Non Human Being

It was a pleasure to be part of Tributary Projects Non Human Being exhibition curated by Grace Blake in September. The exhibition featured one of my large-scale monotype prints along-side work by Kai Wasikowski, Mahala Hill and Tristan Jalleh. Non Human Being focused on the way the biosphere, for better or worse, must respond to the legacy left behind by humans, and envisions a post-anthropocene world in which the environment we have created for ourselves serves other species.  

Biennale of Australian Art

Just over 2 weeks left to see my solo exhibition as part of the Biennale of Australian Art (BOAA) in Ballarat. Verge combines drawing and printmaking processes in response to an encounter with shoreline erosion from my perspective as a kayaker and walker exploring the perimeter of Lake Victoria in Gippsland earlier this year. My work is among great company with 150 Australian living artists showing in multiple venues across Ballarat. You’ll find Verge in an amazing historic bacon factory, the George Farmer Building until Nov 6, open daily 10am - 5pm, tickets at https://www.boaa.net.au/

Verge series install, 2018, George Farmer Building, Biennale of Australian Art, Ballarat.

Open Studio Day + latest exhibitions

Please read on for information on 2 exhibitions opening this week in Canberra & Melbourne as well as an Open Studio event this weekend.

Open Studio Day

Saturday 28 July 11.30am - 4pm

M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Cres Griffith, Canberra



If you're curious about what I've been up to in the studio since moving across to M16 Artspace in April, this Saturday is a great opportunity to stop by for a look and a chat. I'm in Studio #1. There will be a Champagne start at 11.30am, live jazz by Tilt trio and lots of studios and art organisations to peruse. This is also your best chance to see my latest large drawing before it heads to Ballarat for the Biennale of Australian Art in September. 

I am pleased to be part of Subterrain, a Flinders Lane Gallery Pop-up exhibition now on display at Collins Place Gallery in Melbourne's CBD (Level 1, 45 Collins St). There will be a closing party Friday 3 August 5-7pm for Melbourne Art Week. In this exhibition natural formations and geological structures provide points of departure for my work and that of Hannah Quinlivan, Jacob Leary, Zac Koukoravas, Melinda Schawel, Dan Lorrimer and Agneta Ekholm. If you can't make it to Melbourne you can always view the works and read Phe Luxford's essay online.

I am also part of the M16 Artspace Studio Artists' Exhibition, which opens this Thursday 26 July from 6pm in Canberra. Please join us for a drink courtesy of BentSpoke Brewing Co. and Quarry Hill Wines. The exhibition continues until 12 August (open Wed-Sun 12-5pm).

Now on display at Collins Place Gallery, Melbourne:
Ghost V, 2018, pencil and monotype on paper, 228 cm x 112cm (photo by Brenton McGeachie).

'Ghosts' solo exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery

I'm looking forward to heading to Melbourne next week for the opening of my solo exhibition 'Ghosts' at Flinders Lane Gallery! The exhibition is on display from May 1st - May 19th. If you're in Melbourne, please drop in for a drink and a chat between 1-3pm on Saturday May 5th. If you're not in Melbourne you can always check out the exhibition online.

Ghost IV, 2018, pencil and monotype on paper, 228cmx168cm

Catalogue Essay
by Tess Horwitz, 2018

Annika Romeyn’s art is a call to remembrance of the natural world around us – its power and its fragility.

‘Ghosts’ responds to the riven, pockmarked landscape of Golden Gully, which Annika experienced during a Bathurst Regional Gallery Hill End Residency in 2015. Hill End has endured the legacy of the gold rush: land clearing, erosion, heavy metal contamination and the re-diversion of rivers. Trees bear witness – clinging precariously to crumbling gully walls or lying uprooted where earth has given way. Trees, too, re-inhabit and reclaim. We are faced with historical evidence of human economic greed and disregard for nature, and of nature’s slow reparations.

Damaged but gradually growing over, the landscape of Hill End seems to derive from a less rapacious time. The damage is slight compared with the proposed Adani mine in Queensland, which would destroy 28,000 hectares, consume 12 billion litres of water annually, and release 2.3 billion tonnes of thermal coal into the atmosphere. In so many ways our world is teetering on a precipice. We live in the Anthropocene Epoch where human activities are causing major shifts in the operations of nature, maybe even those parts we assumed to be immutable.

In immersive, large-scale works Annika’s body makes the marks, her hand is visible, stroking beauty into being, healing and resurrecting. The ordinary and the wounded are transformed into the magical, into realms for the imagination. Since her early studies in illustration, Annika’s practice has centred on close and patient observational drawing, which here melds with the techniques of printmaking to create in the viewer a sense of humility in the face of the complexity and longevity of trees and of nature.

“Art is a kind of mining”, writes Jane Urquhart, “The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth”. There is so much curiosity and so much deep looking in Annika’s exquisitely detailed work. Her dramatic use of perspective forces us to look upward like ground-hugging insects. In multi-layered drawings, perspectives shift and intersect inviting us to move through and within the landscape. The earth is always there, mediating our self-image.

These works began with subtractive and direct drawing – Annika wiped away ‘light’ from a field of indigo printing ink with the pressure of her index finger wrapped in cotton rag. The monotype technique allows for a single impression, with a couple of progressively faded impressions taken from the residual ink left on the plate. These faded second-run prints, commonly referred to as ‘ghost prints’ evoked a fitting sense of memory, distance and ambiguity, which Annika worked with in further layers drawn with carbon and white pencils.

Over the softer, bluer ‘ghosts’, Annika draws the resilience of the natural world back into being. Ravaged trees and eroded earth appear animate, confounding us with their beauty and their awe-inspiring scale. These works are powerful observational investigations of the land, but they are also parables about human power and human insignificance.

References:
Nathan Nagle, Distribution and dispersal of Legacy Sediment and contamination from Historical Gold Mining at Hill End, New South Wales, Australia, Masters of Research thesis, Dept of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, October 2014

Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter, Penguin Books, 1997

 

Exhibition Statement: 
Ghosts is a solo exhibition of new work by Annika Romeyn. The work began with a Bathurst Regional Gallery Hill End Residency (Nov 2015) spent walking and drawing outdoors in Golden Gully. Annika experienced a surreal landscape bearing the scars of colonial mining – raw and damaged, yet intriguing and somehow transcendent. It is a place that has continued to transform in Annika’s memory, imagination and ultimately through her layering of drawing and printmaking processes.

Annika’s work is inspired by being in the landscape and the experience of wonder and mutability that comes with a close and patient observation of nature. Focusing on sheer cliff faces and twisted trees - fallen or teetering on the precipice, Annika’s work speaks of erosion, impermanence and the precarious state of our natural environment.

Annika would like to express her gratitude to Bathurst Regional Gallery and ArtsACT for supporting her Hill End Residency (November 2015).