Clare McFarlane has been exhibiting with us for ten years, and this anniversary exhibition marks a change of direction for this young artist.
Since graduating from Curtin University in 2003 Clare's paintings have been investigating William Morris inspired patterns as metaphors for a romanticised past. Into these paintings she incorporates elements of fragility and femininity from the past and the present, using Australian flora and fauna to signify the creation of a new Australian identity that doesn’t sit comfortably with the viewer. Most of these paintings were created in painstaking detail, every feather, petal and butterfly wing captured in an extraordinary likeness. However, her work over the past three years reflects some of the changes in her life and has become looser, a freer approach to painting. Whist the paintings still contain patterning, birds, insects and plants, they are not as restrained and detailed as before.
Clare sites one of the major influences on her new body of work was “being asked to paint a laneway for the City of Perth. Designing and executing a piece on such a large scale and in the public eye was an amazing experience in so many ways. I had to design the work differently and I had to use different mediums. And both these new ways of working have found their way back into my studio practice. These included the looser way of painting and incorporating a different medium – aerosol paint. As part of the laneway work I started using stencils and aerosols to get patterns on to the wall and I have continued this method within this body of work. It provides a far quicker way of working; it’s more immediate.
Within the laneway the patterns were representative of wallpaper, layers of wallpaper being ripped away, revealing history and memory, nostalgia for the past, for what has been lost, and what has been hidden. I have continued using symbology and the aesthetic of this ripped wallpaper in my work as it fitted within my previous interest in remnants and fragments, of history and curiosity. In this exhibition I have focussed mainly on birds as I think they are the most expressive and challenging of my subjects. They are such beautiful creatures in life and in death their bodies, crushed and broken, are so filled with poetics of loss, fleeting life and realities of death. The pain of fleeting joy...”
[Clare McFarlane, March 2012]
Clare McFarlane’s paintings can be found in the collections of the City of Perth, Edith Cowan University, Artbank, Cruthers Collection, Holmes a Court Collection, City of Bayswater and Curtin University.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
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