Shila Khatami, ‘Move black’, 2023 acrylic binder on canvas 240 x 340 x 2.8 cm
Photo Credit
Hanns Kunitzberger, 'Hälfte', 2022, spät Oil on mollino 225 x 150 x 4 cm
Photo Credit
Koen Delaere, 'Nova Moth', 2023 ink pigments, oil paint medium, acrylic medium on linen 250 x 180 x 4 cm
Photo Credit
Into each life some rain must fall.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We live between two countries, between two climates and between two private histories. Australia is a vast continent whose climate is extreme - its sheer scale, comparable to all of the so-called ‘United’ States, drives its terrifying heat and aridity and nourishes its unexpectedly lush zones.
It is bathed in sunshine much of the time and we are mostly grateful for the light and warmth, but when it rains it can feel threatening, biblical. It’s the land of the flash flood, where water scurries over hard, dry ground in search of escape, of somewhere to be, often causing real havoc along the way and denying the landscape the rational irrigation system so much of it needs.
Coming from New Zealand where dampness and its associated chill are conditions most of the country regularly endures throughout winter, all that sunshine just a short flight away is symbolic of both Australia’s view of itself as the lucky country and New Zealand’s darker, gothic and self-deprecating atmosphere.
For all that I’ve never thought to make an exhibition called ‘sunshine’ - for whilst we confess to loving it regardless of fire and dermalogical threat, it is rain that manifests our need for shelter and warmth, it is rain that carries us off to sleep and it is rain that encourages deeper introspection and poetry.
When Katherine Mansfield said “I love the rain. I want to feel it on my face”, one can easily imagine that ‘rain’ could be substituted for ‘sunshine’ and find many, if not more adherents to this option. So too of John Updike’s statement, “rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life” – this is also true of sunlight.
Whatever your meteorological preference, these artists and I share a regular and unreasonable enchantment with rain. It is a notifiable condition apparently - we are self-diagnosed pluviophiles. It seems inexcusable to not have at least one condition these days and I think better this, than a more traumatic variant.
Rain includes works by Helmut Federle, Boomoon, Mark Francis, Hanns Kunitzberger, Shila Khatami, Koen Delaere, Lawrence Carroll and Gary McMillan.
Andrew Jensen, August 2024
Into each life some rain must fall.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We live between two countries, between two climates and between two private histories. Australia is a vast continent whose climate is extreme - its sheer scale, comparable to all of the so-called ‘United’ States, drives its terrifying heat and aridity and nourishes its unexpectedly lush zones.
It is bathed in sunshine much of the time and we are mostly grateful for the light and warmth, but when it rains it can feel threatening, biblical. It’s the land of the flash flood, where water scurries over hard, dry ground in search of escape, of somewhere to be, often causing real havoc along the way and denying the landscape the rational irrigation system so much of it needs.
Coming from New Zealand where dampness and its associated chill are conditions most of the country regularly endures throughout winter, all that sunshine just a short flight away is symbolic of both Australia’s view of itself as the lucky country and New Zealand’s darker, gothic and self-deprecating atmosphere.
For all that I’ve never thought to make an exhibition called ‘sunshine’ - for whilst we confess to loving it regardless of fire and dermalogical threat, it is rain that manifests our need for shelter and warmth, it is rain that carries us off to sleep and it is rain that encourages deeper introspection and poetry.
When Katherine Mansfield said “I love the rain. I want to feel it on my face”, one can easily imagine that ‘rain’ could be substituted for ‘sunshine’ and find many, if not more adherents to this option. So too of John Updike’s statement, “rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life” – this is also true of sunlight.
Whatever your meteorological preference, these artists and I share a regular and unreasonable enchantment with rain. It is a notifiable condition apparently - we are self-diagnosed pluviophiles. It seems inexcusable to not have at least one condition these days and I think better this, than a more traumatic variant.
Rain includes works by Helmut Federle, Boomoon, Mark Francis, Hanns Kunitzberger, Shila Khatami, Koen Delaere, Lawrence Carroll and Gary McMillan.
Andrew Jensen, August 2024
