JUDITH VAN HEEREN Sea Garden
JUDITH VAN HEEREN Sea Garden 26 July 12 August 2017 Opening reception Wednesday 26 July, 6pm Dutch-born artist Judith Van Heeren creates surreal worlds inhabited by furred and feathered creatures lurking in airless, dream-like spaces. Rendered with smooth technicality, the works reference colonialist landscapes and natural history paintings while also invoking the fantasy of a distant dream. The artist s otherworldly scenes are at once eerie and beautiful; oppressive and idyllic, precipitating a silent tension that magnetizes us to the canvas in an attempt to reconcile and recalibrate reality. Through this, Van Heeren hints at the wildly contradictory relationship we have with the natural world. Van Heeren s new collection of oil paintings continues the artist s three decade-long celebration of the vicissitudes of the natural world, drawing from a specific, formative moment diving in the Great Barrier Reef. This experience changed the way she perceived the natural world by revealing the conflicted nexus between its captivating magic and confronting mortality. Plush, velvety renderings of whimsical landscapes populated by aqueous gardens and intricate encrusted hills of jewel-like organisms connect the observer with the beauty and fragility of these reef environments. Undulating corals and finger-like anemones sway in a silent dance choreographed by Van Heeren s memories, and yet there s a searing stillness that betrays their ostensible movement. They are like living fossils, frozen in the peak of their performance. Herein lies the dichotomy of these liminal landscapes, for they are at once animate and inanimate, energetic and inert. This coalescence of both life and death tacitly evokes the plight of the Great Barrier Reef fuelled by coral bleaching and pollution. Sharp foregrounds colonised by a lurking chiaroscuro give way to ghostly white horizons of vacant space a chilling apparition from the future. Through their flawless magic realism coupled with visual allusions to colonialist landscapes and natural history paintings, Van Heeren s surreal realms foreshadow the fate of the reef; for it may be reduced to a fantasy, a memory or a dream. Muted pastels and gentle tonal gradations adorning intricate minutiae lull the viewer into a vacuum of silence wherein faint whisperings reciting secrets of the natural world linger just out of reach. Since graduating from Melbourne s Victorian College of the Arts in 1989, Van Heeren has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, recent shows including a solo exhibition at Murray White Room, Melbourne (2016); Spring 1883, The Establishment Hotel, Sydney (2015); Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks (2013), Art Basel Hong Kong (2013). The artist s work is held in important collections including the National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of Western Australia; City of Stonnington; City of Port Phillip Collection; Holmes à Court Collection and Artbank. In 2010 Van Heeren was the recipient of the Moya Dyring Studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
Sea garden in pink 60 x 70 cm $8,900
Sea garden with anemones 62 x 76 cm $8,900
Daisyworld 80 x 135 cm $14,900
Day Seagarden 60 x 100 cm $12,000
Night Seagarden 60 x 100 cm $12,000
Pink sponge 50 x 60 cm $7,500
Seagarden with volcano 50 x 60 cm $7,500
Sea Urchin I 48 x 50 cm $6,600
Sea Urchin II 48 x 50 cm $6,600
White wolf and peacock 48 x 50 cm $6,600
Sea garden landscape 48 x 50 cm $6,600
Sea life study watercolour on 300gsm paper 36 x 34 cm $1,300 (framed)
Glass sponge watercolour on 300gsm paper 37 x 27 cm $1,300 (framed)
Sponge watercolour on 300gsm paper 36 x 36 cm $1,300 (framed)
Topview jellyfish watercolour on waterford rag paper 28.5 x 24 cm $1,300 (framed)
Underside of jellyfish watercolour on waterford rag paper 38 x 28 cm $1,300 (framed)
Lizard and insects watercolour on waterford rag paper 38 x 28 cm $1,300 (framed)
Snake and moth watercolour on waterford rag paper 38 x 28 cm $1,300 (framed)