OF COLOUR & LIGHT - WEST END ART SPACE

Opening Address by Leah Justin

COVID19 - 2020 an unprecedented year of tough times and dark days. A year when a visit to a gallery were inconceivable and although one could go online there was nothing better than seeing works in the flesh so what a treat to enter this space this evening. So welcome to you all and thanks for making the effort to come and support this event so fulsomely.

I am delighted to be launching this show tonight. At the outset I must say that Anna Prifti the curator of this show Of Colour and Light is inspirational , exuding optimism, resilience passion and I am sure I am not alone in applauding her vision and generosity. She could easily have said in this COVID world that it’s all too hard and it was... but truly in the spirit of the artists represented here today she knew she had a goal and with sheer grit, focus and determination she made this third abstract biennial happen.

We walked in on a typical Melbourne summer day... you know the one... cold rainy and grey only last Friday and I was quite overwhelmed with the expression of colour and creativity that we can see in this interesting new space. This is the third abstract biennial Anna Prifti has curated to provide a platform to women abstract artists from Victoria. This initiative started in 2016 with the aim of showcasing and advocating that women artists have been an integral part of the Abstract movement. This room filled with the works of women artists working in a diverse range of contemporary art practices, with emerging, established and well-recognised careers really demonstrates that. And this year the biennial coincides with the opening of this new permanent gallery for West End Art Space. I am sure I speak on behalf of all here on congratulating you Anna on your endeavour which has already illuminated this end of town with colour and light. May it continue to flourish.

Abstraction is difficult and challenging. As Anna said I am the co founder with my husband Charles of the Justin Art House Museum or JAHM as we call it. Our collection is largely composed of abstract and conceptual works and even more apposite to this show. When we recently reviewed the collection we discovered that 50% of our collection happens to be of works by women artists... quite a few of whom we are delighted to see are exhibiting works here in this exhibition. Just by looking at the works in our collection I would wager it would be impossible to determine which of the works in our collection is by a female or male artist . And we are in fact planning a show for 2022 which interrogates that very idea.

As far as we are concerned creativity is gender neutral. Art is not binary and is not gender specific. It is the work that is compelling, not the gender of the creator. No question that historically it’s been tougher for women artists to even receive training or consider it as a profession although I note that there have been and continue to be significant and powerful women who often served as muses or patrons. But we know art was not considered a serious pursuit for a respectable girl even a century or so ago and so women just had to work harder and I would argue that even today in our more liberated times, women, continue to face greater hurdles than their male counterparts in just balancing their working lives.

And yet and yet women have continued, despite the odds to produce, compelled to create, working fiercely and furiously as artists, their contribution rich and meaningful. No question that they have contributed significantly to the art world. And perhaps this is well illustrated in the abstract works being championed in this show. A wonderful celebration of works in which abstraction is expressed in so many individual and unique ways.

Abstraction that is represented in so many forms... lyrical, expressive, intuitive, hard edged, conceptual, reductive and minimalist.

But what lies at its heart? What makes abstract art so distinctive? Indulge me as I tell you a story of my experience of art classes in the early 1960’s. The one class I hated most at school was art. I was an A student... you know the type... conscientious and diligent, great at convergent thinking. I loved school and all the subjects bar one. I used to plead with my mother every Wednesday when we had not a single period but an excruciating double period of Art to ask if I could please please stay home. But my mum never relented and off I went with dread to face the day. What could be worse than two periods of art?

After a preamble and a so called inspirational/motivational mini lecture ending always with today you will paint a... The dreaded time arrived when the art teacher told us in no uncertain terms what we were painting that particular day. I recall vividly her favourites were either a beach scene or a bush scene. Landscapes were her thing - you might get the picture. The trouble was I didn’t whilst the rest of the class clearly did.

So after what seemed an age with my not having a clue what I was going to do and becoming paralysed and rigid with anxiety I began splattering my palette with so many colours... And still the blank paper awaited and I too was just as blank. I couldn’t understand the good humour of all the students around me. If only I could write or talk my way out of it but art was such a totally different skill and I had no way of tackling it. This was torture!

And each week the outcome was the same. What started out a beach scene or a bush scene very quickly degenerated as I laboured to produce something, anything, and each week the outcome was simply a variation of a theme I chose to call - A Study in Brown or sometimes when I was being very creative, Study in Black. My teacher’s low grading of me was inevitable. It still sears me. I had never received a result like that. I was deserving of it and devastated.

But I thought with the conceit of a fourteen year old... hmmm perhaps I was an unrecognised abstractionist, simply because nothing ever looked like anything. But I knew that in truth that wasn’t so, that in fact I just had no idea of where to start and even worse , once I did start daubing, I didn’t know when to stop! But happily it didn’t traumatise me too much and I have grown up loving and appreciating art. It is so vital to my well being. Who would have thought?

So why I am mentioning this. Perhaps in part to answer my earlier question. What makes abstract art so distinctive? I believe artists are the visual philosophers of our age and they are grappling with ideas in so many different ways. Just as writers use words as their vehicle, artists are offering us and perhaps themselves a way of looking at the world more thoughtfully and meaningfully, questioning the status quo through their mark making. The works here are all the outcome of the pursuit of an idea that has taken a huge amount of time and intellect, be that working on a process, refining a technique, exploring a method, developing applications of materiality, colour and form.

Artists reveal our world and offer us ways of looking at the world but we too have to make an effort. it is a partnership in many ways. A synergy of artist and viewer. In an era overloaded with sensory stimulation, abstract art can provide a vehicle for contemplation questioning and introspection. Sorely needed today. And each of the works here do invite reflection and challenge us to also to consider the effort and journey of the artist from the work’s conception to its final execution.

At JAHM we have learned that this is what abstract works can do. At JAHM in our exhibitions we showcase abstract works from our collection. We know for many it is confronting challenging and sometimes disturbing as they are often way out of their comfort zone. Visitors come to JAHM to experience the exhibitions saying... I know nothing about art... or, my kids could do that... and yet after an interrogation of the works which invites their responses, we find they are often deeply insightful, offering observations about the works, from which we also learn so much.

They will comment later... the works have really made us think... my grey cells have really been shaken around.... The works have compelled me to take time to look again.... Now I realise that the less there is the see, the more we have to look. And very often we hear, I don’t know if I like it but I can now appreciate the huge amount of thinking and work that is involved or I could just meditate in front of that minimalist canvas of pure colour... it is nothing and it is everything.

The 50 works in this exhibition reveal the myriad ways these gifted artists have shared with us their craft and we can get a sense of their exhilaration, excitement and sometimes I imagine exasperation in exploring and producing. We are witness to the outcome but the gestation has been long and hard. But, oh so worthwhile! They seek to forge new pathways and invite us along on the journey and I applaud all of the 50 artists (from the 130 applicants) chosen to be represented in this superb show and we are the richer for their creativity. Congratulations to all of you!

This evening I also have the distinct pleasure of awarding several gift vouchers from Senior Art and St. Luke’s Art. The two recipients of the Senior Art vouchers are Madeleine Joy Dawes – Woop, Hops, Tobacco, whose mark making is so precise and meticulous, time consuming and meditative and through her fine pen work she celebrates the imperfections and flaws inherent in the process. Much like the makers of Persian rugs providing a very humbling and human understanding of the process of creation.

And Leah Teschendorff for her work, Untitled Grid 2020. Leah’s attention to detail is mesmeric as is her use of that shimmering blue. The small scale of the work compels one to look ever more closely to discover the rich variations executed here and demonstrate her mastery of her material.

The gift voucher from St. Lukes is to awarded to; Jacklyn Peters whose work Composition in Blue 2019 is quite atypical of the more hard edged abstraction which I am drawn to but there is something lyrical about the work that perhaps talks to the new era we are entering, where perhaps we can hope to see the beginnings of more colour even though much darkness lies just beneath the surface. Here with her beautiful mark making Jacklyn has created a new world of colour and light cohesive and calming, perhaps a world that could be united in its beauty and appreciation of what we have, rather than what we lack... that talks to what we share and not what divides us.

I suppose as we begin this year anew, this painting makes me hope we might strive to make the world a better, more compassionate place where nature and man are in balance

Finally every artist needs a mentor and /or patron. Here they are rolled into one. Not only has Anna Prifti curated this show but she is generously offering a prize to two currently unrepresented artists for a solo show at West End Art Space. A remarkable opportunity to showcase their work and one too rarely offered today when many galleries have been compelled to close their books to new artists or are simply closing.

The artists selected are Jacqueline Stojanovic for Grid 1X, a work which pays a very clever and creative homage to the Bauhaus movement and one in which Jacqueline has so innovatively provided an aesthetically rich meditation on the classic grid format with her woven work on a metal frame.

And Mandy Gunn whose work The Unconcise Oxford Dictionary is abstract and conceptual and for me it talks to many critical issues in our world today. Just last year I read Pip Miller’s wonderful book “The Dictionary of Lost Words” which set a fictional female in the real world of the 19th century editors of the OED and she salvaged the words not included by these white privileged male editors, the discarded word slips she saved were failed entries in the compilation of what we now know as the OED... slips not considered worthwhile or significant, words that were all related to females and womanly pursuits or concerns. Much of this wonderful book is in fact steeped in reality so was this literary conceit really all a fiction I wondered. It was after all making such a powerful statement about women and both their invisibility and their centrality.

Mandy has taken all the pages of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, deconstructed and compressed them in order to reconstruct them as a weaving which she now calls The Unconcise Oxford Dictionary, a play on words literally. It is a physically beautiful work that perhaps asks us to think of the richness of language and the need to keep on reinventing it, ensuring its inclusivity whilst absorbing new permutations and forms for it to continue to grow and evolve, as we must do with all creativity... all art.

And so in conclusion, again thanks to Anna for curating this sublime exhibition and to all the artists for their wonderfully creative and considered contributions in making this space sing. I now have much pleasure in declaring that West End Art Space’s Of Colour and Light show, the third abstract biennial celebrating Victorian women abstract artists is now officially launched.

LEAH JUSTIN

Co-founder & Director

Justin Art House Museum

Prahran, Victoria.

19 January 2020

WEST END ART SPACE 112 ADDERLEY STREET WEST MELBOURNE 3003