Richard Artschwager (1923 - 2013)

Richard Artschwager was an American artist, based in New York. He started out learning simple cabinetmaking, then a workshop fire in the late 1950’s inspired him to use left over materials in sculpture, then he expanded into painting, drawing, site-specific installation, and photo-based work.

Richard Artschwager, Table with Pink Table Cloth, 1964, formica on wood.

Richard Artschwager, Corner Piece, 1992.

What interests me about Artschwager’s work is the way he connects ideas and spaces. He uses visual deception to make the familiar unfamiliar, or somehow 'off', by putting a two dimensional painting of a three dimensional object onto another three dimensional object (e.g. a cube). The deception is pushed further by using materials like Formica that is an industrial product designed to represent another material, like wood or marble. He often simulates a wood finish in paint blurring the lines between representation and simulation. He uses surface treatment as a signifier - it's not just an affect, it's anchored in the idea of the work.

Richard Artschwager, Splatter Office, 2000, acrylic on wood, formica, aluminium.

He goes for the alternative option, like drawing attention to corners by building into them, rather than using the flat surface of the wall. The architectural strength of a space is its corners, where two planes converge and hold each other up. He plays with the way that things and surfaces connect and relate to one another.

His practice sits in many different genres like Pop Art, Minimal Art, and Conceptual Art, and both painting and sculpture.

“Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch” – Richard Artschwager

Helen Johnson

Helen Johnson (b. 1979, Melbourne, Australia) uses painting as a tool to investigate issues around the legacy of colonialism, the construction of national identity, personal history, and contemporary politics in Australia. Her paintings are dense with many layered surfaces that reflect the complexities of identity formation in a society built on a colonised foundation. She incorporates historical imagery from a variety of sources including maps, political cartoons, fragments of bodies, and handwritten text. Her works are often double sided, hung to divide a space, and scaled to the human body.

Helen Johnson, He Head, She Shed, 2015, acrylic on canvas.

Helen Johnson, Bad Debt, 2016, acrylic on canvas, wood.

As my work is increasingly delving into the connections between layers, and between boundaries of space, place, and time, I’m thinking more about inherited colonial trauma from my Irish ancestors who transitioned from being colonised to being colonists. I’m interested in the way that Johnson’s imagery looks at the relationships and disparities between personal and official histories and her intelligent approach to a difficult subject.

Johnson states: ‘I have an increasing interest in painting not as a means of representation but as a ground where representatives can play in a more pluralistic visual language which deals in suggestiveness, distortion and ambiguity rather than depiction and statement.’

I'm not interested in representation but I'm all about suggestion, distortion, and ambiguity. How then can I make these ideas evident in the work?