A Home Among the Gum Trees exhibition with Max Thornton-Smith

A mother-son exhibition, A Home Among the Gum Trees celebrates the flow of time, the Australian landscape and the universal feeling of nostalgia for the place we call home. Comprised of a series of two-dimensional works along with a filmic animation experience, the exhibition explores generational perspectives ensconced in the visual language of memory.

Carrying two perspectives, and presenting a bonded conversation between works, this time-capsule exhibition covers the feelings, emotions and expressions related to the fleeting nature of childhood and the ensuing presence of parenthood, nurtured in a home set amongst the creative arts in the Perth hills.

Exhibition held at Midland Junction Arts Centre from Saturday 27 July to Sunday 1 September 2024. Kindly opened by Anna Louise Richardson.

“The view across my table of making, frames a wandering wisteria vine which has limbically ambled across the structural cross beams of this house. Planted sometime in the late 1950s, this wisteria is approaching its seventh decade. Being the fourth custodian of this rambling vine, I have witnessed its green growth spurts and flowering joys for nearly thirty years. As it snakes across the front door pathway, we have learned to adjust our walking pathways and posture as we navigate the overhanging vines. Pondering on the senescence of the vine, it took me to a moment of reflection on my time as a mother and a practising artist in this house. Many a time in the focused blocks of making during the day and in periods of solitude and silence in the late night, my gaze across this table of making, lands on the gifts of moments of creative endeavours. Curiosity and playful adventures would be strewn across this very precious space of making which has motivated practice of nearly a decade; all the while sharing a responsibility in rearing and nurturing our young son. As he ventures through life on his own journey and navigates through the joys and trials of learning, my practice equally reflects the growth spurts, tribulations and magic moments it presents. A Home Among the Gum Trees is an encapsulation of these feelings of inspired moments, immersion in the landscape and nature around this home whilst being intrigued by the underlying patterns that permeate our lives. In those focused blocks of time away from the throes of nurturing, my practice centres on quietening the mind, softly working with my hands, manipulating three dimensional forms in paper as if playing with time in some dimensionality itself. Gradating gouache from hue to hue and allowing the effect to keep its own meanders, requires a moment of relinquishing and acceptance – this is a lesson a mother learns early in her parenting journey. Through the process of making, it becomes evident, whilst toying with small ontological ideas of perception, that taking a moment’s second to truly sit with the minutiae of time is important. Trajectories on my search for meaningful conversations within the work would weave and meander through a temporal landscape of my own making, found scribed across the surface of the paper I work with. In this quietude, I can sit with moments of gathered memories, and celebrate the markings of time as an artist, and importantly as a mother. A Home Among the Gum Trees is a time capsule exhibition that holds within it the importance of grasping this especially poignant and precious moment.”

light, magic and shadows past 3 am (madder red)

30.5 x 30.5 x 4cm 2024 Gouache on paper

light, magic and shadows past 3 am (madder red) is a work completed in the bowels of the night – past 3am. Gradated hued madder red repeated paper foldings recall natural formations found in the bush nearby. A study in colour, caught in the three dimensions.

out of time (bengal rose)

61 x 86 x 4cm 2024 Gouache on paper

out of time (bengal rose) is a slow race scribed across the surface of the paper creating a temporal landscape of my making. Slowing time in the small saturated and gradated cuts and folds sitting on a background of mellifluous monoprinted motifs, recalling ancient lifeforms.