FLG is delighted to be presenting the new artwork of Kim Anderson, Annika Romeyn & Richard Blackwell for this year's EXPLORE, an online Sydney Contemporary Art Fair.
ANNIKA ROMEYN: Annika Romeyn graduated with First Class Honours in Printmaking and Drawing from ANU School of Art and Design in 2010. In 2021 Romeyn was awarded the Burnie Print Prize, and in 2020 she won both the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the National Works on Paper Award. She has been a finalist in the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (2021), the McClelland Contemporary Waterolour Award (2021, 2018), the Burnie Print Prize (2021), the Megalo International Print Prize (2020, 2019), the prestigious John Leslie Art Prize (2020, 2018, 2014), the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award (2019), the Commendation Prize for the Banyule Works on Paper Award (2019), the M16 Drawing Prize (2018), and the Gippsland Print Award (2017).
Endurance IV was acquired by the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) for their permanent collection in 2020. Endurance VII has been acquired for the Art Bank Collection 2021.
In immersive, large-scale works Romeyn’s body makes the marks, her hand is visible, stroking beauty into being, healing and resurrecting. The ordinary and the wounded are transformed into the magical, into realms for the imagination. Since her early studies in illustration, Romeyn’s practice has centred on close and patient observational drawing, which here melds with the techniques of printmaking to create in the viewer a sense of humility in the face of the complexity and longevity of trees and of nature.
ARTIST STATEMENT: Much of my recent work draws inspiration from Guarella (Guerilla Bay) on Yuin Country, NSW South Coast – a beautiful place that will always be intertwined with memories of Summer 2016/17, the last shared with my Mum. The rock formations of Guarella (Guerilla Bay) are some of the oldest on the east coast of Australia, dating back as far as 510 million years, offering a humbling perspective in line with the words of Frédéric Gros, ‘Walking in nature gives you a feeling of duration that exceeds your own existence.’ Rebecca Solnit’s thoughts on ‘the blue of distance’ (the blue at the horizon, which we can never quite reach) have also been an important influence on my Endurance series. Blue remains ever-present in my mother’s wedding ring, set with a stone of lapis lazuli, the same stone that was originally ground down to make ultramarine blue paint. Personal history and art history intersect in this deep, pure blue, famously the most expensive pigment used by Renaissance painters. Ultramarine is now a synthetic pigment, but it’s still symbolic of something precious. Synthetic ultramarine is a particularly vibrant colour with the power to spill off the paper and wash over you. To me, it speaks of beauty and longing, memory and imagination, the intensity of the ocean and the ungraspable nature of the distant horizon.
Through large, multi-panel watercolour monotype prints I hope to convey the immersive and restorative experience of walking in nature – the momentary shifts in light and the persistent uprush and backwash of water, in contrast and constant interaction with rock formations of unfathomable age. Watercolour monotype is a printmaking process that allows for a one-off painterly print to be taken from watercolour applied to a thin plastic plate. When the image on the plastic is fully developed, and the watercolour is dry, it is passed under the heavy roller of an etching press and transferred onto damp paper. There is no edition and no permanent matrix; after the primary print and one significantly faded ‘ghost’ impression are made, the plate is washed clean and re-used.This technique enables me to work back and forth on the plastic plate, adding colour with a brush and subtracting it with a damp cloth wrapped around my finger. The touch and presence of my body is embedded in the thousands of calligraphic finger-marks that are amassed to describe complex forms and suggest vast spaces. The fluidity of the watercolour monotype medium directs the atmosphere of my work, with the drips signifying a release, disrupting the otherwise carefully rendered environment and breaking the horizon to link sea and sky.
Read about the process here
KIM ANDERSON: Kim was awarded the People's Choice Award in both the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize and the Lyn McCrea Memorial Drawing Prize. Shehas been a finalist in numerous national awards including the WAMA Art Prize, the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, National Works on Paper Award, Wyndham Art Prize, the Swan Hill Drawing Prize , the Kedumba Drawing Award , the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Lyn McCrea Memorial Drawing Prize , Paul Guest Award and the Rick Amor Drawing Prize. Close observational drawing forms the core of Kim Anderson’s practice as she explores the physical manifestations of a psyche in turmoil, and the ever-shifting relationship between our inner and outer worlds. With a consistent tendency towards intricate detail Anderson's practice focuses on how powerful internal emotions such as grief, despair and longing can be embodied, often using elements of the external landscape as metaphors for these intense psychological states. Much of her work involves a deeply personal psychological scrutiny in order to confront the more difficult aspects of human experience.
ARTIST STATEMENT: I am fascinated by the physical manifestation of a psyche in turmoil, as we navigate our complicated relationship with the natural world. Through intricately detailed drawing, I focus on how powerful internal emotions can be embodied, often using elements of the landscape as metaphors for these intense psychological states. In 2019 I was awarded a three-month residency on the Isle of Skye, part of the Inner Hebrides off the northwest coast of Scotland. There, I was constantly aware of the monumental presence of this wild landscape, the bleak and desolate beauty, and a sparse population at the mercy of the elements. On every horizon were mountains and ridges shaped by fire, ice, wind, water and time. A few short miles in any direction was a coastline strewn with extraordinary rock formations carved by sea and wind.Inspired by a long background in dance and theatre, I photographed myself immersed in this rugged, isolated terrain, undertaking a solitary performance that oscillated between awe, anxiety, melancholy and solace. This was like a private meditation, witnessed only by a camera lens activated by remote control. As I lay my face against the rocks, wedged my body into impossible spaces, and sought comfort and shelter from the hard stone surfaces, I imagined I was closer to that landscape than any other human has been before me.Back in the studio, these photographs are translated into drawings through a process of meticulous, emotionally-laden mark-making. I get to know every rock and crevice intimately as I bring the landscape into being with charcoal and ink - first loosely, building up and erasing to create tonal values, before refining the intricate details with very fine ink pens. In Skye I felt vulnerable, humbled and insignificant in comparison to the vastness of my surroundings, yet also a deep and uneasy love for this challenging yet wildly beautiful place. By going outwards into the landscape, I was also going inwards to an internal ‘landscape’ and a state of deep introspection.
RICHARD BLACKWELL: Blackwell's work has been collected for ACT Legislative Assembly,Artbank, NAB Collection, The Justin Collection and he has undertaken several public commissions including the Mayfare Apartments, Canberra, 65 Mary Street, Brisbane and the NEXUS M+A Laneway Project, Brisbane, both undertaken with Urban Art Projects.Interested in the design, materiality and reception of the built environment, Richard Blackwell’s interdisciplinary practice embraces sculpture, print media and digital fabrication to articulate the multiplicitous nature of encountering reality, from both an individual experience and from a more formal engagement with ideas of spatial theory. By referencing interior finishes and building facades the cubes, facets, clusters and waves that make up his latest body of works continues to tease out concepts and systems grounded within both architectural and art historical frameworks. Working with ideas of continuation, variability, replication and relationship, the gradual extrusion of his geometric motifs, many of which have evolved from earlier works, allows Blackwell to take simple systems to a natural, almost self-governing resolve.
