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ERASED (contemporary Australian drawing)

ARTISTS: Vernon Ah Kee, Christian Capurro, Simryn Gill, Jonathan Jones, Tom Nicholson, Raquel Ormella.

CURATOR: Natasha Bullock, Curator, Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

You pass through an ever present past. Lou Reed from Magic and Loss (1992)

To erase is to change. As an inherent part of the creative methodology of drawing, this exhibition highlights how erasure is a generative strategy, one that proposes a future of political, social, environmental and aesthetic transformations. In some works, erasure acts as a mode of expression or it operates by layering the past with the present or as a proposition about action and trace. In each case, it operates as some kind of palimpsest.

A palimpsest is traditionally understood as a manuscript upon which a text has been incompletely or wholly erased to make space for another text. However, the word has developed a number of meanings across different fields. More broadly, it can refer to any object or place that reflects its history – the traces of buildings in ruins are a prime example – the past physically embodied in the present. In each definition, a palimpsest is a densely articulated practice of marking, erasing and rewriting, layering moments in time, one over the other, producing a complicated texture of spatiality and temporality – an ever present past.

Interpreted in this way, one can posit that, of the works in this exhibition, Christian Capurro’s function more literally as a palimpsest while Tom Nicholson’s and Raquel Ormella’s employ it as a mode of expression, referencing the past by way of visual fragments, and in the work of Vernon Ah Kee, Simryn Gill and Jonathan Jones, erasure and layering also suggest productive dimensions of meaning and transformation.

		Vernon Ah Kee Unwritten #10 2008 Charcoal on canvas 150 x 90cm Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

		Christian Capurro Compress (the pit of doublivores), (detail) 2007 works on paper, corrected ink, correction fluid, magazine paper and pins approx. 31 x 21 cm Courtesy of the artist

		Jonathan Jones untitled (graphite a) 2005 charcoal and graphite on paper 110 x 164 cm Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney

		Simryn Gill Four atlases of the world and one of stars 2009 Paper, glue dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Breenspace, Sydney and Tracy Williams Ltd, New York

		Raquel Ormella 130 Davey Street 2005 Whiteboard, white board markers dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane and Uplands Gallery, Melbourne

		Tom Nicholson Flags for a Trades Hall Council 2005 dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney

Exhibition dates and venues:

Singapore: 20 July – 23 August 2009 Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery (NAFA), Singapore
Touring Asia: 2009 – 2010 (more details to come)

Asialink, The University of Melbourne

ERASED (contemporary Australian drawing)