Nathan, Queensland, AU – The Griffith University Art Gallery is proud to present “Hollow Mark | Madeleine Kelly” currently on view at the gallery and running through November 13th. Madeleine Kelly graduated from Queensland College of Art in 1999, and has become increasingly recognised for quasi-narrative paintings which draw on personal and mythological sources. Her investigation of contemporary issues via painting uses metaphor and alusion to explore, among other things, the relationship between the individual self and consumer culture, sustainability and gaps in knowledge.
At three metres in height, the figure of a man looms over the viewer. Painted on two fibreglass resin panels with a thin wash of paint in muted, sombre colours, the man is stretched and anamorphically distorted. His elongated legs seem to enable him to reach towards the sky, so it takes a moment to realize that this is a figure with no head or face, an anonymous figure burdened by two heavy bags of books that bend his back and drag his arms groundward.
This enigmatic figure is painted on both panels of resin as an inverse mirror image or reflection. The metaphor of the mirror is also replicated by the luminous materiality of the fiberglass resin panels, through which it is possible to see shadows and movement, as though in a mythical world beyond the looking glass. Kelly has deliberately kept paint to a minimum on these surfaces in order to highlight this effect. The strategy of using the mirror to double, replicate or anamorphically distort an image is one that informs Madeleine Kelly´s latest body of work created for “Hollow Mark”. In addition to “The Weight of the World”, described above, for which Kelly worked with a new medium, the exhibition includes a group of new paintings, a vitrine of found objects and works on paper, and two works on sailcloth. Thematically, this is a very tight body of work, with many of the paintings focusing on a single human or biomorphic figure either mirrored or anamorphically distorted, and placed within a hollowed space of great flux and movement. Alchemical symbolism, which Kelly describes as “rife with dualisms and transformation”, also provides a continuation of her focus on the mirror. As in many of her previous paintings, Kelly juxtaposes primordial and postindustrial elements with references to myth, art history, and contemporary culture.
The title of the exhibition, “Hollow Mark”, is a phrase drawn from a random sentence in Michel Foucault´s ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’. With its contradictory implications of something both present and absent, it suggests for Kelly “absences, or gaps in knowledge—ideas that are never recorded by the governing power of history”. She comments: “I am interested in the interstices that arrive somewhere between a hollow and a mark; the perplexing arena where figures and half resolved forms, float out from and into”.
In the works selected for Hollow Mark she has found an “archaeology of being” a valuable vein of investigation, as it allows her to offer a “counter-narrative”, an “alternative to the materialistic implications of industrial progress”. In many of the works in this exhibition, symbols of transformation are combined with contemporary references to politics, or to mining, to the primordial and the postindustrial. Most contain references to local scenes or to objects the artist has collected, as well as references to art historical and other sources, but—relocated, rescaled and recontextualised—they combine to form a multi-layered and compelling aesthetic language. Natural elements like bones, fallen tree trunks, natural sponges and water contrast with symbols from the mining industry and economic indications. If some elements have an autobiographical element, others (such as the mining tools in “Dirty Money”, or, in “Split Unity”, the hybrid phoenix-jet planes) are indicative of her reflections on contemporary politics. A three-fold approach towards mirroring becomes apparent in the paintings.
The first is a doubled, reflected image created through the use of bowed Perspex mirrors. The second is anamorphism, which traditionally requires a mirror to create a perspectival distortion. Anamorphism also creates a second point of view articulated against the single viewpoint of linear perspective. The third type of mirroring presents a doubled point of view, or binocular focus, either in framing the image or within the image itself. These uses of the mirror allow her to explore notions of perception and subjectivity, and the boundaries between nature and culture.
Griffith Artworks is responsible for the management and programming of exhibitions at Griffith University Art Gallery, based at the Queensland College of Art, South Bank campus. The rigorous exhibition program at Griffith University Art Gallery seeks to benchmark Australian and international art and design best-practice at the student interface. The gallery places special emphasis on the areas of academic focus by Queensland College of Art and Griffith University’s Faculty of Arts, and on improving professional development opportunities for emerging artists, via employment, exhibition and research outcomes. Although there are several exhibiting areas on the South Bank campus – Project Gallery, Whitebox Space, Level 7 Webb Centre, QCM and numerous walls with hanging track installed – the Griffith University Art Gallery is intended to be the only secure, humidity and temperature controlled space capable of meeting International Facility Report standards, staffed by art museum professionals. The Griffith University Art Collection was established with the founding of the University in 1973 and acquires works by contemporary Australian artists. The collection focuses on works which are inter-disciplinary and which address debates from both within the art form and within the wider contexts of Australian society. The collection is exhibited throughout University buildings in thematic exhibitions that challenge and enhance the academic pursuits of the University’s communities. Since 2005 efforts have been concentrated on honing the development of significant philanthropic support from the local community, and communities of interest. Three very significant gifts have been made to the Griffith University Art Collection, featuring some of Australia’s great recent practitioners. The Paul Eliadis gift (2008) featured over 70 works by Australian artists, including a rare set of 1960s linocuts by Ian Burn, a set of 1970s studies by Howard Arkley, and works by significant local artists Scott Redford, Luke Roberts and Eugene Carchesio. A large 1998 painting titled ‘Possum’ a key work from the first generation of ‘New Expression’ works by revered Warlpiri artist Michael Nelson Jagamara was also gifted by Dr Eliadis. In late 2008 the Gordon and Leanne Bennett gift of 120 works entered the Griffith University Art Collection. Consisting of his entire graphic oeuvre since 1984, this is the most significant holding of works on paper by Gordon Bennett in Australia. The museum also hosts a growing collection, currently comprising 400+, posters. The poster collection was conceived in 1979 when the Queensland Film and Drama Centre (now Griffith Artworks) established an archive of posters, any of which were produced in the centre. Visit the gallery’s website at … http://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/griffith-artworks