Melbourne Art Fair 2022

Melbourne Art Fair
Kirsty Budge, Kate Tucker, Matt Arbuckle
17-20 February 2022

Installation views: Marie-Luise Skibbe

Kirsty Budge

Kirsty Budge’s paintings combine deep introspection and an interest in psychoanalysis with a broader view that embraces the richness of the world. They are a complex and ambiguous mix of figuration, abstraction, personal narrative and landscape. 

Budge writes: “These paintings are part of an ongoing exploration into my personal psyche, the collective unconscious and into various coexisting realities. These works hold lots of little landscapes, symbols, mysteries, synchronistic connections, repeated reflections, shadows and mythological references that made themselves proudly and unavoidably apparent during their making.”

Influences feeding into these works include imagery of artworks consumed in books in the studio, specifically sculptures by Camille Claudel, Marisol and Linda Marrinon, and Goya’s etchings from the NGV’s Prado exhibition, which triggered a revisitation of Budge’s earlier experience of Goya’s black paintings in the Prado. Other influences on this body of work are the writing of Janet Frame and Eunice Lipton, and the work of filmmakers Agnes Varda and Richard Linklater, specifically his Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight). The influence of sculpture on these paintings extends to Budge’s brushwork, as she found herself pushing paint with motions akin to pressing into clay, or removing pigment from the surface, as though carving to reveal under layers.

Budge has used transparent orange for associations of terracotta clay and also of daily moments of pause, the hope at sunrise or reflection at sunset. Through an earthy palette and warm tonal ranges Budge works “to capture a light in painting that is at once visual, religious/spiritual/searching for faith (for lack of better words) and erotic.”

The paintings above all seek to explore the intersection of art and life with all of its attendant complexities. In her works there is a blurring of fact and fiction, personal narrative and cultural references, and an exploration of the border between the imaginary and the real, and the theatre of the surreal. Motifs of bubbles, waves and veils recur with moments of complexity next to moments of simplicity. Out of their energy and complexity these works display a search for healing, coherence and connection. 

Kate Tucker

Kate Tucker’s hybrid painting/ sculptures were created through a collage-like process, where paintings were cut and combined, with some pieces left raw and others subjected to continuous iterative changes. Amongst the various media of these works are fabrics digitally printed with images of Tucker’s previous work, which were then cut, painted and reconfigured. Tucker has also referenced patchwork imagery from DIY and craft books from the 1960s-80s in these paintings, seeking to incorporate material that denotes a sense of comfort for her. 

Tucker’s paintings are built through repetitive layering of various materials. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of painting traditionally onto pre-stretched linens. Rather than working within a defined area and surface, each layer became an opportunity to change the form as well as the content of the work. The result is a series of irregularly shaped paintings that represent an accumulation of numerous material based experiments, rather than the realisation of a pre-conceived idea. The freedom afforded by this has impacted on the way Tucker uses paint to form compositions and make marks. As paint is used to stain calico, which is then wrapped around the substrate, any painting that is done with a brush must co-habit with a different iteration of itself. Tucker samples different materials and reconfigures paintings with the carefree attitude of someone ‘playing’ in Photoshop. However the materials are laboriously embedded and equalised through multiple layers of acrylic mediums, gradually losing their characteristics to become part of an ambiguous collective form. 

Ceramic bases hold and support the paintings, with the content of each painting informed by the structure of its base. A third support structure has been added to this body of work, with the introduction of Tucker’s ‘Elevations’, a series of steel plinths each topped with tiled and interlocking hand-built ceramic forms. 

Matt Arbuckle

Matt Arbuckle’s practice is a process-driven exploration of place, representing landscapes that are conceptualised through their very making. Through an experimental practice, Arbuckle uses elements of traditional Japanese shibori dyeing techniques to create abstract compositions by wrapping, twisting, folding, and draping fabric over found surfaces and structures. The resulting paintings use depth and movement to trace and reveal abstract memories, imprinting the experience of place into the artwork. 

In Recto Verso, Arbuckle has experimented with fabric manipulation to produce a unique abstract visual landscape. To create this installation, Arbuckle used a custom designed ‘roll-to-roll’ machine, which rolled the fabric from one part of the machine to the other. In this process there was only ever 1-2 metres of fabric available for the artist to paint on. This meant the entire painting was only revealed once unrolled. The 50 metre length of the finished painting is unfurled, draped and tethered throughout the space, it is infinitely reconfigurable in response to the architecture it is located within.