Emma Marie - Spaciousness July 16 – August 13 2022 ATELIER Studio|Gallery Kirsten Cooper Saturday 16 July 2022, Nelson ATELIER Studio|Gallery is one of Nelson’s cultural jewels, sitting back from the road at the eastern side of Piki Mai (also known as Church Hill), the site of Nelson’s Cathedral. It is currently hosting the exhibition ‘Spaciousness’ by local artist and NMIT alumnus, Emma Marie. It feels like a particularly appropriate time for the gallery to be presenting an exhibition of this nature, with the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope now being widely circulated, revealing unprecedented views of galaxies beyond our own. And like the first image shown from this historic expedition, Webb’s First Deep Field*; the works in this current exhibition present compositions of colours and marks for our own contemplation of space and our position in that. Unlike the Webb Telescope, however, the artist is not compiling images from physical reality but from the emotional realm. In her statement, Emma Marie explains that intuitive prompts have driven the formation of these paintings, without preconceived ideas of concept. And yet, there is a strong concept of space – both external and internal - underpinning these works, and not just in the exhibition title. Space is there in the relationships between objects and abstract markings. It is there in the graphic and figurative renderings of objects that occupy intergalactic space – planets, nebulae, comets, spaceships – and in our own atmosphere, paper planes. And it is there in the loops, parallel lines, and other markings that create intimations of three-dimensional movement within the spatial boundaries of the frame. Mark-making is an immediately apparent a feature of these compositions. Looped lines repeated in different iterations bring to mind fragments of Cy Twombly’s non-figurative scribblings in his well-documented explorations of history and time. Other marks and layering of colour are reminiscent of the ‘Ten Largest’ - vibrantly colourful works by the spiritualist and pioneering abstract artist, Hilma af Klint. They were recently seen as part of the Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings exhibition in New Zealand at Wellington’s City Gallery. Af Klint wrote in her notebooks about having a ‘spirit guide’ in the production of this series, just as Emma Marie writes of the intuitive prompts that underpin the current approach to her practice. There are a wide variety of marks to be seen, made with graphite and pastel or crayon, or by scraping and scoring through wet paint, and in the process, revealing lines of colour from the layers below. There are also mathematical formulae, fine ruled lines, groups of parallel or misaligned strokes falling like rain, or a long exposure photograph, tumbling across the surface. Other marks are drawn within the boundaries of small, repeated circles. Emma Marie has a deft touch with colour, as might be expected from someone with a background in textile and graphic design. This palette is grounded in deep charcoal and white combining to make a variety of greys. They sit alongside earthen umber, ochre and sienna, enlivened by large swathes of pink, with turquoise, teal, red, orange and a startling citrus yellow. There is use of overlapping clouds of harmonic colour that occupy the middle and back ground, and iterative blocks appearing in many of the works that present to this viewer as a kind of sampling. At times they lie along the edge of a piece, as might be seen on a printer’s proof sheet, at other times applied in a group of thumbprint-sized blobs, as though the artist is letting us into the considerations behind her palette choices. Colour is applied as highly textured impasto, wiped off and built up, or applied in translucent layers. Colour blocks are arranged in loose rectangles with relatively contained boundaries, in others, more fluid applications of colour are allowed to run their gravitational course. Gravity, orbit and flight appear to be an area of exploration for the artist. This is particularly evident in the figurative objects occupying their abstract realms. The arrow-like paper planes, are an ongoing motif for Marie and works such as Plane of Existence 3.8, are rendered in crisp detail, with flight trajectories suggested through ebullient, organic loops. These recall memories of simple toy-making, and depending on the quality of construction, folded paper constructions gliding through the air in unrepeatable trajectories of flight. These shapes are also being used as an omnipresent iconography throughout social channels to indicate delivery, direction, and location – giving this viewer further impetus to thoughts of the spatial and our occupation of or in a given place. The planets and other celestial elements appear as objects within these compositions that seem to describe both the order and the chaos to be found in our sphere of existence, in what was, until quite recently in human history, only imagined. Two works, Expansion 3.6 and Expansion 3.9, present images of nebulae that verge on the floral in appearance, with a rich, deep crimson palette employed against brighter, loosely applied areas of colour. As you are directed to the centre, details of the clouds of nascent stars become almost photo-realistic. As Bridget Riley observed in The Eye’s Mind: Collected Writings, 1965-1999, ‘Modern painting is about building a way of looking – it has less to do with what exactly you are seeing than with how you are made to look at it**. Emma Marie has presented a series of harmonious works that reward close, extended attention, and invite fresh consideration of ourselves not only as occupiers of space, but as being occupied by space. Emma Marie, Spaciousness July 16 – August 13 2022 ATELIER Studio|Gallery 329 Trafalgar Square, Nelson https://atelier.org.nz/https://www.emglint.com/ * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/nasa-releases-first-breathtaking-images-taken-by-james-webb-space-telescope-180980403/ ** Bridget Riley. “Painting Now”, in Bridget Riley: The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings, 1965-1999. Edited by Robert Kudielka. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999). 204.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Our writersKirsten Cooper Archives
January 2023
Categories |
Photo used under Creative Commons from jordan parks