Jan Manton Art is pleased to announce upcoming exhibition Affirmative by Brisbane based artist Jane James.
Signalling the word ‘equality’, the eight paintings from this new body of work, Affirmative, examine the layers of meaning and visual symbols, and our ability to decipher them. The title of the exhibition is a reference to the same-sex marriage postal survey conducted in Australia in 2017, and its outcome.
It was 2015 when I began the series of paintings that made up the ‘Semantics’ exhibition. At that point, the legalisation of same sex marriage seemed a distant thing in Australia. As the exhibition finally went on show, it did so at a pivotal moment in Australia’s history.
In a follow up to Semantics, Jane James, uses modern semaphore as the basis for a choreographed sequence. Conceived as positive and affirming, they are a celebration of balance. The elements dance, supported but not bound by the ropes. There are no knots or ends, but rather a continuum. Calligraphic in form, each element is as vital as another. The shadows form shapes and negative spaces, the rope winds through the visual plane.
Image: ‘I’ (2018), synthetic polymer on linen, 101 x 91 cm
