RGB & UNKEMPT COGNITION

Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

RGB | Nicci Haynes

UNKEMPT COGNITION | Ella Barclay

Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) Lakeside Canberra | 13 July – 14 September 2024

These two exhibitions are both exciting, visual treats to enjoy. The colours are mostly vivid, powerful, almost mesmerising.

Nicci Haynes is an artist based in Kamberri/Canberra. She works in a variety of media, including drawing, performance, print, film, and installation. Her experimental practice is process driven. She is creative in her use of a variety of materials and spontaneous in her approach, frequently recycling technology and odd objects. In RGB this artist expands her investigation of how language and communication intersect and interact across various media.

Haynes is showing just three artworks, but each of them is excellent and, as previously noted, richly colourful. RG-Being is a 1-minute-long digital video which flicks very quickly through a series of photographs by Andrew Sikorski. Each image is full of colour. Each is, I presume, of the same person in a variety of poses wearing, displaying, putting on or taking off brightly coloured but otherwise plain items of clothing, all absolutely in the RGB spectrum.

NICCI HAYNES 'RG-Being' (still 3), 2024, Digital video (photos by Andrew Sikorski), 1’00” duration

Then there is an installation utilising digital videos, TVs, projectors and electronics. A wonderful tower of more colour on numerous monitors (once discarded but now re-used). A constantly changing mosaic – pinks, yellows, blues, oranges, all vying for attention. And the third piece is another installation – a multi-projector projection of more colours - less vibrant, more pastel. Three great artworks.

NICCI HAYNES '255, 255, 255' 2024, Installation (digital videos, TVs, projectors, electronics), dimensions variable, photo by Brenton McGeachie

NICCI HAYNES 'Being Colour' 2024, Installation (multi-projector projection), dimensions variable, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

The room sheet essay by Dr Denise Thwaites is titled Harmless Fun. It makes an interesting suggestion - that the artworks are monumental, but worn, reminding her of a place in Budapest where old Soviet monuments have been torn down and reconfigured. Haynes artworks here ask what we can see in piles of junk. This essay is a fine accompaniment to the exhibition.

Ella Barclay's first institutional Kamberri/Canberra solo exhibition, Unkempt Cognition, features brand-new work created during a residency at ZK/U The Centre for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin, in 2024. The exhibition combines photographs and a series of humorous light installations to investigate basic human experiences inside our networked everyday lives. A world of growing disasters and clumsy automation awaits us in the doom-scroll bed-rotting experience.

Again there is a great deal of vivid colour. Three large inkjets on archival cotton rag from her Enhanced Entanglements series are vibrant, multi-coloured Contemporary abstract creations shouting look at us.

ELLA BARCLAY 'Enhanced Entanglements 1 (Deployments and Abstentions)' 2023, Inkjet on archival cotton rag, 84 x 61.4cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

As much as I enjoyed the three prints hanging on a wall, they have to compete for attention with nine installation pieces which are quite fascinating. 

Three large, molded blankets of black acrylic adorn parts of the floorspace. At one end of each piece we see colourful footwear peeking out; the other end reveals parts of blond wigs. Are there bodies hidden under there?

ELLA BARCLAY 'Quiet Serfing 2' 2024, Acrylic, Crocs, blonde wig, beach volleyball, 230 x 120 x 40cm, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Accompanying the three-dimensional blankets in the space are various assemblages utilising more of the black acrylic, plus LED lights, electronics, aluminium, silicon, hand blown glass and other materials. Some of these pieces are also on the floor, others suspended from the ceiling. Above them all a wonderful and lengthy tangle of LED silicon lights delivers multiple colours that reflect delicious patterns on the shiny surfaces of the black acrylic artworks. Once again, rich colours in abstract patterns.

ELLA BARCLAY 'Unkempt Cognition' (Canberra Contemporary Art Space exhibition installation), 2024, Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Another fine room sheet essay, by William Kherbek, discusses the distinction between information and knowledge. It tells us that “Barclay’s works regularly explore the edge cases of presence, the body is present, or has been present, its traces are visible, the edges of its intentions are visible if not entirely intelligible”. I encourage all to visit the two exhibitions and to read both the essays, both before and after seeing the artworks. They are also available on the CCA website.

All contributors to the two exhibitions have delivered a great show.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY-SELF AND OTHERS

Photography | Brian Rope

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY-SELF AND OTHERS | Lisa Stonham

M16 Artspace, Gallery 2  | UNTIL 4 SEPTEMBER 2022

Lisa Stonham is a photo-media artist who lives and works in Gadigal Country/Sydney.

In her artworks she seeks to capture the temporary, ephemeral and momentary through the exploration of immovable man-made landscapes. She documents the ever-evolving relationship between light and time in the context of architectural space, to produce sensory and evocative colour field photographs.

Stonham’s work has been exhibited in various Australian galleries. In 2021 she exhibited in the Head-on Photo Festival Open Programme. She has been a finalist in numerous art prizes and awards including the Blake Prize, Iris Award, and CLIP Award.

The exhibition catalogue describes the artist’s work as “a concourse between documentary and abstraction. Although factual, her photographs are detached from physical or concrete reality and resistant to any narrative sense.” So, how can I describe the works in this exhibition if they are resistant to narrative?

In Conversations with My-Self and Others, the artist explores and exaggerates the tiny perfect moments … the 'right now' - that a more isolated and contemplative existence led her to appreciate. She has captured ephemeral and impressionistic moments within the context of the everyday. The resultant colour driven abstractions engage with the temporal nature of light and physical space. They involve the interpretation of light as gesture, everyday rainbows in the context of positive projections and articulation of colour experience in meditation and memory.

During the official opening, the works were described as extending from the usual photographic language to the painting language and particularly into abstraction in the way that photographic light can make us appreciate interior spaces but also remind us of reflective spaces within colour field painting. That is certainly one way of describing the works with words.

My first response when I began looking at the images was wow, look at those vibrant colours, that use of light, and those wonderful shadows. Then I found myself questioning whether some works were single images or composites. And one of the prints is quite small compared with all the others, so I was curious as to why that was the case and why it had been included in the exhibition.

    Lisa_Stonham_Perfect Moment ... Right Now (inYellow)

Lisa Stonham_Dopamine Rush_2021

Having an opportunity to speak with Stonham whilst standing in the middle of the gallery space enabled me to share my reactions, questions and thoughts with her – always a good way of getting further into the artist’s mindset and intentions. During the discussion, we were joined by another artist and listening to her comments and questions also added to my enjoyment of this show.

Lisa_Stonham_Everyday Rainbow (in Blue) 2021

The aforementioned small print Wayfinder was included because it works well with the larger one, Perfect Moment… Right Now, alongside it. The colours in the two works are the same delicious reds and greens. The small work is an archival pigment print mounted to aluminium, whereas the larger one is an eco-solvent print on solve glaze satin rag.

Perfect Moment...Right Now (in green) 2021 and Way-Finder 2021 (installation shot)

I was previously not familiar with eco-solvent inks, but limited research tells me they have their colours suspended in a mild biodegradable solvent, and they don’t contain as many volatile organic compounds. The eco-solvent prints in the show are vibrant – and it is okay to put water on them.

I also learned that Stonham had added separate images of shafts of light seen in her home to other images of pieces of walls, floors and other areas - also in her own home. The combinations work extremely well and are not at all obvious.

LisaStonham_Self-Talk (Chromatic Aberration)_2021

This is a colourful, absorbing and well-presented exhibition. Without objective context, the compositions and colour relationships have become subjects in themselves. No narrative is required to enjoy the works.

This review was first published on page 19 of the Canberra Times of 29.8.22 and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.