March 25, 2023 • 26 mins
Wilma Tabacco was born in Italy, and lives in Australia Wilma uses abstract iconography to refer to aspects of Italian cultural history, archaeological artefacts found in ancient ruins and she ‘maps’ ground plans of architectural spaces. She has presented 45 solo exhibitions since 1988, in Australia, Italy and Korea and participated in over 250 group exhibitions, including in New York, Dubai, London, Seoul, Paris, Edinburgh.
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(00:02):
Welcome to season seven ofthe Prima Donna Podcast, Sonic
Portraits of Australian Artists.
This audio was recorded andproduced on Wurundjeri Country.
I pay respects toelders past and present.
The third episode in this seriesfeatures visual artist Wilma Tabacco.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
(00:24):
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
I've titled this piece, theInterweaving of Images and Words.
Prelude.
. Primadonna is Italian, meaningFirst Lady, and refers to
the lead soprano in an opera.
(00:46):
Their roles written by men usuallyportray Temptresses courtesans.
Power seekers, romantics,duped by lascivious men.
These women mostly died dramaticallyon stage, stabbed, shot, poisoned,
brokenhearted, or by their own hand.
(01:10):
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigolettocontains an aria, sung by a
tenor who plays the characterof the Duke of Mantova . It
is titled La Donna e Mobile.
The libretto was written byFrancesco Maria Piave and is
based on a play by Victor Hugo.
The tune is very upbeat and catchy.
(01:35):
La Donna e Mobile translatesas, Woman is Fickle.
. It continues (01:40):
Qual piuma al vento – like a feather in the wind
Muta d’accento – e di pensierShe changes her voice and mind.
All translations inevitably lackthe essence of the original language
in this case, a more accuratetranslation is yes, woman is
(02:01):
fickle like a feather in the wind.
She has no voice and no mind,meaning she is dumb and silly.
It gets worse.
Sisters of the Revolution, add the Dukeof Mantova, Signor Verdi, Signor Piave
and Messieur Hugo to your burning list!
(02:29):
Introducing myself, shouldI say I am Wilma Tabacco, or
my name is Wilma Tabacco..
I am first person.
Singular of the present tense.
Indicative of the verb tobe conjugates as follows.
I am.
You are she.
He is.
We are.
You are.
(02:49):
They are.
This is the first verb One learnswhen studying a foreign language.
The next thing one learns to say is.
What is your name, inItalian, ‘come ti chiami’?
Answer (03:02):
my name is Wilma Tabacco, in Italian, mi ciamo Wilma Tabacco.
hear the difference in the voicemodulation, tonality, and pronunciation
When I use Italian to say my name.
I remember a boy from my childhood wholived across the road from my family.
(03:22):
His name was Prospero.
In the Abruzzese dialect,my parents spoke.
Prospero means a match.
You know that thing onceused for lighting fires?
The Italian word formatch is fiammifero.
Prosper actually means prosperous,affluent of good fortune.
(03:44):
I didn't know that at thetime, so I thought, what a
strange name to give someone.
I did not then realize that myname was even stranger than his.
(04:09):
Last week, a telephone recordedfemale robot-like voice instructed
me to repeat a phrase three times sothat my voice could be recorded for
identification purposes in a governmentauthorities voice recognition program.
I could have refused, butthen my problem would never
(04:29):
be resolved, so I complied.
Yes, I confess I did put on a veryposh accent and disguised my voice,
not deliberately, I just don't respondwell to being told what to do, but
the robotic voice did not complain.
So now my disembodied voice officiallyidentifies me and I don't like it.
(04:54):
I felt affronted by the process.
I wanted to inform that robot thatI'm an artist and that some artists
are identified by their artworks,Edvard Munch’s painting the scream.
A picture of a woman's screamingpopped into my head as I
recorded my voice identity.
(05:15):
That screaming woman is mute,but I felt her scream and
wanted to add mine to her.
Then I remembered Cy Twombly’s paintedwords echoing as moans, groans,
and whales scribbled, scrawled,smudged, erased, and repeated.
Yes, some artists areidentified by their artworks.
(05:43):
What impetus propels someoneto become an artist, a
musician, a dancer, a writer.
Professions where potentialfailure stares you in the
face at every step you take.
There is no satisfactory answer.
Perhaps clues can be found,captured within one's memory,
fragmented and disconnected thatmight provide some insights.
(06:07):
I remember an episode in primary school,grade one, I think the teacher gave
each pupil a sheet of unlined paperand asked us to draw a tree in pencil.
She then gave it a little demonstrationof how we might go about this.
For me, this experiencewas magical, mesmerizing.
(06:34):
My tree didn't really look like atree compared to some that the others
had drawn, but I was happy, so happy.
When I first attended primaryschool, I could not speak English.
I was born in Italy and arrivedhere at the age of four.
I have no memory of learning English.
But I do remember that in the firstweek of prep grade, the teacher
(06:59):
asked each pupil in turn to come ontoher platform and, in chalk, copy a
letter of the alphabet that she hadlisted previously sequentially, A to
Z horizontally across the blackboardin her beautiful handwritten script.
Our letter was to bewritten beneath hers.
(07:21):
I got the letter B..
I made a downward verticalline turned right.
I made an upward loop that joinedthe vertical in the correct position.
Wrong Wilma.
You make the downward verticalshaft, go back our pathway, make
a right hand turn, create theloop downwards, and join it.
(07:47):
Mine was missing that littlesticking out bit of vertical line
that allows the B to sit neatlyon the horizontal line of a page.
As soon as I was able to readand speak English, I became my
parents' interpreter and translator.
It was harder for them to learn astrange language as quickly as I had.
(08:11):
This was such a big responsibilityfor a young child, one that caused
me considerable embarrassment.
Did these seemingly disconnectedexperiences from long ago plant some
slow germinating seed in my psyche.
One that fused the making of imageswith the formation of words, English,
(08:36):
Italian and Abruzzese dialect?
Abstract images, words in thealphabet, chopped up and reconfigured
to look like maps of actual placesare often the subject or sometimes
the content of my paintings.
I like to think of my abstractionsas studied signs of illegibility.
(08:58):
I write random words in unlined books,scrawled haphazardly over pages.
They appear to have drifted downfrom the air and landed on a page
in a sort of topography of thoughts.
I've done this since the late eighties.
I have books and books ofinteresting words that I
(09:19):
sometimes refer to when I struggle
to title works or exhibitions,words and images together.
Lately, I've been collecting Latinwords with the neuter suffix ‘ium’:
premium Consortium, palladiumSymposium, compendium, podium, and
(09:41):
proscenium, just to name a few.
There are hundreds of themused in the English language.
In grade four, I was told thatI would never be an artist.
It was just before Christmas.
I was asked to find a cardboardbox that would be used to house the
(10:03):
nativity scene we would later make.
I did, and it was therefore mytask to paint the outside of the
box in a most glorious, dark blue.
I now know it was ultramarine blue.
It was meant to representthe night sky, I suppose.
I commenced.
No, that is not the way you paint.
(10:25):
You don't paint smudgy marks witha loaded brush any old which way.
You start at the top left cornerof the box and paint in a straight
horizontal line to the other corner.
Then you repeat the same processunder the first stroke and continue
until you reach the bottom of the box.
(10:46):
Wilma will never be an artist.
Well, Mrs.
So-and-So whose name and face I'veforgotten, but whose words I've always
remembered, I have now been a successfulprofessional artist for nearly 40 years.
What you didn't understand wasthat your formula lacked the
(11:10):
personal, any residue, emotion,and it lacked my hand, hence, me.
My first solo exhibition was in 1988at Niagara Galleries in Richmond.
Hard work, great ideas and superiortechnical painting skills can go
unnoticed without an unexpected eventthat changes the course of one's life.
(11:37):
The director of Niagara Galleriescame to visit an artist colleague
whose studio was located inthe same complex as mine.
To enter her studio.
He had to pass through mine.
He saw my paintings, likedthem, and ask my colleague
to tell me to telephone him.
After having shown folios of myworks to various gallery directors,
(12:00):
that's what one did before digitalimages, the internet and social
media, and being told, oh, we'rebooked up for the next three years.
Come back some other time,meaning don't come back at all.
I wasted no time.
The rest is history.
Thank you, Mr.
William Nuttall.
(12:21):
I exhibited with Niagara Galleriesfor 21 years, from 1988 until
2010, with works sold to majornational and state museums and
galleries, and to private collectors.
I can't go through my CV here.
It runs to 13 pages of dense text.
(12:43):
Suffice it to say that I've mounted45 solo exhibitions in a variety
of commercial and public spaces.
Participated in 250 or more groupexhibitions, co-directed an art
gallery, Langford120 for eight years.
Curated exhibitions,written essays, and more.
(13:04):
My work has been reviewedin newspapers magazine.
Books, catalogs have been published.
Should I be so inclined I could addthe following to my name: bachelor
of Commerce, diploma in Education,diploma in Fine Arts, master in Arts
(13:27):
and Doctorate in Philosophy, I've taughtpainting, drawing, and printmaking
at university level for 32 years.
Part-time, of course, and myteaching style is nothing like
that of my fourth grade teacher.
At the end of 2010, I resigned from mypermanent part-time position at R M I T.
(13:50):
I needed some fresh air.
Earlier that same year.
I parted ways with Niagara galleries.
I needed new experiences.
Folly, yes, risky , yes, butsometimes one needs a sea change
irrespective of one's age.
(14:11):
Independence called .In mid 2011,my R M I T and artist colleague
Irene Barberis and I, neither of uslacking in initiative, opened our own
independent commercial gallery space,langford120 in a beautiful, refurbished
industrial warehouse in North Melbourne.
(14:35):
This at a time when many commercialgalleries were closing more folly.
We had already initiatedseveral collaborative projects
in the past, so we're familiarwith our particular skills.
Over nearly 8 years running Langford 120
we curated and mounted countlessindividual and group exhibitions
(14:58):
with works by hundreds of emergingand established artists, local
and international, that as ithappened, were mostly women artists.
We also exhibited our own works,including experimental installations.
Ones that no commercial gallerywould've wanted to show.
(15:19):
Running a gallery was awonderful experience for both
of us, but being artists.
We had little appetite for commerce.
At the end of 2018 we relinquishedthe gallery space, which by the way
is now a gymnasium deciding thatwe needed to focus instead on our
(15:47):
own studio practices and careers.
Then the next year, COVID arrived.
During our time at Langford120,Marita smith from Gallerysmith
visited us many times.
She was encouraging and supportive,provided advice, even though
(16:11):
technically we could have beenconsidered working in competition.
She liked my work and offeredme a solo exhibition for 2019.
I was delighted to accept.
I've been fortunate to have thesupport of several reputable gallery
directors over the years, includingHelen Maxwell and Nancy Sever, both
(16:35):
in Canberra, and now Marita smith.
Verbal or written descriptions ofvisual images can be tedious, but I'll
try and do a short summary for you.
My paintings, especially those madein the last 20 years, appear simple,
(16:56):
paired back to a few finely tunedcolors and a bunch of crisscrossed
or broken or continuous linesthat act to enclose spaces or not.
But there is more to myabstraction than meets the eye.
Think poetry.
Few words very carefully distilledto evoke ideas and emotions that
(17:19):
are not described or explained.
. After completing my doctoral thesistitled Reading Between the Lines that
contextualized my striped works withinmodernist and contemporary abstract
practices, I decided to focus lesson optical perception and cultural
(17:42):
color usage and more on ideas ofchange, destruction, and renewal.
Aspects of my Italian culturalheritage with all its idiosyncrasies
are in my formation, and thisinevitably directs my work.
But it's difficult to definethe echoes and sentiments of
(18:06):
foreignness or historical events.
Certainly my work'scontent is not personal.
It's not about my identity.
Rather artifices oflanguage displacement.
Misplacement replacementplays out in what I make.
(18:28):
Languages retain their ownvisual resonance as recorded
in memories in histories.
Cultural taste preferences,particular sensibilities, dreams,
ruined monuments and architecture.
Civilizations that speak to usthrough their buried, broken, and
sometimes retrieved artifacts,shards of past endeavors,
(18:52):
buried beneath layers of time.
All of this lies under my seeminglycheery colors and razor sharp forms.
For Walter Benjamin, digging becomesa synonym for self-discovery.
A means for making art where thedetritus of the past underlies
(19:17):
the construction of sight ofboth modernity and memory.
The images of the past "resideas treasures in the sober
rooms of our later insights".
I often wonder whether havingbeen born in the high peaks of the
(19:38):
central Apennine mountains in Italy,where to look down into troughs and
valleys, and in winter even cloudshas influenced my paintings in subtle
ways that even I can't comprehend.
Many of my paintings look likeaerial views something to fly over
rather than view from solid ground.
(19:59):
This has the effect of drawinga viewer closer to the artwork
and then propelling thembackwards to safer ground.
To move from place to place to bedisplaced for whatever reason is
the history of human civilization.
Through my paintings over theyears, I have reconstructed Roman
(20:24):
ruins, referenced seismic events,reimagined historical stories, and
rebuilt, so to speak, in pure gold.
The structures of L’Aquila whereI was born, destroyed by that
catastrophic earthquake in 2009.
I have shattered glass, mapped theCampus Martius, depicted formations
(20:48):
of Roman soldiers, divided the ancientPalatine hill into real estate plots,
pieced together parts of Pompeiiand Herculaneum and much more.
All in the ambiguous visuallanguage of hard-edge abstraction.
(21:09):
If you wish to see some of myrecent paintings, they are on
display at Gallerysmith in.
Abbotsford Street in North Melbournein April, may of this year.
I've titled this exhibition Proscenium.
Proscenium (21:23):
Latinised from Greek and meaning ‘a stage’.
More specifically, the front part of thestage: the curtains and its framework.
It is the metaphorical, vertical,frontal plane of space in a theater
that can also be considered a socialconstruct, separating the actors and
(21:45):
their stage world from the audience.
But because both are in thesame auditorium, reciprocal
responses are encouraged.
This Proscenium suite of paintingshas been carefully staged within
a designated gallery space.
The gallery becomes a stagedsetting for artworks that
(22:07):
represent me in my absence.
The sequential placement ofindividual works on the walls and
the intervals between them providean overarching narrative constructed
through rhythm while each workretains its unique character.
(22:30):
Unlike that body of work exhibitedin 2019 under the title of Fosse,
a Latin, French and Italian word.
This time I've made linearconfigurations dominant.
However, like most of my work overmany years, in some way or another,
the oscillation between form, shapeand line creates a perpetual fluttering
(22:55):
that tends to confound most viewers.
Empty space can become shape,and then with the blinking of an
eye slip back into nothingness.
The frontality of these new works,the linearity that confounds spatial
readings, the painted strokes thatidentify the hand, the finely tuned
(23:20):
color, all aimed to express ideas,emotions and other influences
embedded in their long gestation.
While references to culture,language, ground, space and fragmented
archeological artifacts are presentin all my works, I think it's safe to
(23:41):
say that unlike their predecessors,that dug into the archeology of the
past, I prefer to consider theseworks as ‘inverted archaeology’,
imagined remnants mapped for futurearcheologists to tunnel into and to
speculate on the dystrophic ‘now’.
(24:07):
Words are not substitutes for images,nor can they adequately elucidate
their scope or describe theirfull range of potential meaning.
This is the domain of the viewer.
If you look into and between thelines of my works, through the colors
(24:27):
inside and outside of bordering edges.
You'll find what I have placed there.
Artists in whatever field arerestless creatures, never satisfied.
There's always more to do.
More to say, I could havedone this, I should have done
that are common refrains.
I have some exciting newprojects planned for the future.
(24:49):
Also, I have not entirelygiven up on teaching art.
For the last few years.
I've conducted workshops atthe art room in Footscray.
A community arts hub run by twocourageous and wonderful women where
I'm able to share my specializedknowledge in challenging ways.
(25:09):
I know that many young and nownot so young artists have been
grateful for my support and adviceover the years, even long after
they've graduated from university.
It makes me proud to havehad the opportunities to
share my insights with them.
If you've managed to listento me up to this point.
(25:31):
I, sincerely, thank you.
You can see most of my works alongwith various essays, some written by
me and others by more distinguishedwriters reproduced on my website.
They are not the actual works.
They are reproductions.
Works or reproductions of workscan be seen at Gallerysmith website
(25:58):
also,
you've been listening tothe Prima Donna Podcast.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
Welcome to season seven ofthe Prima Donna Podcast, Sonic
Portraits of Australian Artists.
This audio was recorded andproduced on Wurundjeri Country.
I pay respects toelders past and present.
The third episode in this seriesfeatures visual artist Wilma Tabacco.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
(00:24):
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
I've titled this piece, theInterweaving of Images and Words.
Prelude.
. Primadonna is Italian, meaningFirst Lady, and refers to
the lead soprano in an opera.
(00:46):
Their roles written by men usuallyportray Temptresses courtesans.
Power seekers, romantics,duped by lascivious men.
These women mostly died dramaticallyon stage, stabbed, shot, poisoned,
brokenhearted, or by their own hand.
(01:10):
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigolettocontains an aria, sung by a
tenor who plays the characterof the Duke of Mantova . It
is titled La Donna e Mobile.
The libretto was written byFrancesco Maria Piave and is
based on a play by Victor Hugo.
The tune is very upbeat and catchy.
(01:35):
La Donna e Mobile translatesas, Woman is Fickle.
. It continues (01:40):
Qual piuma al vento – like a feather in the wind
Muta d’accento – e di pensierShe changes her voice and mind.
All translations inevitably lackthe essence of the original language
in this case, a more accuratetranslation is yes, woman is
(02:01):
fickle like a feather in the wind.
She has no voice and no mind,meaning she is dumb and silly.
It gets worse.
Sisters of the Revolution, add the Dukeof Mantova, Signor Verdi, Signor Piave
and Messieur Hugo to your burning list!
(02:29):
Introducing myself, shouldI say I am Wilma Tabacco, or
my name is Wilma Tabacco..
I am first person.
Singular of the present tense.
Indicative of the verb tobe conjugates as follows.
I am.
You are she.
He is.
We are.
You are.
(02:49):
They are.
This is the first verb One learnswhen studying a foreign language.
The next thing one learns to say is.
What is your name, inItalian, ‘come ti chiami’?
Answer (03:02):
my name is Wilma Tabacco, in Italian, mi ciamo Wilma Tabacco.
hear the difference in the voicemodulation, tonality, and pronunciation
When I use Italian to say my name.
I remember a boy from my childhood wholived across the road from my family.
(03:22):
His name was Prospero.
In the Abruzzese dialect,my parents spoke.
Prospero means a match.
You know that thing onceused for lighting fires?
The Italian word formatch is fiammifero.
Prosper actually means prosperous,affluent of good fortune.
(03:44):
I didn't know that at thetime, so I thought, what a
strange name to give someone.
I did not then realize that myname was even stranger than his.
(04:09):
Last week, a telephone recordedfemale robot-like voice instructed
me to repeat a phrase three times sothat my voice could be recorded for
identification purposes in a governmentauthorities voice recognition program.
I could have refused, butthen my problem would never
(04:29):
be resolved, so I complied.
Yes, I confess I did put on a veryposh accent and disguised my voice,
not deliberately, I just don't respondwell to being told what to do, but
the robotic voice did not complain.
So now my disembodied voice officiallyidentifies me and I don't like it.
(04:54):
I felt affronted by the process.
I wanted to inform that robot thatI'm an artist and that some artists
are identified by their artworks,Edvard Munch’s painting the scream.
A picture of a woman's screamingpopped into my head as I
recorded my voice identity.
(05:15):
That screaming woman is mute,but I felt her scream and
wanted to add mine to her.
Then I remembered Cy Twombly’s paintedwords echoing as moans, groans,
and whales scribbled, scrawled,smudged, erased, and repeated.
Yes, some artists areidentified by their artworks.
(05:43):
What impetus propels someoneto become an artist, a
musician, a dancer, a writer.
Professions where potentialfailure stares you in the
face at every step you take.
There is no satisfactory answer.
Perhaps clues can be found,captured within one's memory,
fragmented and disconnected thatmight provide some insights.
(06:07):
I remember an episode in primary school,grade one, I think the teacher gave
each pupil a sheet of unlined paperand asked us to draw a tree in pencil.
She then gave it a little demonstrationof how we might go about this.
For me, this experiencewas magical, mesmerizing.
(06:34):
My tree didn't really look like atree compared to some that the others
had drawn, but I was happy, so happy.
When I first attended primaryschool, I could not speak English.
I was born in Italy and arrivedhere at the age of four.
I have no memory of learning English.
But I do remember that in the firstweek of prep grade, the teacher
(06:59):
asked each pupil in turn to come ontoher platform and, in chalk, copy a
letter of the alphabet that she hadlisted previously sequentially, A to
Z horizontally across the blackboardin her beautiful handwritten script.
Our letter was to bewritten beneath hers.
(07:21):
I got the letter B..
I made a downward verticalline turned right.
I made an upward loop that joinedthe vertical in the correct position.
Wrong Wilma.
You make the downward verticalshaft, go back our pathway, make
a right hand turn, create theloop downwards, and join it.
(07:47):
Mine was missing that littlesticking out bit of vertical line
that allows the B to sit neatlyon the horizontal line of a page.
As soon as I was able to readand speak English, I became my
parents' interpreter and translator.
It was harder for them to learn astrange language as quickly as I had.
(08:11):
This was such a big responsibilityfor a young child, one that caused
me considerable embarrassment.
Did these seemingly disconnectedexperiences from long ago plant some
slow germinating seed in my psyche.
One that fused the making of imageswith the formation of words, English,
(08:36):
Italian and Abruzzese dialect?
Abstract images, words in thealphabet, chopped up and reconfigured
to look like maps of actual placesare often the subject or sometimes
the content of my paintings.
I like to think of my abstractionsas studied signs of illegibility.
(08:58):
I write random words in unlined books,scrawled haphazardly over pages.
They appear to have drifted downfrom the air and landed on a page
in a sort of topography of thoughts.
I've done this since the late eighties.
I have books and books ofinteresting words that I
(09:19):
sometimes refer to when I struggle
to title works or exhibitions,words and images together.
Lately, I've been collecting Latinwords with the neuter suffix ‘ium’:
premium Consortium, palladiumSymposium, compendium, podium, and
(09:41):
proscenium, just to name a few.
There are hundreds of themused in the English language.
In grade four, I was told thatI would never be an artist.
It was just before Christmas.
I was asked to find a cardboardbox that would be used to house the
(10:03):
nativity scene we would later make.
I did, and it was therefore mytask to paint the outside of the
box in a most glorious, dark blue.
I now know it was ultramarine blue.
It was meant to representthe night sky, I suppose.
I commenced.
No, that is not the way you paint.
(10:25):
You don't paint smudgy marks witha loaded brush any old which way.
You start at the top left cornerof the box and paint in a straight
horizontal line to the other corner.
Then you repeat the same processunder the first stroke and continue
until you reach the bottom of the box.
(10:46):
Wilma will never be an artist.
Well, Mrs.
So-and-So whose name and face I'veforgotten, but whose words I've always
remembered, I have now been a successfulprofessional artist for nearly 40 years.
What you didn't understand wasthat your formula lacked the
(11:10):
personal, any residue, emotion,and it lacked my hand, hence, me.
My first solo exhibition was in 1988at Niagara Galleries in Richmond.
Hard work, great ideas and superiortechnical painting skills can go
unnoticed without an unexpected eventthat changes the course of one's life.
(11:37):
The director of Niagara Galleriescame to visit an artist colleague
whose studio was located inthe same complex as mine.
To enter her studio.
He had to pass through mine.
He saw my paintings, likedthem, and ask my colleague
to tell me to telephone him.
After having shown folios of myworks to various gallery directors,
(12:00):
that's what one did before digitalimages, the internet and social
media, and being told, oh, we'rebooked up for the next three years.
Come back some other time,meaning don't come back at all.
I wasted no time.
The rest is history.
Thank you, Mr.
William Nuttall.
(12:21):
I exhibited with Niagara Galleriesfor 21 years, from 1988 until
2010, with works sold to majornational and state museums and
galleries, and to private collectors.
I can't go through my CV here.
It runs to 13 pages of dense text.
(12:43):
Suffice it to say that I've mounted45 solo exhibitions in a variety
of commercial and public spaces.
Participated in 250 or more groupexhibitions, co-directed an art
gallery, Langford120 for eight years.
Curated exhibitions,written essays, and more.
(13:04):
My work has been reviewedin newspapers magazine.
Books, catalogs have been published.
Should I be so inclined I could addthe following to my name: bachelor
of Commerce, diploma in Education,diploma in Fine Arts, master in Arts
(13:27):
and Doctorate in Philosophy, I've taughtpainting, drawing, and printmaking
at university level for 32 years.
Part-time, of course, and myteaching style is nothing like
that of my fourth grade teacher.
At the end of 2010, I resigned from mypermanent part-time position at R M I T.
(13:50):
I needed some fresh air.
Earlier that same year.
I parted ways with Niagara galleries.
I needed new experiences.
Folly, yes, risky , yes, butsometimes one needs a sea change
irrespective of one's age.
(14:11):
Independence called .In mid 2011,my R M I T and artist colleague
Irene Barberis and I, neither of uslacking in initiative, opened our own
independent commercial gallery space,langford120 in a beautiful, refurbished
industrial warehouse in North Melbourne.
(14:35):
This at a time when many commercialgalleries were closing more folly.
We had already initiatedseveral collaborative projects
in the past, so we're familiarwith our particular skills.
Over nearly 8 years running Langford 120
we curated and mounted countlessindividual and group exhibitions
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with works by hundreds of emergingand established artists, local
and international, that as ithappened, were mostly women artists.
We also exhibited our own works,including experimental installations.
Ones that no commercial gallerywould've wanted to show.
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Running a gallery was awonderful experience for both
of us, but being artists.
We had little appetite for commerce.
At the end of 2018 we relinquishedthe gallery space, which by the way
is now a gymnasium deciding thatwe needed to focus instead on our
(15:47):
own studio practices and careers.
Then the next year, COVID arrived.
During our time at Langford120,Marita smith from Gallerysmith
visited us many times.
She was encouraging and supportive,provided advice, even though
(16:11):
technically we could have beenconsidered working in competition.
She liked my work and offeredme a solo exhibition for 2019.
I was delighted to accept.
I've been fortunate to have thesupport of several reputable gallery
directors over the years, includingHelen Maxwell and Nancy Sever, both
(16:35):
in Canberra, and now Marita smith.
Verbal or written descriptions ofvisual images can be tedious, but I'll
try and do a short summary for you.
My paintings, especially those madein the last 20 years, appear simple,
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paired back to a few finely tunedcolors and a bunch of crisscrossed
or broken or continuous linesthat act to enclose spaces or not.
But there is more to myabstraction than meets the eye.
Think poetry.
Few words very carefully distilledto evoke ideas and emotions that
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are not described or explained.
. After completing my doctoral thesistitled Reading Between the Lines that
contextualized my striped works withinmodernist and contemporary abstract
practices, I decided to focus lesson optical perception and cultural
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color usage and more on ideas ofchange, destruction, and renewal.
Aspects of my Italian culturalheritage with all its idiosyncrasies
are in my formation, and thisinevitably directs my work.
But it's difficult to definethe echoes and sentiments of
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foreignness or historical events.
Certainly my work'scontent is not personal.
It's not about my identity.
Rather artifices oflanguage displacement.
Misplacement replacementplays out in what I make.
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Languages retain their ownvisual resonance as recorded
in memories in histories.
Cultural taste preferences,particular sensibilities, dreams,
ruined monuments and architecture.
Civilizations that speak to usthrough their buried, broken, and
sometimes retrieved artifacts,shards of past endeavors,
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buried beneath layers of time.
All of this lies under my seeminglycheery colors and razor sharp forms.
For Walter Benjamin, digging becomesa synonym for self-discovery.
A means for making art where thedetritus of the past underlies
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the construction of sight ofboth modernity and memory.
The images of the past "resideas treasures in the sober
rooms of our later insights".
I often wonder whether havingbeen born in the high peaks of the
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central Apennine mountains in Italy,where to look down into troughs and
valleys, and in winter even cloudshas influenced my paintings in subtle
ways that even I can't comprehend.
Many of my paintings look likeaerial views something to fly over
rather than view from solid ground.
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This has the effect of drawinga viewer closer to the artwork
and then propelling thembackwards to safer ground.
To move from place to place to bedisplaced for whatever reason is
the history of human civilization.
Through my paintings over theyears, I have reconstructed Roman
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ruins, referenced seismic events,reimagined historical stories, and
rebuilt, so to speak, in pure gold.
The structures of L’Aquila whereI was born, destroyed by that
catastrophic earthquake in 2009.
I have shattered glass, mapped theCampus Martius, depicted formations
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of Roman soldiers, divided the ancientPalatine hill into real estate plots,
pieced together parts of Pompeiiand Herculaneum and much more.
All in the ambiguous visuallanguage of hard-edge abstraction.
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If you wish to see some of myrecent paintings, they are on
display at Gallerysmith in.
Abbotsford Street in North Melbournein April, may of this year.
I've titled this exhibition Proscenium.
Proscenium (21:23):
Latinised from Greek and meaning ‘a stage’.
More specifically, the front part of thestage: the curtains and its framework.
It is the metaphorical, vertical,frontal plane of space in a theater
that can also be considered a socialconstruct, separating the actors and
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their stage world from the audience.
But because both are in thesame auditorium, reciprocal
responses are encouraged.
This Proscenium suite of paintingshas been carefully staged within
a designated gallery space.
The gallery becomes a stagedsetting for artworks that
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represent me in my absence.
The sequential placement ofindividual works on the walls and
the intervals between them providean overarching narrative constructed
through rhythm while each workretains its unique character.
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Unlike that body of work exhibitedin 2019 under the title of Fosse,
a Latin, French and Italian word.
This time I've made linearconfigurations dominant.
However, like most of my work overmany years, in some way or another,
the oscillation between form, shapeand line creates a perpetual fluttering
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that tends to confound most viewers.
Empty space can become shape,and then with the blinking of an
eye slip back into nothingness.
The frontality of these new works,the linearity that confounds spatial
readings, the painted strokes thatidentify the hand, the finely tuned
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color, all aimed to express ideas,emotions and other influences
embedded in their long gestation.
While references to culture,language, ground, space and fragmented
archeological artifacts are presentin all my works, I think it's safe to
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say that unlike their predecessors,that dug into the archeology of the
past, I prefer to consider theseworks as ‘inverted archaeology’,
imagined remnants mapped for futurearcheologists to tunnel into and to
speculate on the dystrophic ‘now’.
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Words are not substitutes for images,nor can they adequately elucidate
their scope or describe theirfull range of potential meaning.
This is the domain of the viewer.
If you look into and between thelines of my works, through the colors
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inside and outside of bordering edges.
You'll find what I have placed there.
Artists in whatever field arerestless creatures, never satisfied.
There's always more to do.
More to say, I could havedone this, I should have done
that are common refrains.
I have some exciting newprojects planned for the future.
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Also, I have not entirelygiven up on teaching art.
For the last few years.
I've conducted workshops atthe art room in Footscray.
A community arts hub run by twocourageous and wonderful women where
I'm able to share my specializedknowledge in challenging ways.
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I know that many young and nownot so young artists have been
grateful for my support and adviceover the years, even long after
they've graduated from university.
It makes me proud to havehad the opportunities to
share my insights with them.
If you've managed to listento me up to this point.
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I, sincerely, thank you.
You can see most of my works alongwith various essays, some written by
me and others by more distinguishedwriters reproduced on my website.
They are not the actual works.
They are reproductions.
Works or reproductions of workscan be seen at Gallerysmith website
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also,
you've been listening tothe Prima Donna Podcast.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
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