An interview with Denise Green
Denise Green is one of very few Australian artists to have sustained a distinguished career for some twenty-five years in the highly competitive environment of New York, where she is based-an indication of her resilience and artistic commitment. Her work has been exhibited widely both internationally and within Australia, is the subject of a recent article in Art in America and of an Art & Australia monograph by Katrina Rumley.1 Currently, she has one survey exhibition in Australia (showing at the Brisbane City Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales) and another touring Europe.2 Where once we would have termed her an 'expatriate', such a fixed classification can no longer be sustained. From the 1990s onwards, whether through ready access to air travel or for sheer survival, mobility has become the norm for many people. Whilst maintaining a studio in New York's Tribeca district, Green travels extensively in Europe, Asia and regularly returns to Australia. The following conversation took place during her visit to Brisbane in January 2001 in conjunction with the survey exhibition Resonating: Paintings by Denise Green.
Anne Kirker Denise, could we begin with the notion of 'mobility' and how this may relate to your imagery of the last decade. It seems to me that with the series of highly developed drawings Inspired by Gerhard, completed in 1997, your familiar symbols are presented often in a hybrid state, in shifting registers and on an amorphous ground. Am I correct in perceiving the fan, the house, the chair, the vessel and other symbols as more 'migratory' now than they were in the seventies?
Denise Green I like the way that you picked up on the idea of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline