Selina Ershadi reflects on Anoushka Akel’s exhibition Wet Contact (Michael Lett, 25 Februrary – 2 April 2022) – Tamaki Makaurau Auckland March 2022.

Perception:

Anoushka’s process is a material engagement of layer, line and erasure that is both sensual and arduous; delicate yet crude. Pressing, sanding, scratching, rubbing, smearing, scraping, she applies layer upon layer (wave after wave) to the canvas, sometimes weathering away the surface from the outset or in between applications to faintly reveal what remains beneath, then building it back up again. I think of her daughter’s starfish shape, and the theorist Eva Haywards’s figuring of the starfish as a lifeform of continual transformation. (Ershadi, S. 2022)

The author describes the process of the artist in terms of material engagement and layering. She uses a duality of descriptive words that are both opposite and yet happily coupled, for example, ‘line and erasure’, ‘sensual and arduous’ and ‘delicate yet crude’. This duality is repeated when she references the artist’s young daughter and the theorist Eva Hayward in the same sentence. There is an intimate tone in the discussion which is earlier identified in the closeness of the author and the artist: they share a studio; she mentions long conversations between them and that they orbited over a de stabilising two years of lockdown.

The second sentence is a series of processes as if observed from the adjacent studio. Pressing, sanding, scratching, rubbing, smearing etc. It is the longest sentence as if to emphasise the time and labour it takes to produce these paintings. She mentions, (in brackets) that the process of layering is like wave after wave of addition and subtraction, a forward and backward of movement towards the reveal. This mention of waves also neatly reminds the reader of the sea theme of Akel’s current body of work and her exhibition title ‘Wet Contact’; the water themed poetry of Alice Oswald, which appears in the next paragraph, and neatly leads the way to the starfish motif.

The starfish reference first appears as an observation by the artist during her daughter’s swimming class. She was struck by the state of surrender in the starfish survival pose she was learning. Eva Hayward is an associate professor at the University of Arizona and has written a paper, ‘Tranimalities in the Age of Trans* Life’, which uses the starfish symbolically as a lifeform of continual transformations. The starfish is associated with a state of surrender and of continual transformation, which is how the author describes the artist’s process.

The author’s writing style is more than just a review of the artist’s work, the references and descriptions are more intimate and more considered. This draws me into a world of conversations they have undoubtedly had regarding current reading lists, discoveries and revelations and family stories. I researched the references to Alice Oswald and Eva Hayward mentioned in this quote and found them to be revealing and opening a world of water references and transformation. These were illuminating and insightful paths to follow and made me take a second, deeper look into Anoushka’s work: the significance of the teardrops, the use of the colour blue and the choice of title. I have no impulse to question her references as I assume that they have been discussed in person with the artist, so the writing becomes less of a review and more of an informed opinion.

Wet Physics, 2021
Oil, pastel and wax pencil on canvas
1000 x 1500mm
Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland.

Opinion:

Part of the difficulty in committing black marks to the screen is that Anoushka’s paintings resist and wrestle with definition. (Ershadi, S. 2022)

In this quote, the author admits she has struggled to write about Akel’s work because they seem to resist easy definition. The opening paragraph describes how it took many attempts to write about the artist’s new exhibition because the works straddle various forms and perspectives. She indicates that much communication and discussion has occurred between the two that has intensified during lockdown. There is also mention of Anoushka gifting a painting to her to ‘salve the pain’ of the end of a relationship and ‘communicate her deep care’. Perhaps the proximity of author and artist is interfering with the objectivity needed to stand back and review.

However, at the same time, it does seem an accurate description on several levels. The artist’s processes seem to add and subtract. Sanding, smearing, scratching, scraping as if unsure of what belongs and what doesn’t. Are they line drawings or paintings or prints or are they all those things? Akel describes removing the evidence of painting in her process. The sea theme is vast, formless and edgeless, the ‘unfenced place’ as described by Oswald. Akel describes how she is trying to figure out how water behaves’ “Every time l looked at it, I couldn’t order it, it was completely out of my control visually,”. As the viewer, are we also looking at something visually out of our control, something formless and unfenced? Her work certainly doesn’t stay still, the lines toss us about and the flat colour works to bounce us back out. There is certainly more going on than first meets the eye and thus difficult to put into words.

The Sea is Another Story, 2022
Lithographic ink and oil on unstretched canvas
1070 x 1440mm
Installation view, Wet Contact exhibition 2022, Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland.

Proposition:

If poetry is invested in the newness words might attain when pressed against one another, painting has taken on a similar procedure for Anoushka in her experimentation with monotype printing in her practice. She writes: “The process of pressing one’s painting surface or structure against another and seeing them receive and have an effect on each other ….. seems to satisfy so much of what my thinking about, and observing of, human nature and nurture. The pressing action and its subsequent reaction can be tender or forceful.” (Ershadi, S. 2022)

The author proposes that if poetry invests in the effect new combinations of words pressed together might produce on the reader, then Akel’s experimentation with monoprint and pressing one painted surface against another, has taken on the same procedure. She quotes the artist who confirms her investment in seeing the effect the pressing has and describes how this process satisfies so much of what she thinks about human nature and nurture. The pressing action and its subsequent reaction – which can be tender or forceful. Pressing works against each other has formed a major part of Akel’s process in her works for this exhibition the author continues. However, does this pressing reveal itself significantly to the viewer so that the action is understood. There is a feel of looking at a reflection of something. Often a mark imposed does not have the intensity of the original mark or colour. There is a feeling of response in the tonal temperature in her paintings, rather than deliberate action. Her works display a tenderness whereas her action of pressing is perhaps the more forceful action. Akel speaks about the residue left being more interesting than a copy or translation. The poetry comparison of new words coming together seems to elicit a more explosive reaction, whereas Akel’s process alludes to more of a biproduct of that reaction. Akel’s work Being Marthe for example, after observing Pierre Bonard’s portrait of his wife in, The Bath, becomes the residue, the wet contact, the aftermath.

Being Marthe, 2021
Oil, coloured wax pencil on canvas
350 x 450mm
Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland

References:

Ershadi, Selina, ‘How Does It Start The Sea,’ in Documents, ed. Victoria Wynne-Jones (Auckland: Michael Lett Publishing: 2023), p134-151.

Hayward, Eva, ‘More Lessons from a Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Trans speciated Selves,’ Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no.3/4 (Fall-Winter 2008): 68-85.

’Hayward, Eva, & Weinstein, Jami, ‘Tranimalities in the Age of Trans* Life’, ‘TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2, no.2 (May 2015) 195-208.

Oswald, Alice, ‘An Interview with Water,’ Oxford Professor of Poetry Lecture, https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/article/alice-oswald-professor-of-poetry-lecture-now-online

Samuels, Lisa, ‘Concurrence,’ in Documents, ed. Victoria Wynne-Jones (Auckland: Michael Lett Publishing: 2023), p152-171.

Assignment: Unpacking Critical Text