Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition New Psychic Life by Josephine Cachemaille.
In New Psychic Life Cachemaille draws together a range of symbolic objects to articulate the contours of her interior landscape. There is something intrinsically unknowable about interiority, in both bodily and psychic forms. Cachemaille turns to these spaces in which we dwell – our bodies and our unconscious minds – and sifts through their fragments to unearth something relational, something generative, something invitational.
Despite the symbolic clues offered by the artist's materials and their titles, Cachemaille's figures evade the grasping hand of definition. Their symbolism remains stubbornly – satisfyingly – oblique. The figures and forms which populate New Psychic Life have emerged from the artist's recent experimentation with self-directed meditation. Loosely inspired by the Jungian practice of active imagination, a form of meditation intended to bridge the unconscious and conscious realms. She explains that this process ‘seems to activate archetypal images from my unconscious, to bring them into the present so I can examine them, understand them, do something with them.’
Material experimentation lies at the heart of this process. Working with fabric, clay, natural dyes and wood, Cachemaille maps interiority in a way that renders it tangibly material. Often, she is presenting materials in different modes to explore the rich gamut of their textural and affective power. Clay, for instance, is seen in Worrier and Hubris as unglazed bisque, its porous earthen warmth illuminating the figures it shapes. In other works, it has been fired in a wood-burning Anagama kiln, the unpredictable blackening of its heat resulting in an almost metallic finish. In Immortelle it has been shaped into delicate wood-fired buttons, rigid and bone-like against the taught skin of calico fabric.
Read the full exhibition essay by Dr Kirsty Baker here
To request a catalogue please email info@sanderson.co.nz
Opening Hours
- Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm
- Saturday - Sunday, 10am - 4pm
Address
- Osborne Lane, 2 Kent Street
- Newmarket
- Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, 1023
Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition New Psychic Life by Josephine Cachemaille.
In New Psychic Life Cachemaille draws together a range of symbolic objects to articulate the contours of her interior landscape. There is something intrinsically unknowable about interiority, in both bodily and psychic forms. Cachemaille turns to these spaces in which we dwell – our bodies and our unconscious minds – and sifts through their fragments to unearth something relational, something generative, something invitational.
Despite the symbolic clues offered by the artist's materials and their titles, Cachemaille's figures evade the grasping hand of definition. Their symbolism remains stubbornly – satisfyingly – oblique. The figures and forms which populate New Psychic Life have emerged from the artist's recent experimentation with self-directed meditation. Loosely inspired by the Jungian practice of active imagination, a form of meditation intended to bridge the unconscious and conscious realms. She explains that this process ‘seems to activate archetypal images from my unconscious, to bring them into the present so I can examine them, understand them, do something with them.’
Material experimentation lies at the heart of this process. Working with fabric, clay, natural dyes and wood, Cachemaille maps interiority in a way that renders it tangibly material. Often, she is presenting materials in different modes to explore the rich gamut of their textural and affective power. Clay, for instance, is seen in Worrier and Hubris as unglazed bisque, its porous earthen warmth illuminating the figures it shapes. In other works, it has been fired in a wood-burning Anagama kiln, the unpredictable blackening of its heat resulting in an almost metallic finish. In Immortelle it has been shaped into delicate wood-fired buttons, rigid and bone-like against the taught skin of calico fabric.
Read the full exhibition essay by Dr Kirsty Baker here
To request a catalogue please email info@sanderson.co.nz
