Page 10 - Art First: Joni Brenner: At the Still Point

Os 2015 Cranio 2015 Shadow of the world 2015

Experiments unsettle me and I often use exhibitions as opportuni- and through the flow of chance in others, particularly in the vol-
ties to focus this unsettlement, to feel energised by a new set of umes and curves of the cranium. The rendering of the top of the
limitations. I work by setting the conditions for something unpredict- skull suggests in each case an opening: it is as if the fontanelle
able to happen. The medium and the deliberate use of chance – it of infancy has re-opened in these images, allowing a streaming
sounds so contradictory – provide a strategy to unsettle the habits in and out of the head, which in many cultures, is viewed as the
of the hand and the habits of looking and thinking. It’s like having seat of the soul.
another author on board constantly interrupting you. But the big skulls, this time on canvas, have other earlier prec-
edents, most recently in the form of a set of bronzes she produced
Brenner decided that she would do the same with the present in 2014 for an exhibition at the Nirox Sculpture Park. Instead of
exhibition. She unsettled herself by deciding to undertake a series working on the intimate scale that she is used to, she was encour-
of large watercolours of skulls on canvas, a new direction for her. aged by the curators at Nirox and assisted by Angus Taylor and
Working on canvas with watercolour was, she said, a real chal- his team to construct her forms on a much larger and more impos-
lenge – an admixture of control and of sometimes, having moved ing scale – and she moaned about it every inch of the way! But
the canvas to allow the paint to pool, a matter of having simply to clearly working at the foundry with Taylor’s team, unsettled the hab-
walk away and to do something else, like do the shopping. The its of the hand and of looking and seeing. Those bronzes, which
element of unpredictability was both exciting and wearing, and felt completely at home in the mottled glade of the landscape at
did provide for the emergence of the three large watercolours, Os, Nirox, are clearly the forbears for these new canvases, which
Cranio and Shadow of the world. In each of them, the radiance have both a freshness and a confidence, the incorporation of new
of the white canvas has allowed for the skulls to be painted with possibilities into the range of her work.
shadow and light, through detailed application in the mandible Shown alongside this trilogy of large skulls, are six smaller,

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