Monday, March 18, 2019

White on White: Fiona Halse & Anna Caione Exhibition 2019

White on White: Fiona Halse & Anna Caione

West End Art Space
Address:137 Adderley Street, West Melbourne, Victoria, 3003
Hours: Wednesday- Saturday: 11 - 4pm
Email: westendartspace@gmail.com               
Phone number:  0415 243 917                   
Website: www.westendartspace.com.au
Exhibition dates: Wednesday 28 August – 21 September 2019
Opening: Saturday 31 August 2-5pm, 2019


The exhibition ‘White on White’ explores the philosophical, poetic associations of the colour white through the work of Melbourne artists Anna Caione and Fiona Halse. Caione and Halse express the synergies and divergences in their approach to abstraction through the process of surface manipulation and gestural expression. Their shared preference for the colour white amalgamates their works yet each artist loads the neutrality of the hue with a diversity of personal meaning that gives rise to a range of intriguing interpretative possibilities.

White is considered by some to be a non-colour, yet its transformational qualities continue to fascinate contemporary artists. White can be purely suggestive or a dominant force informing the intrinsic visual language within an artist’s work. The initiation of the single-coloured artwork termed the ‘Monochrome’ is a fairly recent occurrence of twentieth-century art, with practitioners such as Piero Manzoni, Robert Ryman, Mary Martin and Kazimir Malevich falling into the category of monochromatic painters. Curator Tanya Barson of the Tate’s Painting with White exhibition has noted that the decision for artists to restrict themselves to one colour can open up a rich and versatile area of investigation, with the use of white drawing attention to a variety of techniques, materials, textures, surfaces, structures and forms.

Artists often impose a restrictive palette to enable them to discover a plethora of subtleties and nuances. Robert Ryman, for example, embraced white’s neutrality for its ‘tendency to make things visible’. He suggested that ‘a blank canvas enables an artist to clearly see a mark and celebrate directness and materiality,’ yet a mark on white can also expose the bare essentials posed within the surface of the work and manifested by gestural impulses from the artist’s hand. Kandinsky sensed this multifaceted aspect to white when he claimed it was the ‘harmony of silence’. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art he described how the silent or still quality of white resonated for him with ‘the many pauses in music that break the melody temporarily’. (Kandinsky, W, 1977, p. 39).  


The exhibition ‘White on White’ is a tribute to Kazimir Malevich  and his Suprematist composition: White on White (1918). Whilst the Black Square (1915) is commonly believed to be the ‘first Suprematist  painting’ (Lodder, C. 2018, p. 13)  and communicates Malevich’s aesthetic  theory  as the ‘the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts’ ( MOMA, n.d.). Malevich referred to White on White as ‘a representation of the transcendent state reached through Suprematism’ (The Art Story, n.d) and marked a shift from polychrome to monochrome. Malevich’s contribution was significant to the development of non-objective and abstract art, which he believed could pave the way to spiritual freedom, a utopian world of pure form and a  ‘universal language that would free viewers from the material world.’ (Malevich, K, 1926).


 

References:
Art21, Inc, 2007, Color, Surface and Seeing, Robert Ryman, Retrieved 19 May 2019 < https://art21.org/read/robert-ryman-color-surface-and-seeing/>

Kandinsky, W, 1977, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Dover Publications Inc, NY, USA

Lodder, C, 2018, Celebrating Suprematism, Brill, Leiden, Netherlands

Malevich, K, 1926,  Retrieved 19 May 2019 http://www.moodbook.com/history/modernism/malevich-suprematism.html

 

MOMA, n.d. Retrieved 19 May 2019 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80385

 

TATE, n.d. Painting with White,  n.d.  Retrieved 19 May 2019 < https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/in-the-studio/painting-white>

The Art Story, n.d. Kazimir Malevich,  Retrieved 19 May 2019 https://www.theartstory.org/artist-malevich-kasimir-artworks.htm




installation image: 'White on White', Westend Art Space





installation image: 'White on White', Westend Art Space
( left and middle: Fiona Halse; Right: Anna Caione)



installation image: 'White on White', Westend Art Space 
( Fiona Halse)




installation image: 'White on White', Westend Art Space 
( Anna Caione)


 Video of the exhibition




Collage of details and installation image


Collage of details and installation image: 'White on White', Westend Art Space



Interview 





Selected work in the show


Fiona Halse, 'Sun', mixed media on canvas, 60x60cm, 2019





Fiona Halse, rhoi'r gorau i  ( stop), 100cm H x 74cm, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2019





Fiona Halse, llanw (tide), 45cmH x 38cmW, Mixed Media on Canvas , 2019



Fiona Halse, Gwyn #1 (white), 62cm H x 31cm W, 2019 mixed media on canvas, 2019




Fiona Halse, ' Air', 28.5cm (H ) x28cm(W) ( framed size) mixed media collage, 2018




Fiona Halse,  Unionsyth #1(upright), 46cm W x 102cm H, mixed media on canvas, 2019




Fiona Halse. ' Find', mixed media collage,31cm H x 25.5cm W ( framed size) 2018







Anna Caione, left  White #83; right: WHITE #54, Fabric, pigment & mixed media on canvas, 2019




Fiona Halse, left : Heddwch 2; Right Heddwch 1 ( Peace),  Mixed Media on Canvas, 2019




Fiona Halse. ' Afon ( river)', Mixed Media on Canvas ,100cmx100cm, 2019



Anna Caione, WHITE #8, Fabric, pigment & mixed media on canvas



Anna Caione, White #83  2019, Fabric, pigment & mixed media on canvas,100cmx100cm






 Anna Caione, 2019, WHITE #7, Fabric, pigment & mixed media on canvas,100cmx100cm




Combining paintings and juxtaposition of white


Left: Anna Caione; Right: Fiona Halse



Left: Anna Caione; Right: Fiona Halse

         

Left: Anna Caione; Right: Fiona Halse (Heddwch 1)



Left: Anna Caione; Right: Fiona Halse  (Heddwch 2)




Details


 Anna Caione




 Anna Caione




Fiona Halse, Afon ( river)

Anna Caione



 Exhibition at Westend Art Space  2018 - source - https://www.annavisualartist.com/

My work fuses aspects of contemporary culture and my Italian heritage, creating a threshold between the realm of intangible memory and the physical realm of place. I endeavour to touch on both personal and universal experiences, made manifest through the use of materials with an everyday, familiar cast that, although abstracted, are resonant with shared associations.

I am also concerned with subjective understandings of matter and space, exploring the energies inherent in materials and their transformative properties. I often revitalise collected remnant fabrics and found objects in ways that at times suggest old historical surfaces, architecture and the landscape, working intuitively with gestural bodily movements to construct my compositions. My working method, which connects hand and fabric, is grounded in ‘automatism’, a concept based on the intuitive drive, the irrational, and the accidental occurrences during the process of creating. New York School abstractionist Robert Motherwell once defined automatism as ‘letting the work pour out, without any critical intervention or editing’, and for me this involves stretching, sewing, pulling, layering, cutting, and pouring as I apply, shape and harmonise a diversity of materials into a form of palimpsest.

Once the work has been built up I manipulate the surface to expose the expressive layers of raw materials, and allow the skeletal structures of the piece and its subconscious narrative to be revealed. Thus the final artwork functions not only as a means of exploring the physical process of creation, but also as a vehicle for contemplation, encouraging the viewer to consider the less tangible atmosphere conceived within that inflects the visible outer form.



 ANNA CA
ANNA CAIONE MILANO ITALY 2018

Fiona Halse



My work seeks to convey a personal space that is metaphorically associated with the human figure.  Form is found through connecting to a deep resonant feeling, reflecting a personalised, generalised space. Whilst my work is lyrical and utilises Tachist approaches, my work is formal and has an architectonic basis and explores drawing principles. Pictorial and illusionist devices are utilised to create depth, but ambiguity and privacy are also explored by flattening shapes and focusing on the picture plane. I am interested in capturing the visceral and how forms can be deeply connected to an essence that is not described but sensed. My work is aligned with Giacometti’s dissolving scaffolded skeleton forms that Sartre describes as ‘halfway between nothingness and being’. It is also related to a need to be fluid with inner and outer forms, not unlike Klee’s ‘Endotopic’  and  ‘Exotopic’ space. This personal space is efficiently captured through abstract forms.   

I have an interest in how Poiesis and metaphoric form can be activated through Praxis. Forms are found within my work through a need to connect to the materials. This Tachist and touch-based approach to creating work creates space for poetic interpretations and abstract concepts.


Research links:

Kazimir Malevich Suprematist Composition: White on White

Original Title: Ð‘елый квадра (Date: 1917 – 1918)


Ryman – ‘ white has the tendency to make things visible. With white you can see more of a nuance; you can see more’

Philosophical, poetic and spiritual associations of white monochrome paintings – Tate collection

Robert Hunter

Lucio Fontana


Robert Ryman

Cage  - music

The white paintings gave Cage the courage and 'authority' to compose his silent pieces.
The typography of Cage's books greatly resembles this work by Mallarmé

Mallarmé -  Poems

Polysemous play on the concept of white. Words such as 'snow', 'swan', 'virginity', 'foam', 'frigidity', 'glacier', and 'paper' are all associated with whiteness


Hans Arp – sculptures composed of plaster and left unpainted and their natural white color.  
https://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/dada/jean-hans-arp/human-concretion/


Kandinsky 
Claimed white was the ‘harmony of silence’, and it was not negative or subservient, but rather charged with potential. ‘White, therefore, has this harmony of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age’.
Kandinsky, Wassily, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. by M. T. H. Sadler (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1977).  pp. 77–78.


https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/monochrome


https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/martin-expanding-form-t13322

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Where the Sea meets the Sand ( Heddwch - Peace)


This series of work that relates to concepts ‘Where the Sea meets the Sand’ and explores underlying underling suspension, structure and fluid forms. Like a tide,  undercurrents, formal constructs  and rhythmical lines dissolve and change from  positive to negative space. These abstract works seek to capture a sense of openness and infinity. Forms are architectonic, but informal accidents and textures are found with line, and Tachist approaches. This exhibition has a limited blue colour range with pockets of yellow, black, white and ochre.  Some work has warm pockets of colour that contrasts against the cool and white passages and are associated with feelings that relate to submerging, flesh and the impact of the ocean on the body.  This body of work  seeks to capture rhythms that are evoked from the sea - from sea spray, to a sense of floating. There is reference to  breath, stillness, grace and structural strength. 

There is also reference to my father Huw Halse's  architectural plans and architectonic structures  such as scaffolds,  light colour ranges, organic textures and his Welsh heritage.
This body of work also relates to the Australian coastline, tides or currents.

HALSE Huw 14.04.45 - 12.08.17
Gorffwys mewn heddwch (rest in peace)





Where the Sand meets the Sea #3, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 170cm H x 200cm W





Warm Wave, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 58.5cm H x 41cm W 
(part of the abstract exhibition, 2019) 



Unionsyth #1 (upright), 2019, mixed media on canvas, 46cm W x 102cm H



Gweld 1 2019, drawing - mixed media, 40x 39cm ( round)



Unionsyth #2 (upright), 2019, mixed media on canvas, 46cm W x 102cm H



Tear, 2019, mixed media on card, 




Where the Sand meets the Sea #2, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 170cm H x 200cm W





Where the Sand Meets the Sea #1, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 170cm H x 200cm W 
(exhibited in Tidal exhibition, Devonport, Tasmania, Australia, 2019)



dod o hyd i (Find)2019, mixed media on card




A Memory of a Head, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 



mor cynnes ( warm sea), 2019, mixed media on canvas, 58.5 x 41cm






llanw ( Tide),  drawing - mixed media, 40x 39cm ( round)  ( framed) 



Man of Clay, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 58.5 x 41cm



Warm Wave, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 58.5 x 41cm




Tide, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 60x60cm




Suspended Tide, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 60x60cm




Passing Tide, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 122cm H x 91cm W




Upward Wave , 2019, mixed media on canvas, 200cm H x 100cm W




Wave (Blue) , drawing - mixed media, 40x 39cm ( round)





Reconstruct,  2019, mixed media on canvas, 




2019, mixed media on canvas, 





2019, drawing - mixed media,  ( round)






2019, drawing - mixed media,  ( round)





2019,  mixed media collage







2019,  mixed media collage





Sun, 2019, drawing - mixed media,  ( round)