painting

2023: Precarious times

This is the third major project for my Studio 2 course, as part of the Master of Fine Art program. This large scale, mixed-media installation exemplified the use of a conceptual framework and iterative installations to progressively develop work, and through the process suggest regenerative possibilities.

It was designed to warn of the accelerating impact of climate change while signalling the redemptive possibilities of nature. The final installation evolved from an earlier Studio 2 animation in which tumbling shapes suggested the use of a vertical flip book to convey time and motion in two dimensions. 

The concept was framed along cartography, calligraphy and oceanography lines, as exploratory prompts. This framework underpinned the project’s expansion over experimental installations as I effectively terraformed the Gossard space (coincidently a technique suggested by Donna Haraway as a way to rejuvenate our vulnerable planet, in her book Staying with the trouble : making kin in the Chthulucene). 

Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of final installation of Precarious times, view 1 on 12 October 2023. Acrylic on 250 and 640 gsm paper, sizes variable. Wood painted white and portable white projector. 2023.

Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of final installation of Precarious times, view 2 on 12 October 2023. Acrylic on 640 gsm paper, sizes variable, shapes made from plaster, wax, wood. 2023.
Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of final installation of Precarious times, view 3 on 12 October 2023.
Acrylic on 640 gsm paper, 56 x 76 cm, Shapes made from plaster, wax, wood. 2023.

2023: Carbonised

This is another project for Studio 2, as part of my Master of Fine Art program. It consisted of a mournful, site-specific installation of charred cuttlebones, showing how a selected location informed a body of work. While continuing to memorialise endangered sea-life through cuttlebones, for this site specific project I entered the shadowy realm of museum storage the mausoleum of colonial trophies and taxidermy. Based on a dilapidated plan drawer this installation consisted of eight cuttlebones surrounded by pictorial labels, tags and flip books made from relief prints. The relief prints featured the contour lines of the cuttlebone.

This project was intended to create a mournful affect, with the charred cuttlebones symbolising the extreme consequence of global warming.

Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of Carbonised installation, close up of eight casts and tags, 2023. Casts made from high compression gypsum, painted with acrylic, with twine and tags from 250 gsm paper. Cast sizes variable, approx. 24 x 9 x 3.5 cm. 2023.
Photograph by Elizabeth Cole of revised configuration of the Carbonised installation, for a meeting with my supervisor, 2023.

 

Nautilus shell paintings

These six works were produced in A3 landscape format, on oil paper, over a period of 2 months. They were created in response to one of the first paintings undertaken in early 2010. This version of the Nautilus shell (#1) proved difficult to paint, hence the intention in semester two was to improve through practice. The works are made in oil paint with medium number one, with occasional use of oil sticks and wax medium.