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2010 - Travelling North
2008 - Abstraction and Space
2005 - Formal Considerations
2003 - Sense of Place
2001 - Presence / Absence
1999 - Non-objective Representations
1997 - First Steps
SENSE OF PLACE - Dialogue begins...
From Within: A Dialogue between Stephanie Green and James Yuncken
It's strange to me that these 'fabricated' landscape paintings seem so naturalistic. When I first looked at these works they appeared to me to be observed representations of Australian country we know so well. They look and feel very familiar. So I assumed that you were painting 'real' memories from inside your head, taken from trips you'd made into those areas in the past. But when I talked to you about how you work, I realised that the familiarity I experience before these works comes from somewhere and something else. In part, it comes from my own inner landscape of projected vision and experience. In part it comes from the fact that what I know and call the Australian landscape is in itself a fabrication of immense geographical proportions. To appropriate Paul Carter's well-known analogy, these works evoke the 'lie' of the Australian landscape: a network of overlapping created and disrupted meanings about ourselves and our belonging on this continent.
For me these paintings capture familiar feelings of emptiness and longing about the country where we live. These scenes - paddocks, trees, water-holes, open fields - are all marked by signs of human habitation, but no humans are present and there seems no evidence that they will ever return.
In one sense, the slightly ghostly feel of this exhibition relates to the historical attitude with which non-Indigenous Australians have been taught to regard the land in which they live: with a mix of affection, fear, estrangement, romance, exploitation, loneliness, neglect, attempted conquest and aggression. In another sense, these are paintings about Psyche. The land figures absence and longing. The object of desire is present but unseen. There is a stillness that suggests anticipation: waiting for Eros to arrive.
Stephanie Green
to read the dialogues for each of the 12 self generated landscapes click here
Self-generated Landscape No 1:
Familiar
oil on canvas 86.5 x 86.5cm
- I've been here before. I feel these very bumps and clods, those tussocks and hollows. Sheep-scarred land. I have walked against the wind that churns the clouds in this sky. So much energy and movement, even the solid earth seems mobile and alive. Palette marks, mere textures, dabs and rows of paint capture this place - so vivid.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
- Everyone knows this place. Our country, core of our hearts, wide and brown, horizons far, paddocks are thirsty.
The land is not thirsty, hungry, or greedy but pays us back threefold always and in perpetuity. A magic pudding: eat your fill, it never runs out, but be wary of thieves.
From here men went to Gallipoli ...
STEPHANIE GREEN:
- What can we call OURS? Joy in the moment of the image, so recognisable with its open paddock, rich textures and tumultuous sky. Yet I also feel the shadow of my despair. I hear my grandfathers axe echoing across this landscape, an echo that is more than a century old. In that sound rings the narcissism of colonisation.
The magic pudding: we have behaved all this time as if the land were an everlasting, always generous mother, however much we took. But the land is vulnerable, needs care. Never take the last bite, drink the last drop.
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Self-generated Landscape No 2:
Open Country
oil on gesso board
76cm x 61cm
- At this moment everything is possible, open country shaped and balanced by overlapping curves. The rise and fall of hills, overarching sky, a trail of leaves floating above and curves always turning, turning away.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
- Space and the fresh, clear, scented air. A lullaby of happy feelings muffle any awareness of transformation, generations of industry, quietly continuing. This track its outward sign. This moment ours.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
- The scene seems so tranquil. Every pleasure, every journey can begin from here. Harmonious artifice of nature: this landscape hewn by farmers and labourers who toiled for generations in a slow fever of destruction.
Self-generated Landscape No 3:
Dam
oil on gesso board 92 x 92cm
Depth, light and darkness. I step into the pool. Water touches more than my skin. My heart bathes in cool magic. I lift my limbs, move my body. Water surges and spills onto earth, freed from unwilling stillness and containment.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Sunburnt country. Water is scarce. Farmers build dams. Non-natives need water to survive, to prosper and bear good fruit.
Hot and dry, now and again inundations: water spills from the heavens and in stillness the earth brings forth.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
The coursing of the life force captured, dammed up and held to nurture arid ground. This dam, is an artefact of human intervention. Absent of human figures. A body of water, natural occurrence, but this ... perfectly rounded.
Pool of unconscious, depth of desire never fully knowable. Blue play of light on dark surfaces, flood of life.
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Self-generated Landscape No 4:
Trees on the Horizon
oil on gesso board 76 x 61cm
Sometimes, there's a moment when everything seems clear. Bright skies, all parts of the picture balanced. The top of the rise brushed with green, full of promise. Shall we drink from our flasks, share our food?
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Summer with a sky blue enough to swim in. A patch of lush green. Lie on your back, soak up the warmth and stillness. If every day could be like this! The life we want but somehow never quite manage to achieve. How lucky would we be?
STEPHANIE GREEN:
Mixed feelings. Something is missing. This paddock feels abandoned.
Relaxed summer day, red earth, warm and inviting. If only we had time! Can you imagine childrenrunning across the grass? The fat peace of an afternoon stretched under a tree?
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Self-generated Landscape No 5:
Beyond Vision
oil on canvas 81 x 163cm
Sturdy tree trunks, triangular shapes rising dark and solid, growing slender and mobile as leaves and branches dissolve into sky. A hint of Cezanne, revisioned. Magic of Psyche.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Unruly bush ... like us. Patches cleared - stuff left lying.
Yes, Cezanne! Structure is high on my list, but observation, I only observed the canvas. Many times I plastered background over foreground. Would he take exception to that?
STEPHANIE GREEN:
Structure? Fascinating that your paintings are so abstract in their initial conception. Shape, structure, the balancing of elements. Whereas I always want to find out what the story is, who is talking, what they are saying, what is going on.
In this work I love the way technical elements come together. They retain their formalism here, in ways not so obvious in the other works, but still hold the image together strongly. The illusion of the real is here more painterly, more about the process of painting - how, for example, the trees belong to the road.
You say you are not an observer, but you have observed closely with the eye of the mind in a way that the viewer can follow.
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Self-generated Landscape No 6:
Windbreak
oil on canvas 66 x 37.5cm
So many camping holidays I've sat on logs with others around a fire, singing, toasting marshmallows and sharing stories. The warmth of these memories, the sounds of birds at sunset, the bush at night are part of our campfire mythology.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
This is just the sort of spot workers might look for, with a couple of ready made benches, a tree to sit under and boil the billy while tucking away morning tea or some lunch. The talk: maybe chewing over the weekend's footy, the weather, the talk-back, a bit of ribbing, nothing too serious. And if it blows there's the windbreak - for what it is worth.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
But the fallen log is also part of that emptiness in our hearts. The scars of excess clearing, the abandonment of native forests and animals. The logs, lonely and abandoned, so far apart that we would have to shout. No fireplace here around which to gather. As the trees leave the land, the spirit dies.
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Self-generated Landscape No 7:
Trail
oil on gesso board 76 x 61cm
Animal trail through this earthy expanse. Memories of packed grey-pink earth, the rasp of dry tussocks against the flank of the ute. Waving lines, uneven textures and open yellow paddocks, lean of leaves. The new generation is planting again, a late-learned reparation ...
JAMES YUNCKEN:
A chill wind blowing in the weak wintry sun. Expect the odd shower.Hoof-worn tired beauty, eroded to discordant harmony, the land supports us all. Nearby scraggly trees prosper on scrubby green hills. A curious accord, this picture, the bounty we enjoy.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
You write of chill winds, winter sun, rain in the distance. I too see the bleak beauty of pink earth, held together by sparse grasses. Gigantic austerity of sky. The windbreak provides little protection. How can the land withstand our need?
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Self-generated Landscape No 8:
Outcrop
oil on gesso board 76 x 61cm
Alpine rocks, saplings struggling out of pale brown land. Trace the ridge. Follow the high line of country, curving, rising towards the place beyond the horizon. A gully softened by the last green of rain, shadows. We hesitate to descend and explore.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Struggle among the rocks. Where the horizon begins, the farmland stretches out. Imagine paddock after flat paddock. In between, old bushland, the river gully slopes away, untouched - careless debris aside, spared interference by it is steep and stony slopes. Cultivation and civilisation disappear from view, never far though. Treasure trove, adventure playground, sometimes haunted.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
This difficult country offers the promise of wild plants and animals, survivors of hard times. Bushwalkers might come here or teenagers escaping parents on a Saturday night. A high point to be reached, a patch to climb. A place between.
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Self-generated Landscape No 9:
From Within
oil on gesso board 81 x 61cm
Stand of trees, frame within a frame. The eye always moving through, beyond and back again. Path opens onto rocky terrain. Do we linger or trust the open plains? Safety of the hidden or following the lie of the land?
JAMES YUNCKEN:
A little rocky peak invites the chance of vista, panorama, unlocking space and distance: sun-warmed rocks, risk of chill wind. The sun dances through leaves and branches of this cosy enclosure, writing oracles at our feet only to be erased by passing clouds.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
I'm standing within the forest of the soul, the embrace of trees, protective wood, tempted to give up the effort of the journey. Yet I'm drawn outward, to the sunlit rocks. High country. Yes, sometimes it's necessary to find height and distance - the long view of things.
In some Indigenous cultures there are rocks and mountains one is not permitted to climb. Perhaps that is the wisdom of knowing that we cannot know and see everything that lies before us. Even at the vantage point, patterns and obstacles can elude or deceive us. Yet we seem bound to try.
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Self-generated Landscape No 10:
Plantation Forest Road
oil on gesso board 81 x 61cm
Forest bordered by sunlit road. A temple of darkness, lingering, a hesitation. We don't know where the road will go - fear losing direction. The coldness of shadow.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Exotic timbers, a foreign plantation. It works like this: The grower selects and culls, selects and culls again. Eventually the tall straight trunks are harvested, the ground made ready for another cycle. Everything produced is used.
You could easily lose yourself in this sameness. Off road: private property, disorientation, unnatural uniformity. On road: occasional wanderers, timber workers.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
What is the poetics of sameness? A rhythm of repetition, sun light scudding between tree trunks in punctuated lines. Cold plantation shadow, vegetative cuckoos sucking up the fertility of the ground until nothing else will grow. False value, our land, our people.
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Self-generated Landscape No 11:
Joy
oil on canvas 102 x 81cm
Water begets water, tears beget tears. The path leads to an unexpected aqua abundance. The joy of sea, sharp and fresh. The squeak and slip of sand and at last the splash of the first step beyond dryness.
The drying leaves of late summer, surrounding curve of hill darkens at sunset. A sudden coolness and the season changes, almost before we have noticed.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
There the sea the horizon and the world beyond. A green and shady path. This place once pristine, timeless. Imagine what it was like before the path.
Then ships appear, noise of the men shouting, dropping anchor, furling sails.
Now the holiday sound of footsteps, hats, towels, sunglasses, retracing from this beautiful and secluded spot.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
The joy of discovery. We can be only ourselves, curious, playful, greedy. Ancient and modern, always looking to the ocean for news and pleasure, adventure and opportunity. How strange a ship must have looked arriving on our sea shores.
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Self-generated Landscape No 12:
Tree
oil on board 53.5 x 30cm
Night falls in a strange homecoming. A storm brewing in the distance? Moonlight whitens leaves, bright movement in darkness. This tree invites you closer. End and beginning: life, knowledge, self, mystery of the other. It grows out of country, heals and restores life, signalling water.
JAMES YUNCKEN:
Electric horizon, cool moonlight funks the brain, lights through the branches, a cold inner glow. A slight shudder. Attention! Somewhere in the distance, drama, forces of nature on the march, irresistible, fascinating. Bravely behold the terrible beauty from our distance.
STEPHANIE GREEN:
Dynamic destiny. We cannot see what lies before us but this tree comes up out of the dark, pulsing with energy like a warning. Self and country. The energy of the universe charges through dancing leaves, sending shafts of life into the ground.
If Psyche can ever some close to her desired Eros, then it is at this moment, when the super-electric dreams of night can bring her to a vision of her desiring self.
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