Fields of relations, boxes of jewels: a practice-led enquiry into aspects of place as foundation for a new language of cultural abstraction in painting

Abstract

The early stages of my research had focussed on the general idea of place as landscape in painting, centering on the Warlpiri country of the Central Desert. This perspective on place was quickly challenged by ideas of, experiences in and responses to those places I then visited as part of this research. My research eventually became an investigation into the language of painting, informed by ideas and different cultural forms and resulting in a one that has reconstructed my practice.

I have explored how the contemporary language of abstract painting can engage with the experience of different cultural contexts both western and indigenous, specifically in the areas of visual art and music. Western artists I have considered are Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Long, Yves Klein, Tim Johnson and Jan Riske: the indigenous artists considered are the Martumili women of Punmu, Joe Japanangka James, Shorty Jangala and Lady Nungurrayi Robinson.

My conversation has evolved using newfound elements extending and deepening my painting practice. My research has been enriched by fieldwork experiences ranging from a retrospective of Piet Mondrian’s painting in Den Hague, attending the Women’s Law and Culture Week in the Northern Territory and music performances such as John Luther Adams composition Inuksuit and Morton Feldman’s Patterns in a Chromatic Field. My early readings were very much centred on the writings of anthropologists such as Nancy Munn, Diana James, Christine Watson, Francois Dussart and Yasmine Musharbash as they provided important context to my visits to Yuendumu and my fieldwork at the Women’s Law and Culture Week.

In reflecting on my practice I have been influenced and informed by writers such as Terry Smith and his revisiting of contemporaneity and connectivity in the global community; by Yve-Alain Bois’ essay on Mondrian’s painting, The Iconoclast and Maurice Merleau-Ponty regarding phenomenology and perception. Finally, The Grid as a Checkpoint of Modernity by Margarita Tupitsyn helped refine my focus, appearing to encapsulate much of what I had been thinking.

I have come to recognise the phenomenological experience as key to all my responses both as observer and as artist. In particular, the aspect of my research focussing on the cultural forms of Central Desert communities, specifically painting and the performance of songs has had an expansive effect on my thinking and studio processes, contributing to a re-invention of my painting as an abstract artist.