Jan Manton
... out of time | Carl Warner
... out of time | Carl Warner
Jan Manton
Desire Path | Karla Marchesi
Desire Path | Karla Marchesi
Jan Manton
False Continuity | Jacinta Giles
False Continuity | Jacinta Giles
Jan Manton
Intimate Dialogues | Judith Wright
Intimate Dialogues | Judith Wright

Painted Black on Their Faces | Dadang Christanto

 

Painted Black on Their Faces | Dadang Christanto

6 - 30 September, 2017

Dadang Christanto is a family victim of the Indonesian Genocide and Massacres of 1965-66. The mass killings saw an anti-communist purge, targeting alleged leftists including ethnic Chinese, often at the instigation of the military and the government. Conservative estimates place the number killed at between 500,000 and 1 million, with some recent estimates reporting 2 to 3 million people killed.

Dadang’s father was one of the millions killed. The impact of this horror has informed Dadang’s art making from his student days, through to his current exhibition, ‘Painted Black on Their Faces’. Along with Dadang’s personal loss is the burden he carries of the personal stories of so many others.

This is the ‘narrative of genocide’ explains Dadang. The many stories that people have had to keep and live with other the decades. His friend remembers seeing bodies floating in the river, some with their faces painted with black tar. Was this to disguise their identity? No one knows and there is no way to know. To this day the Indonesian government is reluctant to acknowledge these massacres. It is not taught in schools, has been written out of history textbooks and received little introspection from Indonesians themselves.

As a generation ages and dies there is real possibility that the narrative will be forgotten and history rewritten. For Dadang he can never forget, although he does say he forgives. He will return to this theme again and again, his wish is to bear witness to this darkest time in Indonesian history.

 

River Derwent | Aaron Butt

 

River Derwent | Aaron Butt

5 - 29 July, 2017
River Derwent, MONA is a suite of works that depict the shoreline of the River Derwent in Berridale Tasmania, as well as selected artefacts and the grounds of the Museum of Old and New Art.

United by subtle formal and conceptual cues, each work exists in a pair; one painting represents the strange Tasmanian landscape and atmospheric conditions; the other, curious historical objects collected by the museum owner, David Walsh.

The coupling creates a situation where one’s gaze meets the exterior and surrounds of the museum and its contents, disavowing the buildings unique internal architecture and thus perpetuating its mysterious public image and perceptions. In the landscapes, the lighting conditions differ considerably - from smoke-like morning clouds to crisp and cloudless afternoons. In the artefact paintings, objects differ considerably in geographical and historical origin, from an 18th Dynasty Scarab to a 20th century Nigerian Crown.

Extending upon Kate as Nefertiti at Jan Manton Art Gallery in 2015, a series of paintings depicting my partner as Queen Nefertiti, River Derwent MONA similarly combines the ancient and the contemporary; ancient objects in a contemporary museum in an ancient landscape. Like the museum, River Derwent, MONA aims to complicate straightforward perceptions of time and place to exaggerate, as per MONA’s 2013 exhibition concept, the ‘Theatre of the World’.

Aaron Butt, May 2017

 

Pigmentum MMXVI | Miles Hall

 

Pigmentum MMXVI | Miles Hall

23 November - 21 December 2016

At the height of the Italian quattrocento, the prosperity of Venice was considerably strengthened by the sale of oltremare de venecia (Venetian overseas goods). Imported products such as pepper, ginger, nutmeg and cloves found themselves combined with local ingredients that re-invigorated pigments and the golden age of Italian painting has a certain debt to the colours made from pigments that came from contacts established with Eastern and Middle-Eastern civilisations.

While we don’t know whether Piero della Francesca ever relished a sugo di carni from Bologna, seasoned with cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon, we are certain (via the analysis of his paintings) that he had access to a diverse range of foreign pigments such as vermilion, verdigris, cinnabar, orpiment, azurite blue and the most famous pigment - ultramarine blue, made from imported lapis lazuli mined in what is today known as Afghanistan. Similar to the transmutations occurring in the kitchens of the Italian peninsula, Piero della Francesca incorporated foreign pigments with locally sourced materials such as yellow ochre, raw and burnt umber, vine black and red earth. More than five centuries later, Piero’s paintings continue to touch us through their chromatic beauty, formal elegance and economy of means.

In this way the history of pigments is also the history of cultures, people, trade and the relations established between different societies. These small, modestly sized works entitled PIGMENTUM MMXVI have found their inspiration through research into the history of the silk roads, augmented by a love for colour and the desire to bring pigments from diverse horizons into new configurations and visual dialogues. In a world that is increasingly characterised by the control of boarders, refugees, discrimination and intolerance, I hope that these paintings, in their own small way, can celebrate the beauty of what can occur when disparate things collide.

— Miles Hall, November 2016.