| Project title: | It’s The New Thing |
| Location: | Seaside Gallery, Volcano, Swansea, Wales |
| Date(s): | 8 – 22 July 2023 |
I am an artist working in the field of ‘Expanded Painting’.
My work challenges the historical flatness of traditional
painting, the canvas and how it is presented. I produce
painted, geometric, abstract works that respond to their
specific environments, consider various surfaces as a
whole and challenge spatial illusion within their specific,
installation environment.
My practise continues to explore the materiality of paint
and painting while exploring their connections to other
disciplines. I want to hold onto the specificity of the
canvas but push practise beyond the edge, to further
understand the potentiality of painting and paint as
subjects and paint as a language in itself.
Process is ongoing and experimental, were through
concept and production, materials ask questions, guide
outcomes and provide a space where there are no rules.
Guided by Clement Greenberg’s theories of hierarchical
practise, my work engages with the politics of materiality
and its connections to sustainability.
“Hierarchical distinctions have been, literally, exhausted
and invalidated: that no area or order of experience is
intrinsically superior, on any final scale of values, to any
other area or order of experience.” (Greenberg, 1965)
Katharina Grosse and Franz Erhard Walther are
intrinsically linked to my current practise and support my
continued investigation into spatial and temporal
dimensions of form and colour.
Its The New Thing
An exhibition of paintings, reliefs and interactive sculpture that examined extended painting, sustainability, materiality and haptic, interactive encounters at Volcano, Swansea in July 2023. As artist in residence Julie furthered conversation between artist, viewer, object and architecture through the production of site-specific works, interventions and workshops.
“All things considered, a painter can use almost anything as a support for colour”. (Krauss 2005 )
The exhibition responded to the radical innovation of extended painting, (which challenges the historical restrictions of the painted canvas), to further understand the potentiality of working beyond the canvas and painting/paint as subjects and a language in themselves. The use of fly-tipped furniture and waste upholstery materials as supports challenged spatial illusion within the specific environment and highlighted the importance of independent environmental and sustainable actions.
The process was ongoing and experimental, where through concept and production, materials ask questions, guide outcomes and provide a space where there were no rules. Guided by theories surrounding hierarchical practice, the work engaged with politics of materiality and its connections to sustainability, while continuing to investigate spatial and temporal dimensions of extended form and colour.
“Hierarchical distinctions have been, literally, exhausted and invalidated: that no area or order of experience is intrinsically superior, on any final scale of values, to any other area or order of experience.” (Greenberg 1965)
The work responded to the emotional and intellectual message of Art Povera through the reactivation of discarded objects. This built on personal, historical values surrounding sustainability of personal life and artistic practice. Living in both rural and city environments (affected by fly-tipping) has developed my socially conscious artist practice, alongside a need to challenge historical behavioural conventions.
Haptic, tactile, interactive encounters (where painting extended into wearables) developed during the studio process, resulted in a body of work that enabled different experiential behaviours and an increased ability to look beyond the limitation of the medium.
The original process was about where the things came from but unconsciously became about where they took you, extending expanded paintings resources, its reach and its absurd and humorous outcomes.
Seeing my way inside,
this narrow space, materialist pictorial mechanics. That kind of
thing.
Forcing open an undiscovered plane
and carry painting ‘beyond itself’
Extending its resources, and adding elasticity
with anything outside …
Receiving it.
even elbows
are right-angles, unknowable continuities oblique functions and
lateral extensions,
Touching what surrounds us,
10 x 3 metres, blank facades
All this,
about a wall.
Standing somewhere, with space around
(McGunigal 2022)
