Urban renewal
There's a touch of Jeffrey Smart about the work
of Perth artist Joanna Lamb. Regarded as one of the most promising
emerging artists in the country at the moment, Lamb's new exhibition,
Flatland: A Continuing Romance at Sydney's Sullivan + Strumf space
continues the themes explored in her first Flatland exhibition
in Perth last year.
Drawing on pop art, surrealism and expressionism,
Lamb's haunting works of contemporary urban spaces devoid of people
echo Smart's concerns about the disconnection between the urban
environment and the people who live in it.
As the artist explains, the exhibition “It
is a response to the way we connect or don't connect to the landscape
around us. It is about the inhabited spaces that are psychologically
empty and anonymous.”
One might also see parallels in Lamb's work with
the paintings of Howard Arkley.
The success of artists like Smart and Arkley shows
that these types of works strike a nerve with the art-viewing
(and art-buying) public. Of course, the concern that urban life
is dehumanising is hardly a new one; but that doesn't detract
from the power of Lamb's images.
The original Flatland was staged at Johnston Gallery
in Lamb's hometown. Flatland: A Continuing Romance, as the name
suggests, is a continuation and building on the themes and images
from that exhibition. One striking departure point of Lamb's work
from that of Smart and Arkley is that she often chooses to “replicate”
images in differing colours.
One of the more obvious differences between any
two of these replicated images is often the colour of the sky.
Lamb will change the tone from a pale blue to a dusty brown; as
if a dust storm has rolled in across the scene while she was painting
it. Other colours change subtly too – greens become brighter
or duller; browns become greys.
A hint to the meaning behind these subtle changes
might be found in Robert
Cook's “Wallpaper for the New World Order”, an essay
from the catalogue that accompanied the Johnston Gallery show:
These days landscape is nothing more than
a kind of wallpaper. Safely cocooned within the comforts of
our glimmering modernity, it’s just there, making no real
demands on the senses – flat textureless, bland and unobtrusive.
Drained of its urgency within those sleepily nostalgic nationalist
debates and yearnings, the fact is it has become what it always
was – an illusion, a construction in retrospect, a passive
backdrop to whatever set of ideologies are daubed over it. Little
wonder that after the degradations inherent in such processes,
Joanna Lamb comes to it and finds it, somehow empty.
Flatland: A Continuing Romance is an excellent introduction
to Joanna Lamb's work. The artist recently received a highly commended
in the 2007 ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award, which highlights her
potential. If you're a fan of Smart or Arkley, this is an exhibition
that will appeal.
The exhibition is open Tuesday to Friday from 10
am to 6 pm; Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm and Sunday from 2 pm to
5 pm.
David Edwards
