Wilma Tabacco - Then, Now: Now
18 November - 17 December 2017 - Opening Saturday 18 November, 2 - 4pm
‘Notes on an Exhibition’, Then, Now: Now
During the solitary months of planning and completing my 2017 work I read Steven Carroll’s ‘Notes on a Novel’ and ‘Postscript’ published at the conclusion of his novel A New England Affair. His no-nonsense, straightforward description of the planning and research processes undertaken and the anxieties and difficulties of ‘bringing to life’ a new body of work made me rethink how I should write about this exhibition: hence, these personal, somewhat unassuming Notes on an Exhibition.
In my 36 previous solo exhibitions I have presented only recent work, but in Then, Now: Now I have included 3 paintings, one completed in 2004, and 2 in 2009, with the ones completed this year.
The now well-established model of exhibiting only ‘recent’ works in solo exhibitions seems to me somewhat counter-productive: detrimental, even, to understanding an artist’s life-long art practice. Survey exhibitions, especially those of female artists, are rare or come rather too late in life – at least for the artist. So called ‘new works’ seem to automatically acquire more status than those displayed once or twice and either sold or stored away under wraps, (out of sight and out of mind?)
Strange it is to find how one can become so accustomed to viewing one’s own past work as screen images or printed reproductions that the experience of seeing the actual works again can be surprisingly revealing.
Any reproduction of, in the case of my work, a painting, no matter how excellent in quality, renders it flattened, fails to register subtle surface and tonal variation and depicted pictorial space, reduces the work to a miniature version of the original and provides only a front-on view – that of the camera’s original positioning... [Continue Reading]
[Download Full Essay Here]
Anthracite, 2017
oil on linen
183 x 152 cm
oil on linen
183 x 152 cm
Imperium, 2017
oil on linen
183 x 152 cm
oil on linen
183 x 152 cm
Iridium, 2017
oil on linen,
183 x 152 cm
oil on linen,
183 x 152 cm
Hecatomb #1, 2017
oil on linen 61 x 76.5 cm |
Hecatomb #2, 2017
oil on linen 61 x 76.5 cm |
Hecatomb #6, 2017
oil on linen
61 x 76.5 cm
oil on linen
61 x 76.5 cm
Greetings from the Ukraine, 2016
acrylic, pigment on 2 wood panels
40 x 120 cm each
acrylic, pigment on 2 wood panels
40 x 120 cm each
Winter Palace Walk, 2016
acrylic, pigment on wood panel
40 x 120 cm
acrylic, pigment on wood panel
40 x 120 cm
Palatine Plots: a series of 74 works, 2017
oil on linen
20.5 x 20.5 cm, 20.5 x 23 cm, 20.5 x 25.5 cm, 20.5 x 28.5 cm
oil on linen
20.5 x 20.5 cm, 20.5 x 23 cm, 20.5 x 25.5 cm, 20.5 x 28.5 cm