07.10.20 to 18.10.20

Photography: John McRae and Marty Lochmann

TEMPERING

A joint exhibition with Kathie Najar

overview

How do we relate to the natural world? How does memory affect our relationship with the environment? In 2020 are we more acutely aware of the possibility of imminent loss of that which we think we know and hold dear?

Artists Kathie Najar and Rhonda Pryor present an exhibition of new artworks that focus on the natural world with deep connections to both land and sea.

Experience of sensory memory forged through close association with Tasmanian forest wilderness and central Queensland ocean are hand-crafted into works that communicate personal interior experience through media that include installation, photomedia, drawing, textile and painting.

Networks of metaphorical, social and ethical relationships with nature permeate this exhibition.

artist statement

My contribution to the Tempering exhibition is made up of two parts: oil paintings and ‘textile paintings’, that stem from reflection on close associations with place, in this case a particular location on the Capricorn Coast.

The small Saltwater Poem paintings were made in 2008, in response to a place that my late mother held close. All her life she’d talk about this – her happy place – that coloured so much of her life and her world view, and to some degree, my own. These works are part of a series I showed for the first time earlier this year. I chose to add textiles to the paintings as a way of exploring, not only the haptic sensations associated with that place, and the memories that drift there still, but also the emotional breadth of her life.

The textile paintings are a land-based response to the oceanic focus of the Saltwater Poem paintings. Recalling sensations and nuances of feeling experienced while exploring the shoreline under changing conditions, they allude to the light and tidal changes I like to think of as the ‘temperaments of sand’.