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Following the closure of Foyer installation space earlier this year, Inflight opened its doors as one of Tasmania’s few artist-run galleries. Operated by the artists of Letitia Street studios, Inflight’s early spring exhibition was Painting the Home. Curated by Amanda Davies and Colin Langridge, Painting the Home focused on figurative and abstract painters who had utilised aspects of the domestic interior as primary source material.
Using as a thematic springboard points raised by Hannah Fink in the 1995 ‘Home’ edition of Art and Australia, Davies and Langridge explored the role of the domestic interior in contemporary Australian painting, drawing inspiration from the current popularity of home renovation television programs. The result was an ambitious leap into an overwhelmingly broad field.
The potential of colour and pattern provided a loose connection between some of the works included in Painting the Home. Representing the decorative formalities of the domestic space was the work of Neil Haddon and David Hawley. Painted on aluminium with household enamel, the multi-coloured vertical stripes of Haddon’s Slip No. 3, 2003, shimmered mutely in obsessive exactness and recalled the dull shine of institutional décor. In contrast, Hawley’s analogous configuration on hessain prickled with the kind of design one might find on a seventies-inspired tablecloth. A work of stocky proportions, Hawley’s jigsaw-like Constellation, 2000, offset the cool slickness of Haddon’s candied abstraction with earthy tones and rough texture.
Celeste Chandler’s Sweetmeat, 2003, also cited the decorative pattern of cloth. A painterly depiction of a nude woman, hand resting on the creamy suppleness of her belly and leaning against embellished fabric, Sweetmeat was the only piece in the exhibition to include the human figure. Best known