“Art has always served as a record of our cultural lives,” says artist Jane James when explaining the larger ideals behind her work. “That’s what it has done since the beginning of time.” Throughout her practice, James has understood her art to be part of a larger cultural conversation. Now, in her latest exhibition, Affirmation at Jan Manton Art, she’s extending this idea by responding to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia.
In November last year 60% of Australians voted ‘yes’ for legalising same-sex marriage in a nation-wide plebiscite. After hearing the news, James knew she wanted to mark the occasion. “I really wanted to celebrate the positive result of the plebiscite,” explained the artist. “I was really unsure about what the result would be and I was very worried for everyone concerned.”
Producing strong and theatrically lit compositions, James created eight paintings in which each piece references one letter in the word ‘equality’.
Taking a poetic route, the artist depicted the concept of equality by painting a thread of fluid rope, which weaves a path around various sticks. “There is a visual tension between the rigidity of the sticks and the fluidity of the rope,” says James. “But there’s also a balance between them which I find really pleasing. It’s the juxtaposition of the sensuous, flexible and fluid rope, and the contrasting colour, alongside the sticks, which creates a beautiful form.”
These works of visual and linguistic choreography also have personal resonances for the artist. “My postgraduate study was in furniture design and that gives me an affinity for wood,” she says. “I have an affinity for rope because I grew up at sea, so both of them are intensely personal to me. They’re things I understand and I suppose that’s what makes them useful as devices and motifs.”
Considering that James sees her work as part of a conversation, not as a person working in isolation, she believes this exhibition leans towards the joyous and uplifting: “It’s a pause in our lives to say we’ve done this, and it’s pretty momentous.”
Affirmative
Jane James
Jan Manton Art
30 May – 23 June
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Emma Phillips has a knack for catching moments of unbridled humanity. In her latest exhibition at ReadingRoom, she shines a light on the breadth of her practice, amalgamating several projects from the last decade.
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
