RACHEL COAD - 'Restoration'
Gallerysmith: 31st August – 7th October 2017
Installation view
The show comprises nine large canvases all devoted to a single figure
looking and gesturing out of picture, mostly in profile, in all but one
picture, to the left. The figure is rendered in a dark brown monochrome against
a flat white ground, while lighting to figures is even or flat, offering no
clues to an interior or exterior setting. To all intents and purposes the
figures are isolated in a pictorial vacuum. Figures are larger than life-scale,
so that one inspects them at close range as it were, quickly notes an economy
in execution and scrutinises pose or body language as if specimens in some
psychological study.
Installation view
The show is titled Restoration
and the artist’s catalogue note explains that the figures are summations of
many details of a subject (compared with, say, a video or sequence of
photographs) that ‘restore’ the subject’s true or hidden nature through
considered painting. It is a familiar defence of painting, as a more complex
and flexible means of depiction (leaving aside digital options). But the striking
austerity Coad brings to the project also suggests other meanings. To combine
various elements hardly implies a monochrome palette obviously, nor the erasure
of a context or setting. While timing and timeliness are notoriously fickle in
capturing a reliable likeness, the problem extends to reception for a portrait,
indeed to personality and perception in general. In other words it is not
something that painting can hope to remedy in any case. The undeniable impact
of the paintings, I think rests elsewhere and touches on some fascinating, if
frustrating issues for contemporary figurative painting. Although the works
look straightforward enough, as usual, these things take some time to tune
into.
The artist is based in
West Australia and best known for her portraiture for which she has been a
finalist in prizes such as the Doug Moran Prize and The Black Swan Prize as
well as broader prizes such as Metro Five and Albany Prize. While availing
herself of photographic sources, these are supplemented where possible by
traditional observational drawing and a close acquaintance with the sitter. Accompanying
her formal portraiture has been an interest in the figure in vigorous action
and confrontation, the two streams inevitably meeting at points, such as her
2014 show, Juncture.
6 Second Mark (2014) 140 X 140 cm oil on canvas
There, high-speed photography by the artist often disclosed surprising
expressions to a person in conversation and the artist then tried to synthesise
these qualities through painting. Painting’s role as a modifier of photographic
imagery has been a central plank of contemporary painting for some time,
pursued by artists as diverse as Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Marlene Dumas
amongst others. Usually, an overlooked genre of press or publication imagery is
discerned (possibly historical, promotional or topical) and the latitude
allowed painterly qualities, where successful, to a large extent dictates which
print qualities are given prominence, how the source image is characterised.
For Coad this involves a cautious concession to the painterly so that a painting
of a compelling instant such as 6 Second
Mark (2014) looks anything but instantaneous. The painting does not so much
freeze a frame as labour its hesitation, in delineation and modelling, linger
in doubt, with an almost Cezanne-like diffidence. The artist is tantalised by
an identity for the subject, yet held in abeyance. We encounter the private
worlds of the informal or family snaps or video, Skype exchanges perhaps and a roving
attachment on the part of the artist.
This subtle ambivalence in Coad’s treatment marks a greater maturity and
confidence to the work. The current show carries this forward in bolder,
unexpected ways, not least in isolating the figures against stark white
backgrounds. Previous work had tended to favour a more traditional darkness in
eliminating a setting, but the light and white approach brings with it a change
of mood, as noted, a somewhat clinical or detached ambience, where one is
tempted to treat the gestures as psychological demonstrations. The artist notes
that conversations involve listening and looking when not speaking but this to
and fro does not account for the conspicuously oblique or sideways view of
subjects. Significantly, the subject does not address the artist or viewer, nor
anyone remotely on the same eyeline. The paintings frame only one person
involved in the conversation, so that even if the conversation involved more
than two participants, artist and viewer deliberately concentrate on just one of
them, uncoupling any sense of back and forth or participation. At their most
basic, the paintings are about not
participating in a conversation plainly underway, about looking askance or at cross-purposes
to the flow of events.
Megan 2017 150 X 213 cm oil on canvas
The paintings concentrate on not a situation or setting, but an ardour of involvement that flows from face to torso and limbs, a kind of commitment that is compelling yet strangely directed elsewhere. Like the vacillating faces to Juncture, Restoration deals in an involvement kept at arm’s length, the object of contemplation rather than response. The generous spacing around figures highlights this essentially internal dynamic; it draws on nothing else. The monochrome palette compresses or unifies features to a figure, so that dress, grooming, gesture and expression all share a sweeping moment, are finally all of the same stuff. And if the figures seem dim or dark for it, it surely hints at a person taken as a whole; unfathomable motives, unknowable impulses
Mumtaz II (2017) 175 X 175 cm oil on canvas
In some pictures lower portions of the figure are granted a more blurred
handling, as in Mumtaz II (2017). This
example is also the exception, where the figure looks to the right of picture
frame. Yet the blurring hardly indicates motion, by artist or figure, nor
perhaps (improbably) an immersion in water, since the figure’s arm remains more
sharply defined. It is not a photographic quality at all of course, but rather
painterly interpretation now given literally more latitude or leeway, to pass
with some frisson between figure and ground. That this should occur only to the
torso is surely telling and confirms the sense of body in counterpoint to face
and expression. We broach a kind of mind/body duality, whereby facial
concentration seemingly leaves the body in a metaphorical dissolution. It is
scarcely a novel conception perhaps; however its application to discussion
among friends, and the stylistic parameters allowed, most assuredly is unfamiliar
and quietly effective.
Waldemar (2017) 175 X 175 cm oil on canvas
Interestingly, the most extreme examples of this contrast occur with
male subjects. In Waldemar (2017) for
example, the lower portion of the figure almost disappears into a cloud, giving
the surrounding ground surprisingly far more presence. Here, the figure may
negotiate smoke or at least a dry-ice machine, giving the conversation an
amusingly melodramatic quality. But again, one is struck by the fixity and
delineation of the head, its darkness against the lightly glimpsed gesture to
hands and arms. If listening, perhaps the conviction of his words simply drowns
out accompanying gestures.
Mark (2017) 185 X 185 cm oil on canvas
In Mark (2017) perhaps the
least animated work in the show; one has the unmistakeable impression of
hesitation or thought on the part of the subject and in scale and composition
an undeniable scrutiny. But one cannot but help suspecting that, even for the
monochrome treatment, a photograph would have conveyed this just as well. Once
one embarks upon more painterly or formal means, inevitably such questions
arise and it is a tribute to the artist’s rigour that appeals to pictorial
standards soon follow, leave one wondering for instance whether traditional
proportion and modelling need be preserved in such a searching examination? The
work thus engages with fundamental issues for painting, simply through pursuing
more personal and particular issues. It would be premature to claim too much
for the work, but clearly it carves out distinctive territory. We do not
strictly detect a print genre, although the works remind one of Vox Pop
interviews somewhat, but the oblique angle to eyelines ensures that the focus
is now upon a more psychological and personal project.
Adri (2017) 175 X 175 cm oil on canvas
There is one further aspect worth noting. The subjects are all drawn
from the artist’s circle of peers, so that for instance, older or much younger
figures play no part in the conversations. This narrows the focus of the
conversations considerably. The
conversation then becomes about that side of life, the shared issues and
alliances. If one then allows that the paintings look askance in such meetings,
in effect tune out the dialogue as a condition of contemplation or artistic
vision, one glimpses a more intriguing and private relationship. The works
become about something far more guarded and non-committal. They do not so much
criticise the figures’ ready involvement or sincerity but rather harbour quite
a different, much less welcome one. In the end the artist places art first and
what follows ultimately in a state of flux.
Mumtaz (2017) 160 X 220 cm oil on canvas
All images courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith. My gratitude to both for assistance in preparing this review.
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