Jo Mellor’s Cobalt and Rust and Natalie O’Connor’s The Nature of Redness conjure colour from the earth, inviting us to consider the history and character of pigment and its connection to land. Essay by Josephine Morrow
Exhibition Thurs 21 March - Sun 14 April 2024 | Opening Night Wed 20 March at 6pm
Read MoreI hoped to find the truth between the place I could see and my artists' palette of commercially produced colour pigments- artists’ colours.
Read MoreBlood Moon as viewed from the Mungo Lunettes. Photograph by Jack O’Connor
This place is ever changing, what I saw yesterday is not there today, it is gone.
Read More“No person steps in the same river twice”
When I set out my plans for 2020 last year, I laid out the most ambitious plans for my research and practice… but like everyone on this planet, nature had its own plans.
I’ve had to see my research from a different perspective during 2021 and rather than expand my practice to locations across the globe, I was forced to more closely examine the work I had already produced and question my relationship and my place in Australia.
Twice in the last twelve months, I have taken the opportunity to return to the World Heritage Area of Willandra Lakes Region, Mungo National Park in far south western NSW, where I could learn to observe more closely… and listen more intently… to the voices of the country.
I had to ask myself how my understanding of colour has changed and how is it connected and informed by stories and my experiences at Mungo.
The environments of where I reside with my family and the place where I can make art can be in extreme contrast to each other but they are also interconnected.
I seem to have a broader horizon of life when I am watching the sun rise or set at Mungo. This ancient landscape confronts you with time. You come to realise when you are walking out there, that we are only a small particle in a very long narrative. This place can be harsh but it invites you in and also accepts you as being a part of the story of its landscape. I feel very comfortable and safe at this place.
I deeply respect and I am very grateful for the care this place and its people have given to me.
Natalie O’Connor at Mungo Lunettes observations the dry paper samples from Gol Gol Colour Observation #7 in situ against the oldest red layer of the lunettes, The Gol Gol Layer. Thank you to the elders and communities of Mungo National Park for sharing their country and to Tanya Charles and other NSW National Parks staff for providing access and continued support to this unique location.for my art practice and research. Photo taken by Nicole Walton.
In contrast, whilst at home with my family I spend most days looking at the ocean. It is when I am placed in these two situations that I find it easiest to write about the interconnectedness of my life, art and place.
I’ve reflected on a diary entry from the last day of 2019 made sitting on ‘Sharkies’ Beach whilst watching my Husband , Michael and sons, Jack and Sam ride the relentless waves. It was an unusual summer in Sydney with a smoke haze that sat in the atmosphere and filtered the light. Somehow there was a sense of things shifting long before it became apparent to us all.
It’s hot dry smoky and the sand’s heat is coming through the towel to my feet. Cinematic Chillout is playing in my ears and the northeast swell is bringing in a high tide with an energy for the emerging decade. The sound of the waves hums along with the music. Each wave edges closer to me ~ tide and time. How many waves have there been in my lifetime? How many more? Why is it so hard to be with each wave? I’m like the surfers who are always looking to the horizon for the next wave, the next opportunity, the next opportunity, the possibilities to do something new or different.
Its hot.
So what possibilities will the next decade hold for me?
Just like the waves today? Each wave is a challenge but also an opportunity. Some waves roll in gently and others knock you off your feet.
October 2020 after the Covid Lockdown, I returned the red dirt to country with my flag cup warmer
On my first art residency at Mungo, I met artist S.O., a Wangaaypuwan/Ngyiampaa woman. We shared many conversations about our families' backgrounds, places where we had grown up, and it made me contemplate what place I belong. I spent most of my days of the residency in the old homestead with S.O. as she loved cooking and a clean kitchen just as much as I did. There were lots of cups of tea while we played with paint.
Our homestead was in a remote location in the World Heritage area. Surprising for this arid area, it rained heavily, the red clay roads were closed, leaving us flooded in for several weeks. As the days continued, I came to understand that S.O. felt uncomfortable about being at Mungo and going out for walks outside the homestead area, out on country. Since our arrival to Mungo, she had not met with any of the communities of the Willandra Lakes Region. The red roads became dark, slippery clay, and we were flooded in and trapped for some weeks. That uncomfortable feeling that S.O. exposed was probably one of my first real understanding of a 'welcome to country' and the significance of the term 'connection to country'.
I also felt unsettled in this place as I adjusted to the new surroundings and the other artists on the residency. When I left my home in Sydney, I had the strangest feeling that I could not shake. By the time I had reached Mungo, I was experiencing uncontrollable nose bleeds, and they continued for the duration of the residency. It was not your average hit in the face nosebleed but profuse bleeding that randomly occurred. My body became depleted and exhausted. There was so much red, red blood.
My superstitious Greek upbringing wondered if it was a sign.
On the last day of our month-long stay, S.O. walked with me. We found the other artists all drawing, painting, and immersing themselves in the harsh beauty of the Willandra Lakes Region. I carried my mug of tea with its knitted cosy around it of the Aboriginal flag gifted to me by S.O. when I first arrived at Mungo. It is not my flag, but I understood the weight of the gesture. I feel pretty awkward about flags. I have never felt that I belonged to any flag. I am not sure if it is a post-migrant thing or if it's a position that I have developed as I associate war and battles with flags, but this flag that S.O. gave me of the banal object to keep my tea warm linked her identity and the place where we stood together.
I started to understand why I was in Mungo and why I would need to return. So many of my questions about colour could be answered there.
The cues for selecting a palette for this place were interconnected to this flag. The triad palette of the traditional owners of this country... the very first palette of colours. It was explained that red is the men's colour, yellow is the women's colour, and black is the sky. Now that I reflect on this, I see it is the colour of the sky at night and by day is blue. So, holding the mug cosy with its triad palette, I was reminded that Aboriginal people have painted in this country forever ago. Long before Sir Joseph Banks invaded this place, with his English box of engineered colours, to paint the rainbows of Newton. And long before the pursuit of George Field to develop a perfect triad system, this place has provided its people with the perfect triad palette. This place holds the truth of the nature of colour.
– A diary reflection on a return visit to Mungo in October 2020 after the first COVID lockdown.
“If we possessed the three colours in absolute absolute. or correlative perfection in pigments, such alone would be sufficient to compose all other hues and shades”
Like many schools worldwide, those in Australia teach colour theory through an inherited colour wheel system. At some point, in a child's art education, they learn about the application of the three primary colours and how, when mixed alongside each other, they create secondary colours. The mixtures are as follows: red + yellow = orange; red + blue = purple; and yellow + blue = green. In my years of teaching Visual Arts, I have rarely seen an art program that explicitly mentions where this practice originates, but I have seen how student artists struggle to create that perfect colour mix and balance around the wheel, if they did not choose the right primary mix of colours in the first place.
’Despite the myriad of colours available to artists today, there is still a pervading Brewsterian[i] idea that reducing the number of colours to three primary colours would produce the colours in a rainbow and further the expansive outcome of colour mixes. Field describes 'colouring' in Chapter One of his Chromatography (1835) as ‘the first requisite of painting’ (Field, 1835, p. vi). He writes that when applied in painting it, is ‘the one thing imparting warmth and life’ and that colouring is ‘the chief quality engaging attention’. He poetically describes the colour as ‘equally diffused as light, spreading itself over the entire face of nature, and clothing the whole world with beauty’ (1835, p. 57). Field’s teachings on colour, and more specifically on the primary, secondary, and tertiary mixtures, has held sway in classrooms and art studios from the early nineteenth century right up until today.
[i] David Brewster (1781-1868) was a colour theorist who expelled the ideas of the primaries (red, yellow and blue). Field experimented with Brewster's idea and extended this to secondary and tertiary mixtures.
It feels like the world has suddenly paused and started to notice things that are small. So small that our eyes do not see them… but we are aware and have a sense that they are there.
Read More“Every pigment has a peculiar nature as regards to its effect on the eye; besides this it has its peculiar quality, requiring a corresponding technical method in its application” Goethe, Theory Of Colours
As part of my PhD research writing, Ive been re-visiting burnt sienna Pigment Red 101 of late. I know this colour well, or should I say, I’ve worked with this colour for forty years and I’m still learning from it. Burnt Sienna has played an integral role in my paintings, particularly as an underlying warm ground colour but also as a glaze that can unify a painting with the sheerest of veils.
The colour named, Burnt Sienna, can have different visual appearances and working properties. I am working with Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolour, the Burnt Sienna and it is classified as Pigment Red 101. This colour is identified as an earth replacement using a transparent synthetic iron oxide with a lightfastness rating of 1 and a AA permanence rating.
When I presented Gol Gol Layer Colour Observation #5 and #6 at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, I included burnt sienna as part of the installation, as it is classified as a red pigment and its beauty can be seen in the Gol Gol Layer at Lake Mungo. The paper that was revealed after 2000 hours was much gentler in its saturation than I expected and the undertone of the wet colour in the glass vessel was closer to yellow than red. As seen in the video and images (below), I am repeating the study with Burnt Sienna for closer observation.
I have been working with Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolour Burnt Sienna since I received my first paint box when I was 11 years old. Burnt Sienna, in 1979, was a natural pigment that possessed the subtle qualities of transparency for glazing and mixing but in 1988, Winsor & Newton colourmakers could no longer expect the same qualities from the naturally sourced pigment and the introduction of a synthetic earth replacement became what I know is Burnt Sienna today.
Whilst conducting an acrylic colour comparative study in 2005 (where I used Burnt Sienna as a sample colour across five different colourmakers) I became unaware of how my understanding of the inherent qualities of the pigment, Burnt Sienna, was not a generic expectation for all Burnt Siennas. All its expected and inherent beauty of colour: its brilliance; sureness; depth and transparency; that I love to play with, were heavier, sitting with a more matt finish on the painting surface, and the colour mixing outcome provided me with a very different dark when mixing with french ultramarine. It is not that these Burnt Siennas are not good… but they are different, and their difference brings about an entirely different outcome.
So I could get trapped considering these behavioural differences across colourmakers and ponder the historical changes to the colour, but all of this seems inconsequential when I am standing in the studio, have the tube in my hands and I’m about to squeeze out a colour.
The 19th Century British colourmaker, George Field wrote,
… those pigments are most beautiful which possess the most colour, whether they be light or dark, opaque or transparent, bright or subdued. There are some which exhibit all their colour at a glance: there are others that the more they are looked into the more colour they are found to have - containing, as they do, an amount of latent colour.
So I am now observing more closely, this red called Burnt Sienna to know more about its’ beauty: sureness; brilliance and depth….its earthly power.
Im in my UNSW Art & Design studio space today and whilst people are slow to return from the summer break, Ive seized the opportunity to spread out a bit and review a work that I started out at Lake Mungo in May last year. Initially, I wanted to have the work complete in situ over a number of visits…but this morning I felt differently about a huge roll of paper and the charcoal remnants next to my desk. I could smell Mungo. I remembered a place.
I regularly get asked and to be honest I also wonder why I study this colour in particular… some days I know and I can see the personal connections and other days I’m just baffled why I would bother, but I keep coming back to my connection of colour and country…PLACE
layers of earthly redness. a work in progress
So I saturated the whole sheet which is about 1100cm squared and selected three earth reds; Burnt Sienna, Venetian Red and Perylene Maroon of Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colours and went to town with it!
I could feel the scars of invisible drawings done by sharp stones and sticks from my first time with this paper whilst working at Lake Mungo, NSW National Park. I could feel small grains of sand and clay. A memory of place.
The paper is heavyweight cotton but it becomes soft when its saturated with water and the red pigments of Burnt Sienna and Perylene Maroon soon stain through the surface and embed themselves deep in its layers. I did not used the Venetian Red. It is a beautiful red with a density and weight that is probably closest visually to the red of the pockets of dense red clay at Mungo but I felt that it was too soon introduce her to the work. The Burnt Sienna and Perylene Maroon need to have some time on their own. I want to see what they do first.
Ironically, I have called this post keeping their place, which is a reference to the nineteenth century colourmaker, George Field and his identification and advocacy of the inherent qualities of physical colour used by artists, one of these qualities being…keeping their place. The quality of a coloured pigment is determined by its dispersion with a vehicle (which in the case of my use of watercolour in the studio today is gum arabic) to maintain its stability and strength.
For these reds paints to feel like Mungo they almost need to be subjected to the elements as well…..water, wind, air, earth and time. Every particle needs to find its own place.
The Gol Gol Layer Colour Observations investigate the changes of behaviour over time of each red coloured artists’ pigment as a response to the oldest red layer at Mungo, Willandra Lakes Region, Australia. This two part installation of wet vessels, along with 24 sheets of paper were submerged for over 2000 hours. The 24 sheets of of paper evidence the effects of each red pigment in watercolour from the time based installation, Gol Gol Layer Colour Observation 5 in 2018/ 2019. Reflecting the typical arrangement on an artist’s palette, they are classified into three groups; Warm Reds, Cool Reds, and Earth Reds.
This observation was first installed as a finalist work as part of the Art On Paper Award 2019 at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Art Centre. For the duration of the exhibition, observations of the behaviours of each pigment were documented.
Gol Gol Layer Colour Observation 6. Image: Observation of Permanent Alizarin Crimson- Pigment Red 206 at 2000 hours 21/11/19
Disgusting mould has grown completely over the lid and the top of the solution. Colour is intense and appears very saturated before extracting the paper from the test tube. It was difficult to extract and despite the heavy smell of bushfires in Sydney currently the odour from this sample was pungent. A congealed blob of fungus growth had grown on the paper- the colour was dense and heavily saturated even as it was drying.
Gol Gol layer colour observation 5 - lakebed exhibition, concordia gallery.
Gol Gol layer colour observation 5 at 1000 hours.
I documented the settling of pigment in each of the 25 vessels of colour. Distinct differences were noted and the pigments attachment to the paper surface as the action of evaporation occurred left extraordinary marks that left a visual imprint of the character of each red pigment.
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sunset walk along the Gol Gol layer at Mungo. photo by sam o’connor
late afternoon walk along the Gol Gol layer at Mungo.
Read MoreSome artists are quite happy with the degradation in their artwork… it is a part of their intention… and then, there are artists who perpetuate the same practice without questioning what and how they use their materials. It is important to me as an artist to respect the materials and make informed choices that connect on a conceptual level with the intended artwork.
I am interested in the effects of free radicals on paint films and paint fu film degradation but on a conceptual level been drawn to consider the behaviour of free radicals. It is this consideration that led me to present the behaviour of colours in my work.
Every colour behaves in a different way and in different lighting conditions and as artists we have to predict what that colour is going to do. In Luisant, my use of fluorescence challenges my predict, as they will undergo changes as they fade and respond to a different lighting condition.
The colours in Luisant evoke an experience about the life, demise and memory of colours. I’ve referenced the landscape but no particular place it is more the experience of memory, playing with its constant changes of light and colour, and its fragile form.
These pages below are the early ramblings, questions and inquiry about the connection of ourselves with a very small particle of colour.
