August Ward, Permissions, installation view, 2024, Artspace.

These works by August Ward are part of a group exhibition of 'emerging' artists at Artspace including Yana Dombrowsky-M'Baye and Dayle Palfreyman. Ward's large-scale paintings look at symbols of aspirational consumerism, like vases and flowers, in the context of affluent suburban interiors. The paintings themselves, if purchased, could become objects in the very interiors that they depict.

On a material level I was drawn to the texture of the paint, and the digging into and gouging, removal and layering - what paint does when acted upon. I've been focusing on painting as action and labour, not image or aesthetic, so I loved seeing action in Ward's painting.

August Ward, Surrender, detail, 2024.

All the exhibitions at Artspace this year have been considering the question "Do I need territory?", Permissions looks at the field of the emerging artist as being a territory, therefore acknowledging the fixed career pathway of the artist from "emerging", to "mid-career", to "established", and asking "whose responsibility is it to push these territory boundaries?"

It's strange for me to be considered "emerging" when I'm 56 years old, having had a 30 year career that was "established". It's as if those 30 years have been erased and none of it counts because it wasn't spent traveling down the art pathway. I was on a road running parallel. Those artist career pathway terms are often seen in art gallery or art institution copy advertising calls for proposals, residencies, or job opportunities. They are part of the official language of the art world. A world that expects artists to experiment and challenge conventional thinking, but within the confines of the pre-existing conventional margins. Perhaps, then, it's the institutions that need to push these territory boundaries, or maybe all it would take would be for them to treat them as fluid rather than fixed.