I was honoured to be selected as winner of the 58th Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and grateful that my work ‘Verge 3’ has found a permanent home at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
The exhibition is open until 11th December with lots more fantastic work to see. There is also a virtual tour online if you’re not in the area.
In ‘Verge 3’ I layered pencil drawing over monotype ghost prints to create a sense of depth and shifting perspective, thinking back to kayaking and walking around the edge of Lake Victoria on Gunaikurnai Country in Gippsland with Dad. We encountered dramatic shoreline erosion near our camp at Emu Bight - precarious, steep walls of sand and uprooted trees. There was beauty to be found in the complexity of the exposed root structures, but when I looked into the cause of the erosion, it was due to increased salt levels in the lake following the late 19thC artificial opening to the sea at Lakes Entrance - a reminder of consequences and interconnectedness.
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'Endurance' solo exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery
CATALOGUE ESSAY by Elli Walsh 2020
Endurance solo exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, February 2020 (photo by Dean Butters)
Tunnelling into personal experiences of place, Annika Romeyn visualises the loss, life and longing embodied in the natural Australian landscape. Through a combination of drawing, watercolour and printmaking processes, the Canberra artist engages with sites of erosion and flux to express the precariousness of the environment in the age of the Anthropocene. Sheer cliff faces, weathered rock formations and twisted trees symptomise the plight of nature as it staggers on the edge of no return.
In her latest series, ‘Endurance’, Romeyn captures the mnemonic power of place. She draws from time spent at Guerilla Bay, Yuin Country, a profoundly personal place that embodies the final Summer shared with her mother in 2016/17. It was at this time she encountered Rebecca Solnit’s thoughts on ‘the blue of distance’ – the blue at the horizon, which we can never quite reach. For Romeyn, blue became the symbolic colour of memory and emotion in the process of revisiting Guerilla Bay from the physical and temporal distance of her studio. Tones of ultramarine, pthalo and indigo reconstruct the coastal landscape with brisk detail, which recedes into the cool hues and indistinct washes of aerial perspective. There is the echo of traditional Chinese blue and white porcelain in these densely detailed compositions, each mark dancing between representation and abstraction to suggest a liminal space between the landscape experienced and the landscape rendered.
This is Romeyn’s first series using the watercolour monotype process, a new medium that has created more subtle tonal variations than her previous oil-based monotype technique. Fluid marks buzz with energy like particles assembled together to forge an image, threatening to dissipate at any moment into the hazy abyss of reminiscence. Aqueous drips become ladders between sea and sky, clouding the horizon and conjuring the psychological distance of memory.
Though these works seem serene and sublime, there is the hint that the landscape is – and will be – the helpless victim of humanity’s hamartia. Viewing them, we become aware of how easy it is to marvel at nature’s beauty and strength whilst ignoring the fragility in front of our eyes. The cool blues and rainy atmosphere depicting the NSW South Coast stand in stark contrast to the infernal imagery of the present moment. Yet buttressing the vulnerability of Romeyn’s watercolour washes is the elemental fortitude of rock and water, carving open a symbolic space for endurance and hope.
Scaling her works in relation to her body, the artist explores how place imprints itself not only on the mind but also physically, corporeally. The encounter between ourselves and the land is a haptic exchange: it overcomes us and we, sadly and slowly, overcome it. Retaining traces of her hand – the white marks made with the tip of her finger and the darker areas with her brush – Romeyn’s works beckon us to step into this in-between space of physiological and psychological encounter; of landscapes felt and landscapes remembered.
Ultimately, Romeyn does not seek to express a place of the present moment, but how place seizes us in its absence, how it summons the imagination and speaks to our emotions. In her works, blue is the colour of longing, evoking the fissure between us and the glow of our past. If we can look out across that vast gulf of memory without wanting to close the gap, without yearning to possess the horizon, then the colour of solitude and desire becomes the colour of healing and endurance.
Elli Walsh, 2020
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery 'Of the Sun'
‘Of the Sun’ brings together seven artists from across Australia who work land and sea scapes into performance, painting and installation. The exhibition is a contemplation of our relationship to earth’s natural elements and the role they can play in our personal journeys. In looking to what is powerful and natural these artists share an unbending will to work within the elements, traversing the terrain that will eventually inhabit their work.
To present expanded ideas of painting and process to our audiences in Goulburn, ‘Of the Sun’ connects these artists through the intensity of their collaboration and consultation with their subject, as well as their deftness in working across disciplines. These artists make work that is vibrant, personal and complex. ‘Of the Sun’ shows new commissions and key works from each artist and is a statement on what is happening in contemporary Australian practices, now.
Sharon Adamson
Maringka Baker
Mary Barton
Lottie Consalvo
Teelah George
Claudia Nicholson
Annika Romeyn
'Endurance' final days & Commendation Prize, Banyule Award for Works on Paper
Thanks so much to everyone who has visited my solo exhibition Endurance at Megalo Print Studio & Gallery (21 Wentworth Ave, Kingston, Canberra). In case any of you are still keen to get there - the exhibition is now in its final days, ending this Saturday Sept 21. Megalo is open 9.30am - 5pm Tues - Sat. The work was inspired by the elemental power and personal significance of Guerilla Bay, Yuin Country (South Coast, NSW). The exhibition has received a thoughtful and supportive review from respected critic Sasha Grishin.
Endurance solo exhibition install, 2019, Megalo Print Studio & Gallery, watercolour monotypes on paper, each 168cm x 228cm, photo by Brenton McGeachie.
In other news, my large-scale pencil and monotype work Verge 2 recently received the Commendation Prize in the the Banyule Award for Work on Paper and will remain on display at Hatch Contemporary Art, Melbourne until Oct 19. Verge 2 was part of a series made in response to the shoreline erosion that I encountered while walking and kayaking around the perimeter of Lake Victoria, Gippsland. My work is also included in the Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia, which opens this week (19 Sept - 10 Nov).
'Endurance' solo exhibition opening & more
I would love you to join me in celebrating the opening of my solo exhibition Endurance from 6pm Thurs 15 August at Megalo Print Studio & Gallery (21 Wentworth Ave, Kingston, Canberra). The exhibition continues until Sat Sept 21 and I will give a print demonstration & artist talk at 2pm Sat 14 Sept. The work has been inspired by the elemental power and personal significance of Guerilla Bay, Yuin Country (South Coast NSW).
Endurance, 2019, watercolour monotype on paper, 168cm x 228cm
I have also created a work in response to a piece of coal from Geoscience Australia's National Mineral and Fossil Collection for GEO: Art of the Collection now on display at the ANU School of Art and Design Project Space until 31 Aug.
Borrowed Time (coal), 2019, monotype and pencil on paper, 112cm x 76cm
Further afield, my work Slippage (image: below middle) is currently on display in the 4th Global Print exhibition, Douro, Portugal (1 Aug - 30 Sept). My work Verge 2 (image: below right) is a finalist in the Banyule Award for Work on Paper, Hatch Contemporary Art, Melbourne (Aug 28 - Oct 19) and my work Chasm 4 (image: below left) is a finalist in the Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia (19 Sept - 10 Nov).
