Sunday 28 July 2019

VICTORIA HOWLETT at BOOM


Victoria Howlett in Marengo Studio 6.2019



 VICTORIA HOWLETT
Boom Gallery 
11 Rutland St, Newtown (Geelong) VIC 3220





Falling Towards Heaven II, (2019) oil on board, 1.2 x 1.2m

Saturday 27 July 2019

EMIL TOONEN - August 2019






EMIL TOONEN


Clock, [2018] 



WINDOWSPACE BEEAC
August 2019




Emil Toonen, Clock, [2018]




What is this? Do you need to know. Is it enough to want to simply look, listen and wonder (surely the hope of every artist for their viewer). 

This writer definitely does not need to know - there is great sufficiency, even joy, in simply gazing at and listening to Emil Toonen's 'construction', 'assemblage', 'machine' - whatever you will. 

As a whole the object is a vision of circuitry and various motions that together throb and patter. When first met there was an almost instant entrancement - at once something primeval and nostalgic in the entirety, a loving in its making, a grace in what at first might have appeared hazardous. Toonen's work is something of a conundrum, playful and serious in one, and for that haunting. 

It is a fact that the artist was soon to have his first child, to be a new father, when this work was gestating - 'it just came to me' he said, and when I understood that, the patterings were instantly tiny feet, a heartbeat, a coming to life of something mysterious, that 'everyday miracle' we call birth. Toonen was trying on the future in the way an artist does.

This is Toonen's second visit to Beeac's WINDOWSPACE, (see Controlled Fall, June 2016). A reprise of 'notes' from then remain pertinent:
Emil Toonen’s work could be a slow process. First objects have to be sighted, (they are not on the shelf), then pondered, possibly allied with others, and then ultimately coaxed into being – this requires serendipity, an eye, contemplation, awareness of the nature and capability of materials, a feel for weird combinations and finally there is the making, or shaping, of a ‘work’. Many of Toonen’s objects do ‘work’ – they blink, whirl, spin, nod and make you laugh.


Emil Toonen, Consumer Pillar [2015]

Toonen’s thinking is wry and his media exceptionally various. Since he grew up in the Strzelecki Ranges in south east Victoria – mirror location to the volcanic grassy plains and salt lake area of south west Victoria – could it be, that accustomed to the natural environment, his eye responds with greater alacrity, analysis and wit to the ‘unnatural’. That rather than ‘bin it’ he pokes and prods ‘waste’ to see what it’s worth, what it gives up, where it sits in his firmament of senses, sentiment and response. Politics are not free of his estimation either.



Joseph Cornell, Untitled, [Soap Bubble Set]



Comparison of this work of Toonen's with that of American Joseph Cornell, is inevitable. When reviewing Cornell's work and legacy on the centennial of his birth, Adam Gopnik ('Sparkings', 2003*) wrote in the New Yorker:   
What’s nostalgic in Cornell’s art is not that it’s made of old things…What’s nostalgic is that, behind glass, fixed in place, the new things become old even as we look at them: it is the fate of everything, each box proposes, to become part of a vivid and longed-for past…a bottomless melancholy in the simple desolation of life by time. The false kind of nostalgia promotes the superiority of life past; the true kind captures the sadness of life passing.

This writer feels all of that in front of Emil Toonen's Clock, [2018]. 
It is a privilege that WINDOWSPACE BEEAC is allowed to share the subtle hum of this work with the wider world.


AS

Thursday 4 July 2019

RAFFAELLA TORRESAN - JULY 2019




RAFFAELLA TORRESAN


A Gathering 



WINDOWSPACE
July 2019

(Detail) cold cold day, (2010)


Raffaella Torresan has paint in her blood. Images are what she breathes.
‘I can’t put a stop to work I love’ is her refrain.
‘Raffaella Torresan is always working. This is the most important fact about Raff and her art practice’ writes Maurice McNamarah.*

Torresan is something of a Renaissance woman, a painter who also writes, poetry and prose, has had an affair with photography, and loves to thrash out ideas in tangential ways among friends, which has led to her organization of many occasions for sharing, visual and verbal. All she lacks is the classic salon, but being a gregarious Italian-Australian, and tenacious, she finds ways and places to spread the enthusiasm and conversation. Taking over the VAS (Victorian Artists’ Society) is pretty much an annual event. Pubs suit poetry readings.

Torresan’s life has not been all ‘smooth sailing’ however and the bumpier parts and their origin are the subject of her latest book – La Ragazza (2018).

To try and put a perspective on her abundance of enthusiasms and talents it was helpful to ask the question: Who are your visual favourites. In this writer’s head, first came Raoul Dufy – a guess not far from the mark, although Torresan’s first- named was a surprise: Francis Bacon. Then came Redon, Francesco Clemente, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cezanne and then, with triumph, Lucien Freud. Torresan’s world is wide and her visual lexicon fed by travel. Unafraid to paint on the streets, it’s hard to imagine how she finds her way home with so many canvases!

Torresan’s affection for ‘the work she loves’ is there in her outpouring of images. She has an insatiable hunger to conjure what she sees and experiences.
In honour of her abundance WINDOWSPACE will access a second window to fill with paintings and brighten mid-winter.

See more of Torresan’s achievements at: http://www.raffaellatorresan.com/index.html

AS

* Introduction, La Ragazza, Black Pepper, 2018