Emotional Landscapes II

Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Emotional Landscapes II I Margaret Gordon, Manuel Pfeiffer and Alan Pomeroy

ANCA Gallery I 23 April – 11 May 2025

In July/August 2024, ANCA exhibited Emotional Landscapes I by Jenny Adams, Julie Delves, Eva van Gorsel & Delene White. Van Gorsel subsequently received a Canberra Critics Circle award for her imaginative and creative observations and, in particular, her key part in that exhibition.

Emotional Landscapes II featuring artworks by three other artists has the same purpose - questioning the dichotomy of being apart from nature versus being an integral part of it. Photographer and former climate scientist van Gorsel curated this show, in close consultation with the artists.

My initial reaction on entering the gallery was to immediately see the landscape in Pfeiffer’s pieces, but not in the other works. That was my narrow interpretation of landscape. Gordon’s works feature landscapes of nude human bodies, whilst Pomeroy has “set out to re-imagine the contemplative posture as a composite posture figure set against evocative landscapes.” Pfeiffer’s art is not a straightforward representation of landscapes as we might actually see them. Like those of all good artists, they are interpretations of what he saw.

Each artist has revealed something of their personal emotional experiences to a variety of landscapes, enabling viewers of the works to reflect on their own emotional responses to landscapes they explore.

Gordon most commonly produces small sculptural pieces of her models. But here she presents mostly pastel and charcoal drawings, with just one acrylic painting and one ceramic sculpture.

Margaret Gordon, 38 Small Form, 2024, ceramic sculpture, 13.5 x 18.5 x 10cm

Photograph provided by ANCA

All these human landscapes are female. She participates in a variety of workshops sketching both genders, but as selected pieces for this show she felt it appropriate to use only drawings of female models. The drawings are diverse, showing various amounts of detail in differing parts of the sketched bodies. That, plus the variety of body types reveals the diversity of the female body landscape. How we each respond emotionally will depend on our genders, ages, personal body types and more.

Margaret Gordon, 26 Another Seated Form, 2024, pastel and charcoal, 52 x 46cm

Photograph provided by ANCA

Six of Pfeiffer’s works on canvas are painted with acrylic; two are mixed media. All eight vibrantly colourful works are striking in appearance. As always with this artist, they are beautifully composed and executed. One most interesting feature is the inclusion of shapes, such as that of a diamond or an egg. They are paintings of landscapes many of us have visited or, at least, seen in photographs. We can clearly recognise some outback places. My favourite work is of the Devil’s Marbles, but they are all a joy to look at.

Manuel Pfeiffer, 04 Karlu Karlu (Devil's marbles), 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36 inches (61x92cm)

Photograph provided by the artist

Some of the landscapes portrayed are less obvious, but the titles identify them. So, for example, we know the Nullarbor is being portrayed even if we don’t immediately recognise it. I very much enjoyed the clear representation of the long straight stretch of road through a flat landscape with no trees. The magical place known as Larapinta is also delightfully shown, almost demanding we walk on the long trail.

Manuel Pfeiffer, 07 Magic Larapinta, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36 inches (61x92cm)

Photograph provided by the artist

And then there are Pomeroy’s wonderfully thought-provoking works. Again the catalogue titles arguably provide keys which enable us to open the doors to the material we need to explore in order to properly think about what this artist is saying. Each piece shows figures set against evocative landscapes. They are observing and meditating, fingers pressed against their mouths almost being gnawed. They are sitting on the fence in one work – seeking the wisdom of the three wise monkeys?

Alan Pomeroy 02, On the Fence, 2024, oil on canvas, 76 x 91.5 cm. Photograph, Alan Pomeroy. TBE

All are simply delightful paintings. And there is also a most affordable 40pp book featuring the artist’s own photographs of his art. In it his artist’s statement reveals the inspirations for these works in his continuing artistic inquiry, and his hoping to encourage awareness of the power of thought .

Alan Pomeroy 05, In Too Deep, 2024, oil on canvas, 76 x 112 cm. Photograph, Alan Pomeroy. TBE 

As with its forerunner, Emotional Landscapes I, this exhibition most successfully achieves what its artists set out to do. They have created artworks which cause us to reflect on our personal emotional responses to the natural world in which we live. And invite us to ask ourselves how and whether we can live in harmony with our natural environment.

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

 

VIEW 2025

Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

VIEW 2025 I Cailyn Forrest, Adam Hsieh, Fiona Lee, Aia Solis, Emma Winkler

Photo Access I 23 January – 22 February 2025

VIEW 2025 shares artworks by emerging artists Cailyn Forrest, Adam Hsieh, Fiona Lee, Aia Solis, and Emma Lyn Winkler. It is accompanied by a publication offering insights into current photographic trends.

Cailyn Forrest is a Doctoral candidate in her final year at the National Art School, Sydney. Her practice focusses on examining analogue and alternative photographic processes through a feminist lens.

In her work Darkroom Viscera here, Forrest has transformed the act of photography into a bodily ritual, intertwining artist and material. The results are, in effect, a performance. They show us a female body, but it is not portrayed in a conventional manner. Rather the set of ten seemingly faded prints successfully present the artist’s body very differently. The artist has described them as “little experiments.” An experiment is generally considered to be a careful test used to discover or understand something that is not known. So, it is interesting to look at this series and consider how well Forrest’s experiments, whether little or more substantial, have improved our understanding of the female body.

16122024, 2024 - Silver gelatin print on hand-coated rice paper on board – Cailyn Forrest

Adam Hsieh is a digital artist. Guided by his experience as a queer Chinese migrant, Hsieh’s art practice seeks to explore the dynamic tension between places and place-makers. He uses multi-sensory interventions, manipulating systems of light, sound, moving images, code, and AI.

In I Didn’t Come Here for Love here Hsieh has used juxtaposition – wide-angle views of Hobart’s Mount Wellington alongside exchanges had with others on the geosocial app Grindr. Words from those encounters are superimposed on the well-chosen views of the famous mountain. The resultant video installation runs for 10 minutes showing limited movements in each channel as it screens.

I didn’t come here for love, 2023 - feature image from three-channel video installation
– Adam Hsieh

Fiona Lee is an artist based in Elands, NSW. Using installations, photo media, and sculpture, her practice engages with critical social issues, focusing on climate change and the post-natural world.

In her Future Critical artwork here she seeks to confront ecological loss and political inertia, arising from the experience of losing her home in the 2019–2020 bushfires. Using an inkjet print of video stills, a clock and audio, this work explores the lack of necessary action by political systems through visual disruptions, layering, and fragmented imagery. Their portrayed remnants speak to us of the destruction of our precious forests, reminding us of the terrible impacts the fires had on the natural environment.

VIEW round - inkjet print of video stills – Fiona Lee

Aia Solis is a Filipino artist based in Australia. Her photographic practice explores themes of learning, unlearning, and relearning through an experiential approach. Her work explores emotional tensions experienced in personal and cultural transitions.

In her work Taranta Muna, Solis merges past memories and present realities, using some quite delightful stitching on photo collage plus video. On her Instagram account she has written that this is “an ongoing project that reflects the unspoken dissonance of not fully belonging to the past or being entirely rooted in the present - a state of instability and uncertainty. Threads weave together images of past memories and present realities, creating a layered dialogue between control and chaos, seeking strength not in resolution, but in embracing the uncertainty of the in-between.”

These works were some of my favourites in the exhibition and I look forward to seeing more of this project as it evolves.

01 - stitching on photo collage - Aia Solis

Emma Winkler’s practice uses collage, painting and animation to explore the relationship between anxiety and death. She has a personal yet playful approach, inviting viewers to laugh in the face of death - or at least start a conversation about it.

The exhibition catalogue informs us that, in Shadow Puppets, Winkler fuses painting, photography, and animation into textured narratives infused with “existential absurdity.” I had to do some web browsing about that term, learning (amongst other things) that it underscores the conflict between our desire for order and the chaotic nature of the universe. Certainly, Winkler’s paintings (including a hand-painted stop-motion animation) here are fascinating combinations of diverse things wherein the end compositions to my eyes seemed appropriate.

Sinking Feeling, 2023, oil, acrylic and spray paint - Emma Winkler

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

Whether World & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’

Animation, paintings, and photographs: Brian Rope

Moving image work: Whether World by Susan Bruce & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’ by Henry Hu

M16 Artspace | 14 April – 7 May2023

Whether World is by Susan Bruce, a moving image artist who describes the exhibition as a moving image work which considers whether the natural world (including trees, fungi, and aquatic life) communicates with humans and how humans communicate with the natural world. She questions how weather is experienced by our bodies and how we are changing everything through our activity.

Bruce is exhibiting in Canberra for the first time, so I turned to her website for background. Her practice also includes experimental short films, collage, drawings, prints and artist books. She is inspired by the textural qualities of film and the interrelationship between digital and analogue media.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Writing about this show, Bruce shares “I am between two worlds. In one, I can see humans are crawling on the brown earth, butterflies are communicating with humans. Seeds are growing above the ground as well as underground. To me, trees are more valuable than diamonds. In my world, I float amongst the clouds, smell flowers, and swim underwater like a squid. I am free, and I am not ‘earth bound’.” Those charming words were a most useful backdrop to my viewing of her artwork.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Without those words I would have seen fish, birds, gorillas and, yes, humans. I’d have seen the earth, underwater scenes and trees. I’d have noticed the drawings on her collages. But the backdrop helps us appreciate how Bruce sees people communicating with flowers and bees, and them communicating right back. She sees pigs in all their size and pinkness walking around us. She is saying to us that humans and non-humans co-exist, that humans are no longer at the top of the chain.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Serendipitously, I viewed this exhibition the day after seeing the new documentary movie Giants, which is about some giants of Tasmanian ecological activism – former Greens leader Bob Brown and tall trees. Two days running, I found myself considering the same questions – how do we humans co-exist with all other forms of life on this planet? Where do we fit in the great scheme of living things? Have we any right to impact on the places where other life forms reside? That movie and this exhibition both successfully examine such questions.

From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’, is new work by Henry Hu. Again, not previously familiar with this artist’s work, I went to his website. He began his practice using modern technological tools and easily accessible digital software creating artwork that engaged aspects of digital art and graphic design.

Later, Hu worked to incorporate digital creations into tangible forms. This delivered mixed-media paintings, lens-based works and computer-generated animation. What we see here are “testaments of existence as imagined, invented, remembered, and observed.” 

The artist has limited his tonal palette within each pleasing photograph and each mixed-media work - combining a multi-layered technique of paint pours with sand, gravel, twig, leaf, grass and wood. He describes this as a delicate manipulation of material that traces the ambiguity of nostalgia.

Henry Hu, the flint #38, 2022. pigment inkjet on cotton rag.38 x 26 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

There also are two pieces of abstract computer-generated animation conceived as an extension and companion to the static work. Sadly they’re displayed on small tablets with soundtracks accessed through tiny headphones. Turning on the tablets and locating the animations may defeat some.

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (1)

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (2)

I would have liked Hu’s excellent text about the series Light Jelly Sweet - on his website at https://henryhhu.com/works-two#ljs – to be displayed in the gallery. Here’s a taste: “Burning sun. Open air. Nature. The fields. The woods. A birch. A pine. An oak. Shades. Shadows. Clouds overhead. Streams beneath. They are gifts for a child. How unguarded we were, the early days.” (The full text is available in printed form at the front desk next to the room sheets.)

This review was first published by The Canberra Times on page 10 of Panorama and online on 29/4/23 here. It is also available on the author's blog here.