ivy jean exhibition Review at Tap Gallery
Written by John McBeatty
Ivy Jean’s survey photographic show at Tap Gallery showcased a variety of themes, techniques and periods of work across her entire oeuvre thus far. Jean‘s work is informed by her artistic sensitivity to composition, light, colour, atmosphere and emotion; while being steeped in a plethora of photographic styles and movements such as Modernism, Impressionism, Romanticism, Surrealism and Classical Realism. Her willingness to experiment with a range of cameras (Pinhole, Vintage, Digital and SLR film cameras) has produced images of great beauty, ambiguity and formal elegance. Often she captures phenomena within the world at its point of flux and mutability, where precise definitions of form and subject are instead blurred and melded together. The resulting images disrupt the viewer’s preconceived notions of reality and offer glimpses of half-remembered people and places from a time that has already long past. In this instance we do not perceive an orderly and legible world of appearances but one where mood has been heightened to startling effect.
Her Industry Series conjures up a world located in dreams where ambiguous and distorted details frustrate a logical reading of the image while alluding to the unreliability of memory in relation to events experienced in the distant past. The image ‘Open for Business’ seems to depict an abandoned amusement park for children, where the exhibits and rides have long been dismantled leaving only minimal traces of its former glory. The narrow archway that was the entry gate stands forlorn, with its barely decipherable text denying signification. To the right of this archway are a phalanx of orange metal Giraffes no longer traversed by giggling children. The photo ‘Cargo’ depicts a container case located in Port Botany which is still a hub of activity with the movement and storage of manufactured goods from around the globe. The whiteness of the warehouse is juxtaposed with a Mondrian-like stack of multi-coloured containers that are orange, yellow, green, and ultramarine blue. A network of hooked curlicue shapes inscribe the exterior of the warehouse as a direct consequence of the lengthy exposure time associated with the pinhole camera used. ‘Cargo’ is the most identifiable image of the smaller suite of four images from the Industry Series that were hung in close proximity to one another to achieve a composite effect.
The most hypnotic image from this suite is entitled ‘Factory’. The blurring of what appears to be a two storey institutional building hints at its function as a site of malevolent cruelty or unremitting human labour. The viewer can speculate upon the nature of confinement within this building’s walls: is it a prison, mental asylum or a Magdalene Laundry for unmarried pregnant women as so eloquently enunciated in Joni Mitchell’s song. Some type of white fabric billows in the bottom left corner of the image perhaps signalling that indeed this is a Magdalene Laundry. But I wonder whether I have been perceptually duped and only imagined the setting of the photographic image before me. An interesting connection can be discovered in the origins of pinhole photography. The technique was first developed in the Fifth Century BC by the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti and later discussed by Aristotle in his work Problems so it is therefore a practice firmly embedded in philosophical enquiry.
The contemplation of aesthetic beauty is perhaps one of the highest ideals of philosophy and visual art; though it is a contested category in contemporary art theory and practice, which has a greater concern with social and political issues located within the world. The importance of beauty in an individual’s life was extensively interrogated by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement, but he was not the first philosopher to value beauty as an essential ingredient of a good life. For Kant “Beauty is a symbol of Morality” and “The enjoyment of nature is the mark of a good soul” so there is a strong moral imperative behind the contemplation of a beautiful object or a scene from nature. Furthermore, the shared enjoyment of a sunset or painting indicates that there is harmony amongst people and within the world and it holds our mind’s attention in a disinterested way.
The contemplation of beauty as an aesthetic value was supremely embodied In Ivy Jean’s suite of works entitled ‘Botanical I-III’. This group of works derive their luminosity of colour and tone from the close cropping of the floral motifs as well as an ingenious use of chiaroscuro. They are imbued with a gorgeous, painterly quality and instil in the viewer a sense of perfect harmony and bliss which can only be described as an experience of sublime beauty. The central panel ‘Botanical III’ portrays six yellow and white daisies that hover in sharp focus at the top of the composition and set against a darkly modulated background of greens, pink and scarlet. This work is a photographic translation of Claude Monet’s ‘Les Nympheas’(or in Anglophone countries referred to as ‘The Water lilies’) and it is of the highest calibre.
The adjacent smaller-scaled panels are symphonic counterpoints to the central panel, adding to its already resonant visual power. The left panel ‘Botanical II’ is a tightly composed image with positive and negative areas of detail situated diagonally at opposite corners of the composition. Again the golden sequence of six flowers populate the lower half of this square visual field. The right panel ‘Botanical I’ is a glorious summation of the preceding images with a higher degree of abstraction and a complex tonal range of red, pink, yellow, green, crème and black accents. Two barely discernible red rose motifs have been captured before they will bloom, while a network of oval patterns is scattered across the whole surface of the image. Tonally the image is vertically bisected in half with interlocking zones of light and darkness on each side.
Ivy Jean’s exploration of different photographic techniques and artistic thematic is manifested in her ‘Tree Series I’ and ‘Tree Series II’. These images reference a romantic sensibility that can be traced back to the Romantic movement in painting, music and philosophy that occurred in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. This movement was characterised by an intense focus on nature with the individual artist, composer or writer preoccupied with expressing their emotional and imaginative response towards the subject.
The triptych ‘Tree Series I’ depicts one stark and gloomy tree without foliage and set against cumulus cloud that casts a pitch black shadow over the landscape and outline of the tree. The season seems to be winter though the brightness of the blue sky directly behind the clouds seems to suggest that optimism is still possible despite the melancholy mood of the tree and landscape; that is sunk very low down in this vertical composition. The spectator ponders whether or not a storm is approaching. The artist has rendered her cloudscapes in a naturalistic style despite the heightened mood of desolation present. In the central panel the tree has been completely obliterated and the contour describing the mound of earth that the tree originates from has likewise disappeared. This triptych has an affinity with the cloudscapes created by Bill Henson to accompany his ‘Paris Opera Project’ (1991), though Henson’s trees are towering silhouetted expanses of blackness, while similarly set against a dazzling blue sky that is trying to break through the gathering clouds.
Naturalism is abandoned in Ivy Jean’s ‘Tree Series II’ in favour of even greater abstraction and the lurid use of colour: greens, black, brown and orange. The sky is a shocking green hue with swirling pine trees placed in a landscape that seems to be on the verge of a tempest. The romantic and painterly quality of these two works approximates the printing process of lithography while also reminding this reviewer of Tony Clark’s ‘Myriorama Series’ (1985-1997) where generic trees, earth and rock formations are shown amidst a background of blurred and atmospheric details. Clark based his ‘Myriorama Series’ on a nineteenth century parlour game invented by the English artist John Clark in 1824. The game entailed the constant rearrangement of sixteen small panels representing fragments of an idealised landscape which could be assembled to from a panoramic scene. Due to the common horizon line shared by each panel, multiple combinations of the scene were possible by rearranging each panel into a different configuration.
Ivy Jean’s diverse photographic practice takes a completely different course in the earlier black and white film-based series of the male nude entitled ‘Pictures of You’. These images can be placed firmly in a classical realist tradition of photography where the nude is closely cropped and enlarged to investigate the sculptural potential of the human body. They recall the black and white studies of the human body photographed by seminal Modernist photographer’s Imogen Cunningham, here I am thinking of her studies of Roi Partridge (1927) and John Bovington (1929) and Edward Weston’s nudes of 1934-1935. However, these Modernist works pursue an extreme segmentation of form often eliminating details such as hands, heads and legs completely from the picture plane, which consequently objectifies the human subject. Ivy Jean retains these clues in her studies of the male nude exhibited and delights in the sensuous beauty of this muscular man’s body. The expressive power of clasped hands behind the subject’s back is fully realised in two close-up views of the hands where the veins and sinews depicted have a monumental intimacy, akin to viewing a photographic close-up view of Michelangelo’s ‘David’. However there is a gritty realism inherent in these images where even the dirt under the subject’s nails is offered for inspection.
A return to classical perfection is attained in Jean’s horizontal recumbent view of the subject’s chest and stomach. His chest is hairless and smooth while his posture reproduces the favoured Renaissance and Mannerist technique of figura serpentinata where the body rotates around a central axis while the lower limbs face in one direction and the torso almost in the opposite direction to from a graceful s-curve. His right hand gestures in a meditative manner with one finger touching the ledge of his mouth and providing evidence of his humanity.
Ivy Jean’s exhibition is an exhilarating and impressive achievement of an artist intent to pursue new techniques and styles within the tradition of photography and the visual arts. Her ability to assimilate these influences into her own personal aesthetic sensibility is a testament to her enquiring mind which can hold seemingly disparate photographic ideas and approaches together in tandem. Ivy Jean is a romantic at heart who is moved by the immense beauty found in the natural world and she offers her personal vision to the viewer so that they may share in the contemplative joys and wonder found in nature.
Ivy Jean’s exhibition was held at Tap Gallery, 45 Burton Street, Darlinghurst from 19th May until 25th May, 2014. The show was presented as part of the Head On Photo Festival 2014, held across many galleries and venues in Sydney during May and June.
Her Industry Series conjures up a world located in dreams where ambiguous and distorted details frustrate a logical reading of the image while alluding to the unreliability of memory in relation to events experienced in the distant past. The image ‘Open for Business’ seems to depict an abandoned amusement park for children, where the exhibits and rides have long been dismantled leaving only minimal traces of its former glory. The narrow archway that was the entry gate stands forlorn, with its barely decipherable text denying signification. To the right of this archway are a phalanx of orange metal Giraffes no longer traversed by giggling children. The photo ‘Cargo’ depicts a container case located in Port Botany which is still a hub of activity with the movement and storage of manufactured goods from around the globe. The whiteness of the warehouse is juxtaposed with a Mondrian-like stack of multi-coloured containers that are orange, yellow, green, and ultramarine blue. A network of hooked curlicue shapes inscribe the exterior of the warehouse as a direct consequence of the lengthy exposure time associated with the pinhole camera used. ‘Cargo’ is the most identifiable image of the smaller suite of four images from the Industry Series that were hung in close proximity to one another to achieve a composite effect.
The most hypnotic image from this suite is entitled ‘Factory’. The blurring of what appears to be a two storey institutional building hints at its function as a site of malevolent cruelty or unremitting human labour. The viewer can speculate upon the nature of confinement within this building’s walls: is it a prison, mental asylum or a Magdalene Laundry for unmarried pregnant women as so eloquently enunciated in Joni Mitchell’s song. Some type of white fabric billows in the bottom left corner of the image perhaps signalling that indeed this is a Magdalene Laundry. But I wonder whether I have been perceptually duped and only imagined the setting of the photographic image before me. An interesting connection can be discovered in the origins of pinhole photography. The technique was first developed in the Fifth Century BC by the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti and later discussed by Aristotle in his work Problems so it is therefore a practice firmly embedded in philosophical enquiry.
The contemplation of aesthetic beauty is perhaps one of the highest ideals of philosophy and visual art; though it is a contested category in contemporary art theory and practice, which has a greater concern with social and political issues located within the world. The importance of beauty in an individual’s life was extensively interrogated by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement, but he was not the first philosopher to value beauty as an essential ingredient of a good life. For Kant “Beauty is a symbol of Morality” and “The enjoyment of nature is the mark of a good soul” so there is a strong moral imperative behind the contemplation of a beautiful object or a scene from nature. Furthermore, the shared enjoyment of a sunset or painting indicates that there is harmony amongst people and within the world and it holds our mind’s attention in a disinterested way.
The contemplation of beauty as an aesthetic value was supremely embodied In Ivy Jean’s suite of works entitled ‘Botanical I-III’. This group of works derive their luminosity of colour and tone from the close cropping of the floral motifs as well as an ingenious use of chiaroscuro. They are imbued with a gorgeous, painterly quality and instil in the viewer a sense of perfect harmony and bliss which can only be described as an experience of sublime beauty. The central panel ‘Botanical III’ portrays six yellow and white daisies that hover in sharp focus at the top of the composition and set against a darkly modulated background of greens, pink and scarlet. This work is a photographic translation of Claude Monet’s ‘Les Nympheas’(or in Anglophone countries referred to as ‘The Water lilies’) and it is of the highest calibre.
The adjacent smaller-scaled panels are symphonic counterpoints to the central panel, adding to its already resonant visual power. The left panel ‘Botanical II’ is a tightly composed image with positive and negative areas of detail situated diagonally at opposite corners of the composition. Again the golden sequence of six flowers populate the lower half of this square visual field. The right panel ‘Botanical I’ is a glorious summation of the preceding images with a higher degree of abstraction and a complex tonal range of red, pink, yellow, green, crème and black accents. Two barely discernible red rose motifs have been captured before they will bloom, while a network of oval patterns is scattered across the whole surface of the image. Tonally the image is vertically bisected in half with interlocking zones of light and darkness on each side.
Ivy Jean’s exploration of different photographic techniques and artistic thematic is manifested in her ‘Tree Series I’ and ‘Tree Series II’. These images reference a romantic sensibility that can be traced back to the Romantic movement in painting, music and philosophy that occurred in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. This movement was characterised by an intense focus on nature with the individual artist, composer or writer preoccupied with expressing their emotional and imaginative response towards the subject.
The triptych ‘Tree Series I’ depicts one stark and gloomy tree without foliage and set against cumulus cloud that casts a pitch black shadow over the landscape and outline of the tree. The season seems to be winter though the brightness of the blue sky directly behind the clouds seems to suggest that optimism is still possible despite the melancholy mood of the tree and landscape; that is sunk very low down in this vertical composition. The spectator ponders whether or not a storm is approaching. The artist has rendered her cloudscapes in a naturalistic style despite the heightened mood of desolation present. In the central panel the tree has been completely obliterated and the contour describing the mound of earth that the tree originates from has likewise disappeared. This triptych has an affinity with the cloudscapes created by Bill Henson to accompany his ‘Paris Opera Project’ (1991), though Henson’s trees are towering silhouetted expanses of blackness, while similarly set against a dazzling blue sky that is trying to break through the gathering clouds.
Naturalism is abandoned in Ivy Jean’s ‘Tree Series II’ in favour of even greater abstraction and the lurid use of colour: greens, black, brown and orange. The sky is a shocking green hue with swirling pine trees placed in a landscape that seems to be on the verge of a tempest. The romantic and painterly quality of these two works approximates the printing process of lithography while also reminding this reviewer of Tony Clark’s ‘Myriorama Series’ (1985-1997) where generic trees, earth and rock formations are shown amidst a background of blurred and atmospheric details. Clark based his ‘Myriorama Series’ on a nineteenth century parlour game invented by the English artist John Clark in 1824. The game entailed the constant rearrangement of sixteen small panels representing fragments of an idealised landscape which could be assembled to from a panoramic scene. Due to the common horizon line shared by each panel, multiple combinations of the scene were possible by rearranging each panel into a different configuration.
Ivy Jean’s diverse photographic practice takes a completely different course in the earlier black and white film-based series of the male nude entitled ‘Pictures of You’. These images can be placed firmly in a classical realist tradition of photography where the nude is closely cropped and enlarged to investigate the sculptural potential of the human body. They recall the black and white studies of the human body photographed by seminal Modernist photographer’s Imogen Cunningham, here I am thinking of her studies of Roi Partridge (1927) and John Bovington (1929) and Edward Weston’s nudes of 1934-1935. However, these Modernist works pursue an extreme segmentation of form often eliminating details such as hands, heads and legs completely from the picture plane, which consequently objectifies the human subject. Ivy Jean retains these clues in her studies of the male nude exhibited and delights in the sensuous beauty of this muscular man’s body. The expressive power of clasped hands behind the subject’s back is fully realised in two close-up views of the hands where the veins and sinews depicted have a monumental intimacy, akin to viewing a photographic close-up view of Michelangelo’s ‘David’. However there is a gritty realism inherent in these images where even the dirt under the subject’s nails is offered for inspection.
A return to classical perfection is attained in Jean’s horizontal recumbent view of the subject’s chest and stomach. His chest is hairless and smooth while his posture reproduces the favoured Renaissance and Mannerist technique of figura serpentinata where the body rotates around a central axis while the lower limbs face in one direction and the torso almost in the opposite direction to from a graceful s-curve. His right hand gestures in a meditative manner with one finger touching the ledge of his mouth and providing evidence of his humanity.
Ivy Jean’s exhibition is an exhilarating and impressive achievement of an artist intent to pursue new techniques and styles within the tradition of photography and the visual arts. Her ability to assimilate these influences into her own personal aesthetic sensibility is a testament to her enquiring mind which can hold seemingly disparate photographic ideas and approaches together in tandem. Ivy Jean is a romantic at heart who is moved by the immense beauty found in the natural world and she offers her personal vision to the viewer so that they may share in the contemplative joys and wonder found in nature.
Ivy Jean’s exhibition was held at Tap Gallery, 45 Burton Street, Darlinghurst from 19th May until 25th May, 2014. The show was presented as part of the Head On Photo Festival 2014, held across many galleries and venues in Sydney during May and June.