To coincide with her exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery, Edwina Corlette Gallery is delighted to present a series of new paintings by Sally Anderson. Sally is a past winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and a finalist in this year’s Portia Geach Award for female portraiture, with her painting of Claudia Karvan (below).
Born in Lismore, Anderson began her undergraduate studies in Visual Art at Southern Cross University before transferring to the College of Fine Art in Sydney. A past finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Paddington Art Prize, Anderson was invited to participate in the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists Residency in Reykjavik in 2014. Her work has been acquired by Artbank, the Australian Catholic University and corporate and private clients in Australia and Europe.
Bridal Veil Falls, the Window and the Piano Lesson
‘Close space! Close the kangaroo’s pouch! It’s warm in there.’
Maurice Blanchard
(from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetic of Space)
‘The world is large, but in us it’s as deep as the sea’
R.M Rilke
(from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetic of Space)
What better time to re-visit Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space than this as we find ourselves so reliant and tied to our homes during this pandemic? For me, my domestic environment also took on a new meaning a couple of years ago; when I became a mother. The home became this central haven when my son was born, and it meant most of what I was experiencing happened in, or close to, the home. I became interested in ways we are able to ‘experience’ landscape within the domestic, particularly through screens, photos and handheld devices (as an extension of self). Which is why within my work you’ll almost always find yourself inside looking out.
This body of work borrows and recontextualises paintings depicting windows from Dodd (Blue Sky Window, 1979), Diebenkorn (Window, 1967), Matisse (The Piano Lesson, 1916) and Bonnard (The Open Window, 1919). The work furthermore heroes’ windowsills, the sea, swamp banksias, blank screens, skies, still life studies, waterfalls and falling water. Swamp banksias have been sourced from a Northern Rivers property we’ve been residing on for the past 9 months. My son’s placenta is also buried under a swamp banksia in our Marrickville backyard the word ‘banksia’ holds within it a clue to Australia’s colonial history.
I am interested in etymology, topology and the capacity for words and names to hold memory, meaning and experience. There are various ‘Bridal Veil Falls’ scattered throughout the world, though my work is referencing both the waterfall seen from Govetts Leap lookout (Blue Mountains NSW) and an ongoing dialogue I share with my partner about marriage.
I’ve titled the sculptural works Standing Falls. The idea for them came about as extensions of the paintings. I wanted to make these ‘standing waterfall’ works and the result is these kind of totem like forms. They represent a kind of ‘gushing’ of emotion.
I think this body of work reflects a shift in my process and practice. The works are deliberately lighter, less dense and perhaps more direct. They were made in parallel with parenting. Writing this makes me recall of a past body of work by artist Amber Wallis titled Part Time Paintings. My son, Augie, is probably the same ages as Amber’s daughter, Ivy, was when she made those works.
Sally Anderson 2020
Image: Sally Anderson ‘Augie’s Banksias, The Window and M’s Piano Lesson’ 2020 acrylic on linen 112 x 137 cm
