In this new series of paintings Chelsea Gustafsson explores our cultural fascination with sharks. Whether triggering a primal fear or a sense of awestruck wonder, Gustafsson’s process of exploration aims to create a pause in which to consider our actions, why we respond the way we do towards challenges, and how we may use knowledge to improve both ourselves and the environments around us.
Artist StatementThe past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. - Peter Benchley, Jaws
450 million years ago the first ancestors of modern sharks were cruising the oceans, before trees and well before us. Fast forward through five mass extinctions, today their long and successful existence is under threat due to habitat loss, over fishing and climate change, that is to say, from us.
Whilst my entry point to this series of paintings comes from an environmental concern, my intention is not to educate or add to the noise, but rather share my fascination and awe for sharks and invite the audience to be swept along in discovering the many stories that surround these fish. Stories told through pop culture, conservationism, or historical accounts are installed into each still life as a postcard or images torn from magazines or books. The journey of developing the paintings is also a process of trying to make sense and create some kind of understanding and order. I find the preparation of selecting and laying out objects into still life arrangements as very contemplative, resulting in works that are introspective, occasionally melancholic and some glistening with humour.
Some elements allude to the obvious and I also like to play with some references to objects from 17th century vanitas, where artists used still lifes to remind their viewer of the transience of earthly pleasures and impermanence of power and wealth.
Catalogue essay by Kate McAuley In an early self portrait, the artist Chelsea Gustafsson appears in profile. It’s a unique and spirited piece that also affords the viewer great insight into the way the artist sees the world. In the work, Gustafsson’s face leans forward while an eye, shrouded in a black mask, peers out in deep fascination. The artist’s love of the natural world and concerns for the environment are also represented by five white feathers that adorn her ear while her strong desire to communicate through art, rather than words, is indicated by the coil of fair hair wrapped around her chin and covering her mouth. This empathetic, complex, thoughtful and often humorous point of view runs through all of Gustafsson’s work, but it is particularly on show here.
For Fish Out of Water, the artist has focussed her attention on the ocean’s most indomitable apex predator - the shark - to once again lay bare the complicated relationship between us humans and our broader environment. Rather than preach to the viewer about our collective destruction of our planet and the decimation of animal populations, however, Gustafsson prefers to explore our fear, fetishism and reverence for these majestic animals with the hope that the viewer will draw their own conclusions.
There is an inherent irony in the simpler works on display here. Toy sharks are strung up by their tails in the way fisherman have displayed their catches for centuries. A plethora of shark species, including hammerhead, tiger, great white, reef and mako, hang against pastel backgrounds like shocked or amused trophies plucked from the water after a child’s bath time.
For the more detailed still-lifes, Gustafsson was inspired by the Dutch vanitas paintings of the Baroque period. Rich in symbolism and developed to represent human vanity and the transience and futility of life, this intricate style was the perfect foundation for the artist to add to her canon. Examples of sharks in popular as well as classical culture are peppered throughout these works. Mad Magazine, Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon shark Jabberjaw, and pulp fiction book covers make an appearance. As does a rendering of John Singleton Copely’s 1778 painting Watson and the Shark, which depicts the rescuing of an English boy from an attack in Havana, Cuba. Reference books on sharks and photographs have also been included.
It could be argued, however, that it’s the addition of other, less obvious, totems that give these paintings their true depth. Fresh flowers, normally a representation of fragility and decay, have been swapped out for their plastic counterparts (which are both inferior and likely to survive long after we’re gone) while the lemon, traditionally seen as the bittersweet nature of life, is also the juice we squeeze over our fish and chips, the meat of which for many years was sourced from sharks. Gustafsson has also included scrunched up or torn paper and sticky tape to add “human mess” to her otherwise tightly executed tableaux.
It is the piece, Still Life Without Oceanic White Tip, that perhaps best represents the overall intent of this exhibition. In it a picture of a shark has been ripped from the scene and a tube of lotion, which may contain the shark liver oil used in cosmetics for decades, sits in the foreground. It’s the ornate gilded mirror, representing vanity and reflection, angled out of the frame, however, that gives the viewer pause and invites us to question our place within the world she has shown us. With Fish Out Of Water, Gustafsson is neither dogmatic nor anthropological. Instead she is respectful of human intelligence, rueful of our failings and concerned for our future - and here in lies her genius.
ARTIST BIO: Having previously worked in film and television and as a graphic designer Gustafsson’s shift toward working as a professional artist has seen her exhibit both nationally and internationally, and be announced as a finalist in the Kennedy Prize (2021), Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize (2018), Percival Tucker Portrait Prize (2018), the Black Swan Prize (2018), the Kennedy Art Prize (2018), the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2018), the Metro 5 Art Award (2007), the John Leslie Art Award (2008), the ANL Maritime Art Prize (2009) and winner of Linden Postcard Show in 2010.
