New paintings
There is no doubt that on a technical level, Julie Fragar is one of the most competent painters working in Australia today, and certainly of her generation. But separating her from a dozen other technically competent painters is a sense that painting is only part of it. Unlike her more unctuous contemporaries, whose work seeks to dazzle in its virtuosity, or its sheer tastefulness, Fragar’s work appears to harness her fearsome technique only as a means to an end. Fragar’s application of paint does not merely satisfy, it magnetises, begging further involvement, and her latest exhibition, New Paintings, demonstrates this strength.
Perhaps the most surprising development in Fragar’s work is its escape of the reliance on the snapshot as a starting point. While Fragar continues to use photography as reference, there seems to be a more conscious construction of image in these works, an imbrication of myth and reality. The mythic lends Fragar’s work a hefty visual gravity, evolving its aesthetic to a place more akin to Gericault than Peyton. This evolution is welcome; not that Fragar’s work was ever less than technically superb. Rather, the world of painting has been slowly catching up, and Fragar is (fortunately) taking a deep breath and pushing into more bracing territory. Gone are the intimate moments, the self-conscious captures and Barthes’s punctum, repurposed in paint. New Paintings sees Fragar engaging with staging and composition in a much more active way, revealing scenes that we can hardly imagine, much less photograph.
Fragar’s last exhibition at Sarah Cottier, Marathon Boxing and Dogfights (2013), was visceral, unnerving and tough in its frank anger. Deftly executed, the exhibition was comprised of dogfights, bleak self-portraits and
Julie Fragar, Off Sure Feet, 2014. Oil on board, 137 x 102cm. Courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.
Julie Fragar, The Strings, 2014. Oil on board, 137.5 x 102cm. Courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.
