Melissa Boughey has travelled extensively, exploring the divergent landscapes of Tasmania and the East MacDonald Ranges -Tjoritja, in preparation for this current exhibition. When combined with her pre-existing knowledge of the place she calls home in the southern regions of Western Australia, Boughey's practice becomes a meditation not only on the unique qualities of each environment, but also how the experience of place is internalised. ‘Cross-pollination’ seeks to capture something of the sensation of being immersed in a new landscape, of witnessing its geography, colours and light with fresh eyes but also through the lens of past experiences.
CATALOGUE ESSAY by ANDREW STEPHENS
Founded on the human experience of abstracted musing, the word reverie captures that curious state where mind and body briefly disengage from each other. While the mind wanders and ponders, the rest of the body goes about its tasks, with the eye unconsciously or imperfectly perceiving external objects. Melissa Boughey attests to occasionally inhabiting this interesting, meditative zone during her creative work. This was evident during recent travels from her home in south-west Western Australia, taking in Tasmania and Central Australia. Boughey found that the imagery in the work she was making during and in the wake of these journeys was site-specific – yet, at the same time, those locations seemed to percolate into one another. As she made a painting or work on paper, she was dealing with what was directly in front of her eyes, responding with her senses, but thoughts, feelings and memories of other locations were simultaneously emerging, unbidden, and being intuitively layered into the work. Cross-pollination was underway.
Boughey’s practice includes working on paper en plein air, as well as more formal production with oil paints on canvas in the studio. Much of her outdoor work is a playful yet strenuous experimentation: she dips large sheets of paper into available bodies of water (a waterfall here, an inlet there) before working on the dampened surfaces; or she leans right into a large piece of paper to apply ink, charcoal, watercolours or pastel. She likes to work on site and respond to the various sensory stimuli – concerned not so much with how a scene presents itself, but with being open to the emotions and memories that arise. It is then and there, as she works, that a reverie might manifest. She describes this flow of making as a precious experience. Throughout her career, Boughey has allowed this process to naturally evolve into what she describes as making annotations, in the sense that her work distils essence. More and more, she finds herself not focussing on defined outcomes: ‘You can get really stuck in trying to produce a specific image, fighting to get that image to make sense. I am more interested in creating a feeling of place.’ For Cross-Pollination, the special places she has engaged with include gorges in the East MacDonnell Ranges (Tjoritja) in Central Australia and Tasmania’s Hartz Mountains and Central Highlands. Through her treatment of, for example, the fall of light, the intercession of a tree-like form, the texture of a rockface, or rendition of alpine plateau foliage and misty atmospheric conditions, she somehow manages to relocate the viewer to positions within those landscapes. While working outdoors in Tjoritja, she found the magnificent gorge was almost too overwhelming to contemplate; she went for a walk and focussed instead on a tree stump with extraordinary, beautiful patterns and markings made by termites. ‘I find the big, broad view is not what I am interested in. I prefer a close-up, as if you are sitting within it all, rather than the landscape being “out there”.’
ARTIST STATEMENTCross-Pollination is a series of works, conceived in different places, and imagined while crossing the Nullarbor Plain. They carry the remnants of prior experience, the current physicality of place and the emotive effects of memory. Ideas that emerge from your sub-conscious while you are in the process of painting is a precious thing to hold onto.
2023 has been a year of some disruption, big projects, and momentous occasions. Interspersed with seasonal farm commitments, time has been spent on the road, traversing from the south-west of WA to Tasmania and back again, with a central Australia painting intensive thrown in.
I can only paint what is inside of me at the time and works thought/dreamed of in one place become about another, a process of transference; memory, feeling, nostalgia. A cross-pollination of ideas emerges within the process of painting; responding to the physicality of paint & surface with tension, colour, harmony, surprise.
Melissa Boughey - August 2023
Photography of artworks by Bo Wong Installation photography by FLGARTIST BIOGRAPHY IN BRIEF: Boughey completed a Bachelor of Arts at Curtin University in 1994 before moving to Southern WA where she and her family run a small farm vineyard and cellar door. In the last decade Melissa has focused on her arts practice, holding many group and solo exhibitions, as well as being selected finalist in a number of national shows including the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2021, 2019), The Paul Guest Prize for Drawing (2016), Kogarah Art Prize (2015), Albany Art Prize (2015), Lloyd Rees Landscape Prize (2015) & Fleurieu Art Prize (2011) amongst others.
She currently works from her home studio, overlooking pristine rehabilitated wetlands, and takes inspiration from her immediate surroundings. She exhibits regularly in Melbourne, Sydney and regional Western Australia. Her work is held in the Busselton Health Service, Mental Health Unit, WA, The Office of the Public Sector, Government of Western Australia and private collections in Australia, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and France.
