Jehanne’s Alchemists - a group art show of cross
pollination: from literary to literal and the abstract
Sheffer
Gallery 38 Lander Street Darlington NSW 19-29 April
gallery hours: 11am-6pm Wednesday-Saturday
Opening launch: Saturday 21 April 2-6pm
Curator: Anne Bentley
Artists: Megan Yeo, Edwina Wrobel, Lucinda
Clutterbuck, Penny Burnett, Linda Brescia, Priscilla Bourne, Dorota Bona, Anne Bentley
and Jakob Adler.
Jehanne’s Alchemists came with the brief that
participating artists were to read Thomas Keneally’s 1971 novel, A Dutiful Daughter. At only 150 pages long, the book is full
of imagery, is very Australian and a little fantastical. Set in the Northern Rivers coastal region of
NSW, it features farming, floods, puberty, perversion, beauty, Joan of Arc and two
ordinary people who morph into half cows.
With the author’s blessings to put on the show, artist & first time curator,
Anne Bentley told artists that they could be as exact or abstract of the
subject matter as they liked and to have fun.
As is with
all human nature, the work artists present often shows the viewer a hint of their
own morals and judgments as well as what
is gleaned from the subject matter of a project. Megan
Yeo presents bovines morphed into smoking, sausage sizzling, flannelette
shirt wearing humans with animal heads rather than Keneally’s humans “discovering their bovine selves”. Lucinda
Clutterbuck, is working on a short film focusing on interviews conducted in
France late 2011, about how Joan of Arc is remembered as an historical figure
along being politically appropriated to suit current sways of belief. Lucinda has also created drawings of
movement, showing a sensual side of discovering one’s own bovinity. Edwina
Wrobel’s gouaches display a distinct symbology including a syringe leaking
fire, Día de los
Muertos faces and a beating heart down a
well. Linda Brescia, working in her current medium of photographing her
posed marionette-like models made of screened fabrics and household items –
they are intriguing and a little bit spooky.
Does the
viewer need to know the book? “Not at
all” says Anne Bentley who recalls seeing a series of drawings by Salvador Dali’s
François Rabelais influenced illustrations Les
Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel (Pantagruel’s Comical Dream) in 2002. “...but I did source an English translation of
Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel due to that exhibition, which I am
yet to finish reading. I don’t think it
matters at all if people know the story but the show will intrigue people and
they may want to source their own copy of Mr Keneally’s novel.”
Images clockwise from top left by
Linda Brescia; Edwina Wrobel & Jakob Adler – copyright the artists
