from ideas of tending...

At the Caboolture Regional Art Gallery, Judith Kentish spoke to us about her latest exhibition - from ideas of tending... It occurred to Jude that though she does not let her work as a nurse cross over into her art practice both disciplines share the principle of tending to something - be it people, materials or ideas.

Working in series allows a process of working out, when a creative act becomes too easy it indicates to her that it's over and time to explore another way to experiment by asking what happens if? Using ink is a slow process with minimal interference allowing the fluidity and staining of the medium to do its thing. "My action was to start the process, but the work finished itself."

The piece wool mound: a vigil is two piles of wool on the gallery floor with a wooden stool in between. When you lean into the space you can hear the sound of wool being teased, which alerts you to the difference in the wool piles - teased and unteased. Jude says "my work is performative, people just don't see me doing it." Yet in her video work ink drops: the viewing we see her hands carefully moving the ink on paper pieces from one pile to another. This careful tending of the luscious 600gsm paper is accompanied by the crunchy sound that the protective glassine sheets make when moved.

Her woven drops are long tubes that look like they could contain something but are too frail to manage. They throw lonely long shadows on the wall and are an interesting counterpoint to her inkfolds. I was mesmerised by these shroud-like, cloud-like fabrics pinned to the wall behind Jude as she listed the materials used in the seven bodies of work:

• cotton voile
• thread
• ink
• wool
• paper
• pins
• video

The gifted wool had been accumulating in her studio and the act of wrapping it up in the voile to move it out of the way gave Jude the inspiration to make the woolsacs. These sacs play with the slumping of wool, the weight of wool, lyrically described in the catalogue:

gravity, pooled
pillowedinto ink stained,
ponder
an invitation
a pond-shroud of description
embodied hints
cyphers
each fat and full

Judith Kentish: from ideas of tending
On Display: 3 September - 11 November 2016

Intentions

I know it's February already, but for me that's when I can properly focus on my own intentions after the long summer school holiday break. The kids are back at school, daily routines are re-established and my time becomes my own again.

So in 2016, I'd like to continue to make art, exhibit and explore fabric printing. The art I have been making lately tend to be a combination of ink, pen and watercolour on paper. Patterns continue to emerge, like the image on the left, which is a simplified version of lily pads on the Enoggera reservoir.

I am also devoting time to two other art related projects, Lines in the Sand on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and Mindsettle.

Seattle Art Museum 2

SAM has rooms full of fabulous First Nations art. One display by Jack Daws - INCONVENIENT TRUTHS - had the American flag bottled up in a jar and an edifying declaration from Chief Seattle in 1971.

"If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that these rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.

The white man does not understand. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a wanderer who comes in the night and borrows from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has won the struggle, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind and does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. And he does not care. The father's grave and the children's birthright are forgotten by the white man, who treats his mother the earth and his brother the sky as things to be bought, plundered, and sold, like sheep, like bread, or bright beads. In this way, the dogs of appetite will devour the rich earth and leave only a desert."

Seattle Art Museum 1

SAM was showing an impressionists exhibition called "Intimate Impressionism", which was a catalogue of masters from the 1800s. Many of these works are so known to me they are almost cliched, but it was something else again to see the originals. The PORTRAIT OF MADAME HENRIOT by Pierre Auguste Renoir was a joyful image filled with bright light. BEHIND THE SCENES by Jean Louis Forain though vaguely creepy, with a tuxedoed old guy standing behind a lush young performer backstage, was beautifully composed with the left side light and the right dark. I drank in the various compositions, like that of THE TOWPATH by Johan Barthold-Jongkind with its diminishing row of trees to the vanishing point and his clever use of a limited pallete of green, tan, blue and white. Another standout was Eugene Boudin's CONCERT AT THE CASINO OF DEAUVILLE, I loved the lumpy iron work around the bandstand and the luminosity of his painted frocks.

I have no aspirations (or sufficient talent) to paint in this style, but I'm happy to learn more about art by wandering through the halls of art museums and galleries. It also puts me in mind of some wise words from Howard Hodgkin,

"Your talent stays the same, your critical eye gets better. "