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Anneke Silver 's work is meticulously executed and exudes both joy and cultural schizophrenia. Flashes of the ancient Aegean, Egyptian , Byzantine and pre-historic imagery as well as imagery from living cultures-Australian Aboriginal and Eastern European folk art- are contained in ten small icons and six large canvasses by this Townsville based artist.
Silver's work touches on astronomy, mythology, biology, botany. The forms include humanoid trees, treed humans, figures entwined, snakes entwined, spiky leaved plants, stones, fish, birds, suns, moons. The textures are luscious and as varied as the 'borrowed' images. Gold leaf is prolific and applied to smooth empty spaces, to buttered layers of under paint, over the spores of a fern frond or cloth, and as a stencil of stars. Other textures are dribbles of wax, washes and scumbles of colour, thick pastes of paint, rectangles of sand (3:4 of a large canvas =the golden section = the earth), and, in the small icons, carved timber.
Along with the gold, the predominant colours are a range of earthly hues surrounding touches of primary brilliance. Born and educated in Europe Silver developed an intense liking for the bright folk art of Eastern Europe.1 Decoration is a feature of her work. Circles, stars, flowers, loops and zigzags encase thirteen Madonnas from as many ancient cultures in Generation. The central image is less illustrative and draws on abstract 'mind spaces'2, rather than historic pastiche.
Giancometti-like measuring lines continue off the edges of the figures and shapes, giving the works movement and vitality. There are layers of these lines reminiscent of Auerbach, showing the figures' process (history) of development.
The work, Memories of the Aegean, draws a direct parallel between