guitar strings, wiring cable, vinyl records, cassette tape, turntable, record playback cartridge, rotation motor, daily time switch: OMRON/H5-A stainless steel and iron. Ohtake's seemingly exhaustive system of making  certainly makes a very interesting artworks that is for sure!

 At the entrance of the Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown exhibition there is the visionary sound installation of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller titled; Osaka Symphony 2018  walking through the exhibit and hearing a strange myriad of sounds one realised that people with sight impairment, could also enjoy an art museum for being able to hear the artwork was a very good aesthetic extension for audiences that experience the world differently.

 For throughout history many artists have had serious impairments of one sort or another. Some examples are the Spanish painter Goya was deaf as was the British artist Joshua Reynolds along with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo to name a few, so it's enlightening to see this installation bringing people to the gallery that may have thought they could never experience an art museum.

 

This is a not to be missed exhibition with further performances to come, so if you're in Japan or coming to Kansai try and get to the this not to be missed exhibition link below.

National Museum of Art Osaka link

http://www.nmao.go.jp/

link to Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller titled Osaka Symphony; 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujBg33fCLZE

Station to Station - University Exhibition

Recently while lost as usual in Osaka, then going into an underground train station to find my way home, one came across a university art exhibition in a largish space next to the train station subway walkway, its a great area to hold such an energetic show of students artworks.

It was very enjoyable to wonder around this University Exhibition in Osaka, it bought back many fond memories of my own art student days of study, which was very different from the electronic gadgetry that students seem to need nowadays, it was just a pencil and paper to draw on, for it was before the iphone, ipad or digital everything, yes sorry to say I am one of the last of the art dinosaurs but nonetheless that doesn't stop ones appreciate of the aesthetics efforts within this show which are very interesting.

One does not know who the artists are in this exhibition (as cant read Japanese) they exhibit equally and anonymously, so when looking at the artworks the experience is directed at the aesthetics and one of the first sensations realised is the energy these artists have, its impressive to see so many ideas produce in large and small artworks.   

Plus what one also liked very much was the installation of the artworks, it wasn't compartmentalised into areas of painting, sculpture, printmaking, electronic arts etc..., one could walk around this space and engage a variety of aesthetic sensibilities, well placed next to each other, so presumably the audience could glean knowledge from each artists artworks in unity and diversity, so as a cohesive whole this show worked very well.

In leaving the Station to Station Exhibition what was realised is the next generation is there to take over from where the apriori group of artists when they leave this planet, to make there own tracks into uncharted aesthetic horizons, for like all the artists before them in history they are Driven. Many thanks to the artists who put on the exhibition a good experience!