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the art of judith wright and ian friend

 judith wright: desire; ian friend: tracing the paths of memory

Anne Kirker
Eyeline 73
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Last year, at the galleries of Andrew Baker and Jan Manton, two senior Brisbane-based artists, Judith Wright and Ian Friend, held solo shows. To my mind, each, in their respective ways summed up a phrase from Hal Foster’s book ‘The Return of the Real’, where he states that both modernism and postmodernism demonstrate ‘a continual process of anticipated futures and reconstructed pasts’.1 Foster was in part referring to the process of ‘deferred action’ whereby subjectivity is never fixed or established once and for all. I like this notion as it fits with malleability, slippage, and shifting borders of awareness. It also implies exploration along paths that may be uncertain but that are pursued nevertheless.

Wright’s exhibition comprised her characteristic large-scale monochromatic drawings of abstract shapes, referencing ‘the body’, silhouetted on translucent white Japanese paper. Startlingly new was the procession of small bronzes, cast from a soft claylike substance, which was placed in front of them. Each with a subtle colour difference stood no higher than twelve centimetres from waist level on the single narrow bench. Given the over-all title of Proposition, these little objects from 2010, were conceived in groups of three. Important this, as the risk of misunderstanding the artist’s sculpture as discreet stand-alone (and only ‘hand-held’) personages would otherwise be high and would ignore the compelling dialogue between them. Nevertheless, for those who know Wright’s oeuvre well, there is always the awareness that her imagery is about the body in counterpoint with others, both animate and inanimate, of intimate human relationships, of connections with archetypal (possibly ritualistic and totemic) presences, and with the fluidity between the conscious and unconscious mind in determining her art.

When I

Judith Wright, Desire, 2009-10. Installation of three drawings. Acrylic on Japanese paper, each 200 x 200cm. Pinned to wall beyond procession of three bronzes, each 10 x 12cm. Private collection, Brisbane. Photography Peter Wright.

Judith Wright, Desire, 2009-10. Installation of three drawings. Acrylic on Japanese paper, each 200 x 200cm. Pinned to wall beyond procession of three bronzes, each 10 x 12cm. Private collection, Brisbane. Photography Peter Wright.

Ian Friend, Tracing the paths of memory: Biting the air #5, 2009-10. Oil on canvas, 165 x 105cm. Private collection, Brisbane. 

Ian Friend, Tracing the paths of memory: Biting the air #5, 2009-10. Oil on canvas, 165 x 105cm. Private collection, Brisbane.