September 2023
An exhibition of mixed media and ceramic transfer artworks. Presenting a collection of selected works that integrate photomedia, painting, design and ceramics. The artworks in Variations represent a filtering of ideas through lived experience, via the lens, paint bottle and multiple methods of practice. Media use is intended to demonstrate a post-production feel.
The images in Variations represent non-hierarchical, commonplace brushes with nature. The exhibition is a culture-specific exploration of local inner-city flora. The flowers and plants take on the “aware” anthropomorphic form, as a metaphor for the meditative processes of Rachel’s practice as “tending the inner garden”. The canvases are overlaid with photographic prints and overpainted by hand-piping on top of the design with an acrylic/impasto blend of paint. Also, stencil designs are developed from digital photographs, piped with ceramic paint in a limited colour palette, turned over to produce a reversed image on a slab, and fired.
Rachel has specific interests in painting, ceramics and alternative photography, inspired by local art mentors Kerrie Docker and Paul Temple, and local artists. Among other influences, informing Variations are the floral ornamentation of Art Nouveau, linework of Van Gogh and woodblock printing of Margaret Preston.
The overpainting technique grew from a childhood interest in t-shirt painting, cross-stitch and collecting vintage prints, to embellishing artwork rescued from second-hand stores. This building of layers and collage often contained kitsch, excessive and Rococo elements, now seen in the thickness of paint and modified colour scheme of the mixed media artworks.
Rachel’s Australian and British heritage, dance and musical backgrounds, influence the interpretations of Monument Hill Parklands, Albury Botanic Gardens and surrounding urban landscape. The role of movement, and the emphasis on practise, in the exhibition, is inherent in both the physicality of the paint application and the tactility of the finished product.
