Aaron Perkins

If I were taller | Aaron Perkins

 

If I were taller | Aaron Perkins

29 August - 4 September, 2022

Reflecting the persistent engagement with literature throughout his painting practice, Aaron’s PhD defines criteria for the classification of a painting as fiction. Drawing upon the literary autofiction of Ben Lerner and Rachel Cusk, Aaron argues that this shift away from painting’s art-historical preoccupation with ‘truth’, through the explicit use of fiction as a method, allows a visual knowledge of the fictions woven throughout everyday reality to be gained through painting. If I were taller exhibition is the final outcome of Aaron’s PhD research.

 

Pronounced Á-Nem-Oy | Aaron Perkins

Pronounced á-nem-oy | Aaron Perkins

2 June - 20 June 2021

Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Aaron Perkins in his latest exhibition Pronounced á-nem-oy, exhibiting from 2-20 June 2021. Perkins writes:

To sail is to read the wind. However, despite a recent residency atop the Maroochy Sailing Club on Chambers Island, I have no experience on rafts, yachts, catamarans or any other masted what-nots. The points of sail are unintelligible to me and my movements over the water are illiterate.

Despite this inexperience, in Pronounced á-nem-oy Perkins nevertheless attempts to harness the wind to continue his exploration of language through abstraction. In a suite of paintings, works on paper, and video that hitch the literature of Ancient Greece to the telegraphic system of flag semaphore, Perkins orients himself within space and language, likening seeds blown by the wind to units of speech, and playfully exploring the evolution of language — albeit sometimes along failed routes…

In the catalogue essay by Jude Anderson, Perkins’ skill as an “Anemoi Purveyor” – that is, as someone promoting the wind – is said to lay in “his deliberate, deeply considered visual techniques, and his delight in offering the ancient languages of winds and sailing to speak playfully with us”. This we recognise and extend as an invitation to all to join us in Perkins’ play at Jan Manton Gallery.

 

At the still point, there the dance is | Aaron Perkins

 

At the still point, there the dance is | Aaron Perkins

12 February - 7 March, 2019

Jan Manton Art is pleased to present Aaron Perkins’ latest series of work At the still point, there the dance is.

In this series, Perkins continues his exploration of history painting as a means to critically engage with the current affairs of contemporary society.

Using an abstracted combination of text and image obtained from various online news services, the works resist an all-at-once perception to privilege subjective interpretations made in the space between abstraction and figuration, between looking and reading, and between surface and interface.

 

Chronicle | Aaron Perkins

 

Chronicle | Aaron Perkins

6 - 27 April, 2019

For emerging artist, Aaron Perkins, the genre of history painting is of profound interest to the contemporary era. While prestigious institutions throughout the world hold grand paintings historicising Renaissance battles, Revolutionary wars and Imperial metaphors, Perkins’ is driven to understand a way in which one can capture the historical present. With an omnipresent awareness of our global connectedness, the present moment can feel as endlessly fragmented as it does hopelessly fast. No longer is there any illusion of a grand historical narrative, and as such, Perkins’ work aims to consider the way history painting can capture a multitude of voices.

To develop contemporary history painting beyond the traditional framework, Perkins references the literary genre of ‘autofiction,’ in which the author uses a protagonist, who is written in the first person and in some way, represents the character of the author themselves. Comprised of both autobiographical and fictitious narratives woven together, autofiction seeks to critique the inability of singular accounts to constitute a true historical narrative. Through these inconsistent autofictitous narratives, there is often a sense of plotlessness– an idea which Perkins explores in these works.

The works in Chronicle combines two distinct elements– online news articles containing photojournalistic images, and cryptic crosswords. Both of these forms published in either print or online news sites daily, work as reportage of contemporary events and culture. By loosely drawing photojournalistic images, Perkins simplification of line removes any ability to robustly gauge the image depicted, without knowledge of the original image. Thus, the viewer must engage their own subjective consciousness to consider the narrative at play. Overlaid with these images are the solutions to cryptic crosswords Perkins solves directly on the canvas, taken from the same day as the images. As the words are scrawled hastily and often crossed out, the viewer is drawn between reading and viewing the artwork. The use of the cryptic crossword serves as a somewhat distilled form of contemporary news and culture, which Perkins considers as an abstraction of broader editorial statements.

By combining these two elements, Perkins work conveys the incompleteness of any historical narrative that the artist attempts to set or the viewer attempts to reconstruct. However, despite these limitations, the work paradoxically becomes part of the historical record of a given day, capturing the fragmented and incompleteness in the 21st Century.