There is something intrinsically intimate in the act of looking ata painting - we can zoom in and obsess over a detail, then zoom out and witnessit as part of a greater whole. Each mark, colour and gesture has itsfundamental role to play in a larger composition; just as each instrumentparticipates in a symphony.

What happens if we remove these individual marks or traces from apainting and present them naked on the wall? What new kind of visual dialoguesand conversations can they establish if others then surround them?

The inspiration for this work came from a desire to zoom in andseparate individual elements from pre-existing paintings. Like taking aphotograph, I used a rectangular frame to crop and remove smaller forms thatseemed to have their own singular autonomy, a bit like removing individualwords from a poem.

Resized and mounted onto panels, I was able to reassemble thesegestures into a new gridded constellation. The spaces in between each workprovide an opportunity for the works to assume their own individual presencewhile simultaneously allowing them to dialogue and converse with theirneighbours. New visual relations and rhythmic dynamics are made possible.

The isolated nature of these fragments draws our attention to thematerial constituency of painting – traces that have been left directly by thehand, the actions of a body - then transformed further through erasure andfrottage against the wall. The warm halo that appears on the wall behind eachwork is designed to generate a chromatic field that unifies the works whileseducing the spectator’s curiosity to get up close. Like you and I, thesepainted forms exist in space amongst other things; they are subject to gravity,reactive to light, and ultimately seek to initiate new connections.

My installations investigate how we understand the world throughmaterials. I am interested in the ways matter shapes our perception of objectsand our place within broader systems. My practice considers how humanmateriality is entangled with ecological processes and cosmic origins—remindingus that the elements of our bodies and environments trace back to the samebeginnings.

To explore these ideas, I work across stained glass, ceramics, andother craft-based methods, often relocating or re-contextualising thesetraditions to generate new meanings and unexpected outcomes. My approachemphasises experimentation, with works that are at times kinetic orinteractive.

Language has the power to both connect and divide us, to facilitate understanding and to obscure it. It can be flippant, funny and deeply personal. There are no Words explores the space between what words mean and how language is used—bothindividually and collectively. It comprises 240 hand-stitched ‘flashcards’,each bearing a fragment of black text on a white background. The text wascollected and stitched over a five-year period from within an intense andintimate, ongoing
conversation.

Thehand-stitched statements, lifted from original contexts - such as discussions,texts, DMs, subject lines, and emails—offered me space to be present with thelanguage, to reflect. Separated from their sources, the tone, nuance, andmeanings shift, opening space for reinterpretation—both physically and throughour internal dialogues. There are no Words was created as both astandalone work and with interactive public programming in mind. Many peoplehave spent time sifting through statements, selecting those they connect with,and crafting their own found-poetry photo booth strips from them. The languageis, by turns, familiar, revealing, and intimate. Each reassembly of the
language reveals something different and personal.

There are no Words comprises 240 hand-stitched ‘flashcards’ accompaniedby audio
recordings of the statements being spoken. It was created over a five-yearperiod from
within an intense and intimate, ongoing conversation. It was initially createdas both a standalone work and for interactive public programming. Many peoplehave spent time sifting through statements, connecting and crafting their ownfound-poetry photo booth strips from them.

In my work, I make small, densely rendered figurative paintingspopulated with elaborate vegetable and mineral configurations. Awkward anderect, the tree forms are resentful of the way they have been rearranged andsingled out, pruned and reshaped. Mountain folds quiver and react in sharpangles and dark shadows at having been flattened and repurposed. Watery tarnspeer mournfully outwards, and rocks breathe in as they hold together theirunnatural shapes. The paint film suspends the actors in motion, cutting shortclandestine meetings, collective festivities, and mutinous stirrings to disruptthe limits of the picture plane.

I use painting to consider the elemental forces of death, desire,longing, boundedness, and the natural world in the context of eco-anxiety andthe limitations of the human subject in Western thought. My work is informed byan ongoing interest in animism, speculative fiction, and psychoanalyticself-scrutiny.

The idea of creating an artist's book based on texts from one or more of the Essene Communions (so-called) had percolated inthe back of my mind for over a decade and a half before its realisation. Thoughthe character of the work appears to be relatively homogeneous, overall, thebook pages possess four distinct components: the format, the text, thedecorative elements and the images. What supervenes is a brief overview ofeach.

From its inception, my intention had always been to create aformat that had something of a scroll-like appearance. That is, successiveblocks of text and image extending over a long horizontal format. In thisregard I was not only much influenced by the compositional arrangement ofcertain decorated Eastern papyrus books, but also palm-leaf and early papermanuscripts fabricated in the Indian sub-continent, Tibet and elsewhere. Theactual mise-en-pages, however, owe their appearance to my deep andlong-held admiration for earlier Western illuminated manuscripts.

The text is certainly the most complex to explain, particularlyfrom an historical perspective. I first became aware of the communions whilstreading Dr Edmond Bordeaux Szekely's[i]work, the Teachings of the Essenes, from Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls.[ii]In chapter 5 of his book, Dr Szekely identifies fourteen communions - seven forrecitation in the mornings and another seven reserved for the evenings. Heavers that “Fragmentary remains of ancient traditions...show that [over] aeons[people] have begun to develop...within their beings a certain receptiveapparatus through which they are able to absorb the currents of force flowingin and around them, and consciously utilise them as sources of energy, harmonyand knowledge. He continues, “The Essenes considered that the development ofthese receptive centres was an essential part of the individual'sevolution....and that a systematic and daily practice of a correct method wasnecessary for the development of them.” Communion to the Trees[iii]forms a part of the third morning communion. Dr Szekely claimed that he hadtranslated them from (pre-Qumran) sources in Aramaic and Old Slavonic, and thathe had uncovered them in various European libraries including that of theVatican[iv].These sources, however, remain something of an enigma until the present time. Thetext I used for Communion to the Trees is taken from the first Englishtranslation. The box-lettering I designed to transcribe it has itsorigin in a number of different calligraphic styles. The most overt being formsof Coptic, Old Church Slavonic and Insular alphabets, with their predilectionfor employing nested-letters. The lettering was created by means of a'rolling-rule', pen and brush; the ink comprising a mixture of watercolour,Chinese stick-ink and gum arabic.  

The decorative elements were also derived from the same sources asthe text. Some were rendered in dry-ground pigments, gouache and ink whileothers were gilded. The gilded framing elements were fabricated in the same 24carat gold leaf as the other decorative features. The pictorial content in theborders and accompanying images was loosely based on the text, more adjuncts than literal descriptive illustrations. They were executed in a variety of painting materials including gouache, egg tempera and dry-ground pigments, some also contain gilded components. The style of the images and border designsis something that was developed over many years, in fact over more than threedecades. It combines a wide range of diverse influences and interests includingthe dry-tropical environment of North Queensland in which I live.

Norman Lindsay’s vast oeuvre remains a staggering monument to hisbohemian lifestyle. While Lindsay’s work has undergone countless criticaldrubbings for its often-erotic celebration of carnivalesque sensuality, thereremains a strong argument for its reconsideration on technical andsocio-historical grounds. Who else in Lindsay’s generation (or even inAustralian art) has explored with such specificity and celebration the humanform, and particularly the female form, in all its multiplicity and wonder? Thisis today a fairly unfashionable position, and Lindsay’s work can be, and oftenis, discounted by contemporary pundits as cheesecake, but by force of sheervirtuosity and compositional inventiveness, Lindsay’s work has stood the testof time, a perennial favourite of grandmothers and great aunts who would neverotherwise display a work of such erotic charge in their home; somehow, Lindsayhas always gotten a pass, despite his libertine lifestyle leading to his beingbranded in his own time anything from a pornographer to a degenerate, often inthe same breath. But looking beyond the artist’s fondness for mythological ortheatrical backdrops and one can see the affection for the models themselves,many of whom appear again and again. Lindsay’s ‘fleshy strumpets’, as onecritic of his time categorised them, were modelled by various women, and prominentlyby the artist’s second wife, Rose Soady. Soady was herself an accomplishedprintmaker (she printed the bulk of her husband’s etchings herself), author andLindsay’s business manager. With her strong jaw, athletic muscularity andhourglass hips, Soady once seen is never forgotten, in turns masculine andfeminine, and appears frequently throughout Lindsay’s vast oeuvre, which is inmany ways a paean to Soady, and the female form more broadly. Several ofLindsay’s works included in Intimacy feature Soady, and all of themreflect his abiding fascination with the female form, the source of both hismost successful and reviled works.

- Jonathan McBurnie

Late in her life my old cat Dusty was made (by me) to live with anaging male border collie called Benji. While I’d had a fantasy that the two ofthem might develop some kind of bond, or if not tolerance, they didn’t. Everyday they engaged in an anxious dance that wore them both out. The problem wastotally intractable because although it was a bad situation, neither of themwas really to blame. The border collie couldn’t help starring at and roundingup the cat and the cat, in turn couldn’t help resenting and hissing at him forit. By being themselves, they made one another's lives a misery. Dusty died ayear or so ago and Benji is much more serene. What happened between them wasintense and largely awful, but it was a kind of profound intimacy; not dissimilarto what we find in the worst, most incompatible human relationships. Sometimesthere's someone to blame and something to fix but often two people just need toget the hell away from each other. Increasingly I think our capacity to changeis much less than we think.

It’s undeniable that dating apps have changed modern datingculture and the collective growing distrust and fatigue singles are feelingtowards the apps is steadily rising. There’s plenty to unpack in how theseplatforms are affecting romantic relationships and redefining our outlook onintimacy. The shift comes as no great surprise considering the greater contextof social changes currently going on. The trend towards hyper-individualism,‘main character energy’, political polarization, pushback against women’srights, and the fragility of white male entitlement, is all being amplified byonline platforms.

Superficiality, ghosting, disrespect and lack of accountabilityonline is off the charts. There’s a sad irony in how offensive behaviour hasbecome normalised in digital spaces fundamentally designed for humanconnection. It's like we're collectively losing our social skills in this newnormal, economy of digital social exchanges.  Academics researching digital intimacyare describing what most of us already feel with some truly depressing findingson the impacts of dating apps, the rise of hook-up culture, ‘situationships’and how we're connecting more broadly. It seems there's an actual upward trendin difficulty forming long-lasting bonds and real intimacy.

Ten years ago Vanity Fairsounded the alarm with its sensationally titled article “Tinder and the Dawn ofthe Dating Apocalypse,” arguing that dating apps had ushered in ahit-it-and-quit-it hookup culture driven by instant gratification. The piecedepicted Tinder as a game rigged in favour of the boys, bleakly suggesting thatwhen faced with a perceived abundance of options, men pursue a short-termmating strategy and no longer have any reason to commit to seriousrelationships. Described as the “UberEATS of relationships” dating apps areblamed for contributing to the commodification of individuals and encouraging adisposability akin to mass consumption. With endless potential matchesjust a swipe away, contemporary culture has become accustomed to having aseemingly endless supply of potential romantic and sexual partners.Relationships have become a form of entertainment, a gamified“relationshipshopping” experience where users can date secure in the knowledgethey can always return to the marketplace for another bout of shopping. Thisis redefining views on relationships and intimacy within modern society,leading some academics to argue that dating apps represent a shift towards a"post-romantic" view of love, where relationships are seen asefficient and risk-free interactions, neglecting the emotional complexities andvulnerabilities of true intimacy.

While Edward Steichen is justifiably remembered as one of thepioneers of fashion photography, and a great innovator of the medium morebroadly, it is the quality and striking composition of his images that findspurchase in our mind. Unlike many photographers, who use the medium to‘capture’ moments of genius, divine accident or punctum, Steichen comes fromthe opposite angle. Each photograph is carefully composed, carefully lit,carefully considered, to say nothing of his impeccable development process. Owingat least in part to his training in painting and lithography, Steichen broughtan almost classicist sensibility to photography, creating a strong and specificstrain of modernism to the still-new medium. Steichen’s models look statuesqueand unattainable in their perfection, complicating the sensualist or surrealistreadings so often associated with the eroticism of the day. Steichen’s take oneroticism, if we can call it that, is at least as enthralled in compositionaland surface finery as it is in the human form. Owing in part to his innovationof the fashion shoot (or to be more specific, taking the fashion shoot takenoutside of the fashion houses and into different settings, giving the images asense of heighted, theatrical drama), and its sumptuous tonality, Steichen’swork remains timeless, carved in photographic granite.

-Jonathan McBurnie

Gemma Smith’s practice tends to be series-based, which slowly moves along a continuum of colour and surface that belies an abiding fascination with the exploration of media. Each series, or perhaps approach is the better descriptor, seeks to resolve a specific set of visual problems, pushing back against its own context, whether tenets of high Modernism, hard-edge abstraction or abstract expressionism. Whether exploring opacity, form or space, Smith’s work tends to be united in its sense of resolution or finish. Even Smith’s most gestural works shy from messy humanity, resolving in a sense of visual order and calm resolution to the most unruly of problems. Smith’s ‘boulder’ works take this sense of finish to the extreme, with their sheer, shimmering planes and vivid colours. These works sit in conversation with the busier paintings, and like their namesake they encourage stillness and, by virtue of their surfaces, reflection.