Anoushka Akel, Carrying the Beast at Michael Lett

Questions posed by Victoria Wynne-Jones:

How might painting reach out and search for the shapes that describe where we are today?

What happens when it touches at its borders and rubs up against the very edges of things?

Perhaps it is power that lies at these edges, in the lines, at the borders that hold. It is here that storytelling, the rudimentary and accumulative transmission of narratives becomes an act of survival.

In the work, Arterial Sun, I was interested in her use of unprimed canvas and the was the oil paint was bleeding into the canvas. The paint must have been diluted with oil to achieve this. I was interested in the line markings, they looked like they were applied with biro. Also, the edges were left exposed and allowed to fray. The work was also front mounted onto a frame which looked like it had a previous use.

Commune (green) and Commune (gold), completed during Akel’s residency at McCahon House. Again, the use of raw canvas the blurred lines and the frayed edges all play into my practice at the moment, as a reminder of the fabric element of canvas, emphasising the texture and weave and the ability to fray and come undone. The marks are rudimentary and basic, the colour bleached out during the drying process. The rough tacks that hold the canvas to the wall.

Carrying the Beast, a series of paintings by Akel in the exhibition that nod to Anne McCahon (Colin’s wife) and her illustrations. Wynne-Jones references the removal or rubbing away of paint as Akel’s painting process, though in these works are more ‘pointed’, ‘area-specific loss’.