Nicola Page

Tree Line - Level ARI Brisbane

2011-09-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

In January this year I undertook a 12 week residency at Level Artists Run Initiative in Brisbane, the following images are from the resulting group exhibition posted here with excerpts from the exhibition essay.

http://levelari.org/

Tree Line: an encompassing area of inhabitable land for plants, animals and other interdependent species as dictated by environmental elements. A naturally occurring boundary, while appearing solid from a distance, a tree line is created through a gradual transition in most places.

The tree line exists as a natural reaction between landform and life, an amalgamation of cohabitants drawn together through nature’s elements such as winds, tides, time and in some instances re-vegetation through fire. Life and creativity forge new ground, evolution through the relating of elemental forces thrown together, responding to tensions, defining themselves with and against the ‘other,’ collectively complimenting one another’s needs, creating cohabitation through a symphony in symbiosis.

The resulting works expressed a tendency toward themes related to connectedness, or a longing for it, a means of defining oneself in relation to a context whether that may be a place, a time or a community. The themes that emerged in the artworks were strongly connected to those relating to a set of challenges in conceptualising the project and the nature of collaboration itself. It is interesting to see that the concerns of the initial hypothesis have informed the artists focus and the overall makeup of the exhibition in this way, especially when considering that the thematic direction was completely open, intentionally leaving space for self definition within the context of the gallery walls and the group’s individual trajectories.

Utako Shindo

Utako Shindo, in referencing the poem ‘Tintern Abbey’ by Wordsworth, shares the experience of the author in returning home after many years in absence. The poignancy of such universal themes are highlighted as this experience transcends time and place, defying any cultural implications of the text by the English poet written in 1798, printed on the delicately translucent Japanese paper. The text is framed by Shindo’s photographic portraits and the local Japanese landscape, layered over the mind’s eye of its inhabitants as the work reflects on a connection to memory and its presence in the experience of the present.

Saskia Pandji Sakti

Saskia Pandji Sakti’s photographic portraits speak of the emotional displacement of people living with chronic and long term illness and the implication of marginalization imposed by un-wellness. The images take strong cues in representation familiar to fashion photography with a certain seamless studio finish, this however only proves to heighten the lackluster of her subjects and their personal struggles experienced every day, ultimately illustrating a sense of displacement and disengagement from a broader cultural sphere.

Trudi Brinckman

Trudi Brinckman’s hanging sculpture, an ode to home, transience and homelessness is constructed with plastic bags, homeless blankets and wire, materials collected from the streets Paris during a previous residency. The permanency of the plastic materials directly contradicts the ephemeral quality of the brightly coloured, weightlessness of the hanging sculpture with its subtle responsiveness to the air currents generated by any movement within the space. Hanging within a small, frail house frame on the floor, a single lit domestic light globe sits as a warm reminder of the need for a sense of home within our inhabited spaces and communities.

Nicola Page

Nicola Page’s works, painted behind glass present a window into an imagined space, the unreality of the ideal specifically in relation to home and environment and a local history. There is a push here between hope and idealism against its potentials and pitfalls as defined and measured by reality and tested through time.

Lucy Griggs

Lucy Griggs presents a series of small finely detailed water colour paintings depicting everyday images from her new home in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a country transitioning from Soviet communist rule and newly coming to terms with ideas of democracy, capitalism and personal freedom. Her images capture this moment in history with all its contrasts and contradictions, whilst the works possess elements of hope and beauty along with generous nostalgia for the past, the images in all their subtlety also hint at a darker, more shadowy side to life amidst the soviet legacy.

Linda Tegg

Linda Tegg’s DVD and installation work ‘Tortoise’ explored relationships between the space of the gallery, the artwork and its audience. Concepts repeated in Tegg’s practice, but in this instance she has played choreographer in coordinating a group of people moving as one organism, constructed out of mirrored shields that neatly conceal the human mechanism of the creature within. The reflective planes work collectively as a liquid none space or blind spot in the gallery, while the physical presence of the shields define a barrier, the witnessing of which flickers between real and unreal, tangible and completely fluid.

Worm Mountain at C3

2010-07-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

A few details of my painting _ painted in acrylic behind perspex.

Installation shots of the gallery

My paintings on perspex

Dane Lovett's portrait of Rick Rubin

Dane Lovett

Jordan Wood's Sculpture centre

Me, Lucy and Linda L to R

Linda Tegg - video work

Lucy Griggs

Amber Wallis

Andy Hutson

Worm Mountain - Exhibition in Melbourne opens 23 June

2010-06-13T23:03:00.000-07:00

Worm Mountain a little conText

OPENING 6 - 8pm Wed 23rd June runs untill the 11th of July

Amber Wallis, Andy Hutson, Dane Lovett, Jordan Wood, Linda Tegg, Lucy Griggs and Nicola Page.

Worm Mountain presents new works by seven emerging artists exploring the theme of natural history.

Nature is an entity unto itself before and beyond us, endlessly moving in synergetic cycles of death and creation, ebbing and flowing in it’s own chaotic patterns of evolution and destruction, through time spans beyond the human grasp. The cultivated perspective is really one of comprehension as we come to terms with our own time and place within this chaos to deal with natural elements beyond our control, whether we are harmonious or contrary.

These artists cite nature and the sublime as concerns for their work, as they draw inspiration from their environments reflecting an internalized space, more so than the exterior landscape, one where value is not added but processed and experienced. This may manifest in many forms such as, the decorative, historical, scientific, sociological, spiritual, auto biographical or nostalgic but most often a unique fusion.

New work for a group show, Worm Mountain.

plus

A four panel painting going to the Waterhouse art prize opening at the Adelaide Museum in July, it will look something like this after it is framed.

Paintings, Oil, Acrylic and Mixed Media

2010-03-03T03:36:00.001-08:00

New works for 2010 studio artists show at Rearview.
These are very much in the realm of vanitas art going beyond still life. I have been looking into themes on the spectrum of life and abundance with, I suppose, a kind of ideal of natural purity, polarized with, corruption, decay and urban/cultural decay.

Herbaceous Order

2009-10-13T02:09:00.001-07:00

Paintings - Oil on Canvas

Works on Paper -Guache and Drawings

Patterns and other Biophilia - Drawings on news print and packing boxes

2009-08-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

Works on Paper

2009-08-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Series of Drawing and Details acrylic paint and charcoal on paper

Interior series

2009-02-16T21:06:00.000-08:00

Here is work from the VCA Graduate exhibition 2008
There are more images and plenty of text on the MVA seminars page of the VCA web site.

These images are from my most recent body of work. I was interested in notions of abundance and preservation. They're a kind of still life or vanitas art, as digital prints of scanned flowers I had collected throughout the year.

I feel the flowers have been preserved by the scanner, capturing the minutest of detail and intensity of colour. Designs are based on Victorian ornate domestic fittings that cover many of the terrace houses throughout the city suburbs of Melbourne. I was interested in the cultivation of nature and how it is represented in architecture and gardens. There are also many associations to colonialism here for me.

Beneath the Empire - Flinders lane Gallery Upstairs

2009-02-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

These are some prints from an exhibition in May 2008 with Ben Mckeown and Paul Kalemba.
Beneath the Empire is a group exhibition exploring the influence of Australia's Colonial history and its relationship to culture, identity, place and environment. The exhibition showcased the works of three Melbourne based artists from diverse backgrounds, who themselves are a Product of shared colonial histories.

For me I was interested in the decorative arts and a relationship to place and landscape. I took these aerial photos while on holiday in western Australia and overlay them with designs derived form Australian bush flowers that created beautiful moments of visual synchronicity.

Eden of Margaret Preston

Habitat of Fiona Hall

Garden of Olive Pink

Vessel of Lallah Rookh (Truganinni)

Abode of Clarice Beckett

The prints were titled after Australian female icons, all were pioneers of culture in one form or another. Their lives draw a line through a certain history that I would like my audience to consider. By following their stories we can explore a recent history of culture in Australia from colonial times up until today with a focus on, landscape, native flora, fauna and indigenous culture.

Review MCV
Lucy Elliot
Beneath the Empire
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Upstairs Flinders Gallery

Beneath the Empire is a group show by three artists who explore the idea of ‘location’ in terms of nationality, imperialism and social difference. Each artist is interested in colonialism in Australian history how it has shaped their own identity.
For Ben McKeown, this has meant a self-reflective concern with his own Indigenous and gay identities; for Nicola Page it’s meant subtly drawing on her own experience of family migration; and for Paul Kalemba, an engagement with the environmental impact of colonisation.
A range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking and installation are used in the exhibition. Whilst the concerns of each artist are particular to their own experience, collectively the works come together to express a shared concern with issues surrounding social justice and environmental degradation.
Nicola Page has created beautiful prints exploring the idea of categorisation. The works consist of prints of aerial photographs of landscapes, overlayed with large, superimposed shapes. The pieces reference Australian women artists who have shown an interest in the environment and Australian history, with the connection between nature and culture one that Page is interested in exploring. Their titles are a kind of reclamation or re-mapping of place through the experiences of women artists: ‘Habitat of Fiona Hall’, ‘Garden of Olive Pink’ and ‘Eden of Margaret Preston’.
Paul Kalemba has created meticulous ink drawings inspired by the design of Australian coins. Each of the drawings takes an Australian native animal and places it in an environment that reflects signs of colonisation. The animals are displaced in time and place, with remnants of degradation surrounding them. The actual process of creating the works, which involves hours of drawing, brings Kalemba close to his animal subjects and imbues them with strong personalities.
Ben McKeown’s paintings draw on his experience of living in his traditional country on the west coast of South Australia, and his more recent experiences of living in Melbourne. The works combine traditional dot painting with abstraction to create a visual language highlighting McKeown’s relationship with location and past and present Australian history.
Beneath the Empire offers the viewer both a visually appealing experience, and the invitation to consider the impact of colonialism on the Australian landscape.

Digital sketches and photo collage

2009-02-16T16:01:00.001-08:00

A Safe Space: Animation and Painting installation

2009-02-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

The first stage of the work shown @ Horse Bazaar, 3.5 min animation

A Safe Space: Animation and Painting installation @ Loop 07

Animations and painting in the installation were created from this image,

exploring use of cultivation and processing of the organic material to create a design.

This work was initially created for exhibition ‘Geek Chic’ at Loop in Melbourne.
The exhibition curated by Alex Gibson, with the intention of exploring an interaction between analogue and digital art. An adaptation of the work (without the painted element, for practical purposes) was picked up by Loop and featured there for several month following the exhibition.

‘A Safe Space’ Exploring concepts of beauty through a relationship between analogue and digital art.

The installation is representative of organism and environment as one. The use of colour and linear form create space that functions as a metaphor for: surface, skin, ground, the face of the earth as they reflect the subconscious, emotional space we all inhabit. Mostly it’s the space that connects these inner and outer worlds. Forms appear and dissolve like land masses through subdued pink hues as mind, memory and intuitions arise into clarity from a subconscious sea.

Projected works are sight specific, light and colour are used to transform and extend the space absorbing the viewer. The environment becomes it’s own world contained and enshrined, a safe space.

A published review can be found at Un:Vol 2:1 pg 69.

Strip @ Red Gallery

2009-02-15T15:42:00.000-08:00

work L to R by Bethanie Nichols, Nicola Page and Hannah Gatland

'Strip' at Red Gallery, with Yasim Holm, Hannah Gatland, Bethanie Nichols and Elizabeth Bryan and myself.

I curated the exhibition with five female artist of a similar age because I was interested in the feminine principles coming through in our practices. We decided to juxtapose the feminine them of the exhibition with traditionally masculine format of the monolith strips hanging down the walls. I felt that this presentation of our work gave the room in the gallery an almost shrine like quality.