COLLAGE WORKS 2024
artist’s notes to accompany for two works in “Cut and Compose” group exhibition of collage art, West End Art Space gallery 20April - 11 May 2024
“Constructed landscape #5”, 2024. 51cmx51cm . collaged linocut, map, acrylic paint on rag paper on stretched canvas
We visualise and represent our natural environment in many different ways and scales - for instance photographs or other artworks reproducing or interpreting what we see in three dimensions; satellite images; or topographical maps, to mention a few.
Cutting and reassembling images from diverse sources into a collage can be like completing a jigsaw puzzle, noticing and joining similarities in the forms and colours of the images.
I relish the chance to use old discarded topographical maps (in this case, a map I found in a house clearance kerbside skip) and to re-use bits of my own discarded artworks (in this case a stage of a reduction linocut of coastal scenery). After many trial arrangements, I finished this puzzle to generate a new whole: a sort of constructed landscape that the eye joins up from different locations and scales of landscape representations.
“White/gold abstract”, 2024. 40cm x 40cm. Collaged used paint tubes, acrylic paint, on wooden board.
Who has not seen images of artists’ studios heaped with squashed used paint tubes? I imagine most are thrown out: however, I enjoy opening up paint tubes once I have squeezed as much paint as possible out of them, and observing the patterns the remnant paint makes. The different shades and textures of paint are in a sense part of paintings that have gone from the studio. They are beautiful objects in their own right, and I have made a series of works using them. This is the only work that reveals glimpses of the metal tubes beneath the paint - the white and gold perhaps influenced by religious decorations of southern Italy.
Winsome Spiller
April 2024
to accompany exhibition at West End Art Space gallery, December 2023
TRANSFIGURE expresses my aim and processes in these works: to transform materials, marks and forms into more beautiful and interesting paintings and objects.
In the first stages of paintings made in this way, I might use processes such as: flowing paint; folding and pressing wet painted canvas; painting with a rag; chipping, distressing or breaking of dried paint layers; breaking canvas apart; printing or transferring from plastic to canvas; and collaging bits of paint together.
After the first stage of the paintings, often done on the floor, I have somewhat undefined fields of marks forms and colours to look at, and work on. The colours I choose are sometimes experimental juxtapositions, sometimes to evoke a season or place, other times colours (like ultramarine) that I find contemplative and universal. But these (broadly speaking) preliminary stage works show mainly forms and tones - the main way we perceive volume or objects or places...and these give mental space for / play of suggestion. The half formed, that might become.
Transfigured marks and shapes or groups or patterns of these, made in these processes, can evoke environments processes or structures in the larger world: for instance I find that
• Running paint evokes watery processes, landforms
• Repetition can suggest layering of geological forces , or topography, or landforms
• Mirrored or doubled forms that arise from printing or pressing a canvas together have a magical or reflective quality (water and dreams)
• Straight edges or lines suggest direction purpose human construction
• Scratches or tears might evoke destructive forces
As I look hard at the marks and forms, see what they suggest to me, I paint into or onto them, adjusting shapes or colours, and finally adding gestural brushstrokes, until they resolve into something with more evocative, with more possible visual meaning. Working with the initial fields of marks and forms, I gradually resolve them into a composition that seems lastingly visually interesting, and if intended, could evoke a sort of place or a structure.
What I make, what I see, usually reflects my abiding interests and reading about - in landforms, maps, archaeology, layers of history, natural processes, and urban development.
But I also am deeply interested in the qualities of the materials themselves - trying to take advantage of, and keep the final work true to, or not totally concealing, the processes and materials. For instance, a painting made by flaking and successive layering might resemble some thing in the world - but at the same time I want it to be able to be seen as an object made with flaking and layering. This was the main driver of the series of small cast abstracts that pay homage to paint, to the vessels that holds paint, and the different materials that can be cast in not quite replicas of the original forms - paint, builders’ glue, paper, transparent pearlescent film. To make these, I assembled (or collaged) objects to make moulds from this assembly, then cast other materials into them to transform each into a new painted object.
Winsome Spiller 2023
Winsome Spiller is a Naarm based artist, whose process-based abstract artworks explore mark-making, spatial relationships, the subconscious, and semiotics in the abstract. Her newest body of work, Transfigure, shows the most recent evolutions in her practice.
Spiller’s practice in her artwork creation extends far beyond painting. Her process is both additive and subtractive, the canvas witness to a myriad of techniques that build the visual language of her work. Objects embrace arte povera, the idea of exploring materials and techniques beyond the conventional and tradition, coined by Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant in 1967. As Spiller details:
In the first stages of paintings made in this way, I might use processes such as flowing paint, folding and pressing wet painted canvas, painting with a rag, chipping distressing or breaking of dried paint layers, breaking canvas apart, printing or transferring from plastic to canvas, collaging bits of paint together.
Spiller’s working process disrupts and reconstructs spatial relationships. Unconventional materials challenge traditional notions of space on the canvas. Viewers are drawn into a spatial dialogue with the artwork, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between the constructed space within the piece and the physical space inhabited by the viewer. It is the variety and combination of techniques that form Spiller’s mark making and transcend her works into art objects. This process of art construction is paramount and is what makes each work so exceptional. Spiller's process, both additive and subtractive, introduces a temporal dimension to her artwork. The layers of paint, the breaking apart of canvas, and the subsequent refinement, create a narrative of evolution. The dynamic between artist and object and how each canvas responds in conversation, creates the uniqueness of each piece. It is this process-based practice Spiller performs so effectively.
Once the artwork is shaped in its preliminary stage, a sea of forms and tones, Spiller through a surrealist influence engages her subconscious to extract what each artwork resembles to her. It is in the perception of elements and principles that, in the artist’s words, ‘give mental space for play of suggestion. The half formed that might become’. In this preliminary form, Spiller plays between the abstract and her subconscious to illuminate what imagery can be found and extracted in each composition. The human eye sees patterns in the transfigured marks and shapes, identifying natural patterns and structures along each surface. Spiller’s career background in town planning and interest in urban history, can be seen influencing her interpretations. The canvases become architectural landscapes, where lines and shapes intersect in a dance of spatial organization. Similarly, her travels in Europe can be seen shaping the landscapes of her canvases. The artist has a logic in her reading of abstract forms. Mirrored or doubled forms represent magical or reflective qualities and speak to water and dreams; straight edges or lines suggest direction, purpose, and human construction; scratches and tears relay destructive forces. Guided by these impulses, Spiller refines each work by shape, form, texture, and line with gestural brushstrokes to clarify her vision, to help evoke the place or structure imagined by the artist. While this refining takes place, the artworks are still uniquely abstract, and up for audience interpretation.
In deviating from the confines of colour within colour field theory, Spiller's artworks unfold as an exploration of form and shape. Here, hues become secondary to the dynamic interplay of geometric elements and fluid shapes, fostering a distinctive visual language. Texture emerges as a narrative element meticulously crafted, introducing tactile dimensions that deepen the emotional resonance of her pieces. Through diverse materials and techniques, rough and smooth surfaces invite viewers to not only observe but physically engage with the artwork, enhancing their sensory experience.
Surrealist elements vividly manifest in Spiller's compositions, transforming canvases into visual dreamscapes with enigmatic forms that blur the boundaries between reality and the subconscious. The duality of conscious intention and unconscious revelation characterizes Spiller's artistic process, where tension between deliberate strokes and spontaneous gestures creates a harmonious coexistence. This dynamic interplay invites viewers to discern the intricate dance between intentionality and serendipity. The abstract forms catalyse interactive interpretation, prompting viewers into a subjective realm of meaning-making and transforming the viewing experience into a deeply personal encounter with the artwork. While aligning with surrealist principles, Spiller's unique contribution lies in the fusion of these techniques with her distinctive mark-making processes. The half-formed, ambiguous imagery serves as an emotional catalyst, prompting a subjective and visceral response from viewers who project their feelings onto the canvas. Spiller's construction of surrealistic elements is imbued with a temporal dimension, mirroring the temporality inherent in dreams and contributing to the dreamlike quality of her compositions. Ultimately, Spiller’s compositions provide guidance by her mark making, but leave space for play of interpretation, creating a unique balance in each artwork.
Standing in front of one of Spiller's canvases, especially those of a larger scale, feels like an aesthetic portal; the scale engulfs the audience and creates a transporting experience. Through the sheer size of the artwork, she initiates a direct dialogue with viewers, emphasizing the dynamic relationship that unfolds in real-time within the spatial confines of the gallery. Beyond visual engagement, Spiller's artworks offer a multisensory experience. The tactile qualities of materials, the visual richness, and scale contribute to a holistic encounter. This multisensory engagement aligns with the structuralist emphasis on the interconnectedness of senses in the construction of meaning within artistic expression. The finished artworks create a direct dialogue with the viewer, a relationship that is enacted in real-time. Through a structuralist lens, it is interesting to consider the viewer's engagement with the work as part of its construction and conceptualization. Structuralist theories, as articulated by Claude Lévi-Strauss or Jacques Derrida, find resonance in Spiller's approach. The artist deconstructs and reconstructs visual elements, inviting viewers to navigate the interplay of signs and structures within her work. The theoretical framework enriches the understanding of how meaning is constructed and negotiated within the artistic experience. Spiller's mark-making transcends mere aesthetic appeal; it becomes a semiotic language within her artwork. Each brushstroke, tear, or collage piece contributes to a visual vocabulary that viewers decode. This semiotic approach invites audiences to engage actively in the construction of meaning, echoing the principles of structuralist semiotics.
Spiller's artworks explore abstraction through form, texture, and colour. Surrealist elements prompt interpretations, and large-scale canvases serve as aesthetic portals. A multisensory experience, engaging the viewer, aligns with structuralist principles. Spiller's mark-making becomes a semiotic language, echoing the intricacies of structuralist semiotics. Spiller’s process-based practice is embedded in intricacies. Her newest body of work, Transfigure, will showcase her practice among her most recent inspirations and influences.
Erica Sait
2023
(Text to accompany the exhibition "Archaeology of Practice" Langford 120 gallery, 10 September - 9 October, 2016)
by Julian T. Spiller www.tabula.net.au
We shouldn’t be confused about where a work of art starts and finishes: paintings have borders, films go until they stop. A sculpture is made out of some stuff and when it isn’t any more, it ceases to be a sculpture – so on and so forth. An artwork succeeds when it is modest about its own purview – with the exception, maybe, of some Russian novels and epic poems – and prefers to concern itself solely with the subjects of its composition, or coyly subverts our preferences with the intimation of, rather than an intrusion of, some interesting things that take place outside the work. For example, the mysteries of Velasquez’ Las Meninas are broader and deeper when its satire is pointed out to us, but no amount thereof solves it as an artwork – but from it, we can ascertain various markers.
From them, we can begin to appreciate the context of the artwork: the age, the weight and the colour of the air that it was produced in, even if it would be ingenuous to think that these things are the only interesting contributors to the aesthetic complex that emerges. Causes and symptoms are different things, even though one of the pivots of postmodernity is a recognition that the two are more of a description than they are an institution. Since we stopped being ashamed of self-reference and reverence, we discovered that cause and symptom run together identically as often as they file into convenient lanes: now, maybe, the cause of an artwork (to this very minute) is itself, albeit in some earlier form.
Sometimes this is subtle, and other times it is dramatic – which leads me to the works of the present exhibition, which are (to various extents)
an exploration of artwork (and artworking practice) in the context of time. As demure abstraction demands, we’ll scarcely find paintings and sculptures of futuristic watches or reality-bending wormholes, but instead an array of things that politely testify to a sequence of events that would almost certainly pass invisibly absent the occasional curatorial note. There are things here which are older than they appear and things that appear older than they are; there are works here which time and indignation have transformed beyond recognition into new things, and might well do again in the future.
It is hard for me to imagine what it would be like to see these pieces entirely originally, so acquainted with them as I am. Perhaps I appreciate them only as forensic puzzles, the secrets to whose improbable solution I can barely resist revealing, and perhaps for all my contextual handwringing I yearn only to see them abstracted from their chequered, rehearsed history.
by Julian T. Spiller
What I do or do not do now is important for everything that is yet to come and is the greatest event of the past: in this tremendous perspective of effectiveness all actions appear equally great and small.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (tr. Kaufmann), 233
The change and transformation of all forms of life goes on.. ..but we do not know who sustains this change. How, therefore, can we know beginnings? How can we know ends? There is nothing else to do but wait.
The Book of Chuang Tzu (tr. Palmer) p. 174
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then I woke up and I was suddenly Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu
The Book of Chuang Tzu (tr. Palmer) p. 20
It is accepted that development is not from any one thing into any other thing, but that everything is resolved into that from which it came;
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (tr. Thomson) 1173b-5
It seems to me, in a word, that all existing things are alterations of the same thing. For if the things which now exist in this world.. ..were not the same thing changed in many ways and altered, then they could not mix with one another.
Diogenes of Apollonia in Aristotle, History of Animals (tr. Barnes) 511b30.
But insofar as they never cease their continual change, to that extent they exist forever, unmoving in a circle.
Empedocles in Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics (tr. Barnes) 31.31
You won't notice – but maybe it will seem obvious, once you've been told – that many of these works are constructed from older, sometimes less successful pieces. Creating new things from odds-and-sods is an old practice, so you might think: ah – collage! Or, ah – assemblage! –but as much would be mistaken, because those old elementary accidents aren't included to evoke anything grand and spiritual (or political, or psychological), but rather to serve as just one layer of many. Nearly all these layers, you won't notice, are imperceptible to the naked eye.
In future, it could well be that these works turn into others, again; by then, they will be just as different, again.
Julian T Spiller ( more writing by this author at www.tabula.net.au )
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by Richard Collins
Winsome Spiller makes art in both two and three dimensions. Sometimes her paintings begin as three-dimensional objects: canvas is ruched and crumpled like a relief map on the floor to provoke pools and rivulets in the dilute paint she pours over it. When the canvas returns to its destined two dimension, these patterns spur her further invention.
On occasions she has soaked muslin drapery in plaster to make wall pieces that arrest the fabric’s billowing in time. Laneway Lace has an affinity with these artworks. If we walk up the lane where it is located we see the familiar ripple of bush vernacular corrugated iron painted to mimic the gathered pleats of a fabric curtain: blokey metal turned into lady-like lace.
Winsome has painted this lace without trompe l’oeil facility but with great delicacy. The result is a rare thing in street art, a gently understated piece of visual wit. It is clearly a painting of a lace curtain and it is clearly a sheet of corrugated iron, and their coupling gives us a frisson of aesthetic pleasure.
An added pleasure comes from the association both these materials have with an older Australia, of similar vintage to the bluestone cobbles of the lane itself.
Long may the gate/curtain stay untagged.
Richard Collins
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by Julian T. Spiller
Preferring to be inclusive, it is natural to recoil at the things that the 'traditional' art establishment stands for – brokerage, patronage and exclusivity – and so we celebrate unconventional attempts to generate art, like street art. Why, though, do we want to call it art? What makes a stencil different from erecting a new picket fence, or tipping sudsy mop water down the drain, and what makes it similar?
Most obviously, the place that street art goes is important: it has to be in the street, broadly construed. Eminent graffiti artists might have migrated their work to the gallery space in the recent while – a Banksy, du jour, is a sought after commodity – but these objects always carry a bit of the street with them. Dismally, one can go to stationary stores and find prefabricated stencil-style canvases – but these are not really street art. The authentic item owes itself to the accidental forms of the urban place, even though art is never an accident; street art wants to be thought of as a contribution to the utilitarian streetscape, which bulges in such-and-such a fashion, or planes off in thus-and-so a way, because that is how houses and buildings fit together. A vast, flat, empty wall might provoke the street artist to salivate at the prospect of working conventionally, but this is not to say that these spaces could be engineered by artists to yield more imaginative results. Street art is not vagrant high art; street art does not wish it were in a gallery. Good street art shows us how to discover things in already discovered places.
Secondly, we might think that street art expresses itself in a way that is unmediated and authentic; street art in its coarsest forms boldly strikes a claim to popularly unclaimed spaces (even if, notably, these spaces are entirely owned and possessed in the legal sense). As a streetscape is commonly uncurated – except, perhaps, by architects and statutory planners – there are no constraints to an artist's industry or sincerity. Liberated from the inclination to win friends and make sales, an artist can do what they like, and what emerges is a sort of discipline that exposes in some artists a dearth of meaningful things to say. Others, however, discover new ways to say meaningful things. It is hard to object: oh, the only reason we think of that as art is because it's in a gallery – because a street isn't a gallery. Street art, then, can be judged on its own merit: after the vagabond thrills subside, expertise and originality are what remains in a conversation no longer dominated by dilettantes and sycophants.
This adds up to something familiar: street art instantiates an old practice in a new (or a recently rediscovered) place, in more or less the same way as ever before. Importantly, nothing stipulates that street art couldn't be produced in a traditional space, although it would be deprived of the street in its moniker – this is because the street is a venue, not a method. Were it to fall tragically out of fashion – like frescos, or murals, or happenings – we welcome street art into the tradition precisely because it doesn't offer anything new, materially speaking. The challenge for the artist is in the original setting, not in original media: the air, the paint and the sunshine are the same. As antithetical as it might seem to the new democracy of street art, the value of a work is accessible and intelligible in the same way that it always was (and indeed, the same artist's supply retailers ring up sales in the same currency!), and for a traditionalist, this is a relief.
Thus, we can celebrate both the new democracy of street art while criticising it in the old way. Street art is not a kind of artistic hookey that slips the criticism of the visual establishment: rather, street art lays itself out to be criticised in an open, popular air.
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By Brooke Babington
There is a sense of play at work in Winsome Spiller’s The Transformer Room. The fragments of colourful material dotted at irregular intervals along the outer walls of the space act as invitations to engage with the work, tempting the viewer to move around a large central column of brick hung with parti-coloured lengths of tulle, lining up rectangular cutout windows in the fabric with their corresponding outlying forms. The hues are vivid and breezy and the tone is one of lighthearted discovery. As viewers move around the room, translucent fields of colour blend and overlap in their fields of vision, shrouding the walls of the gallery in curtained filters punctuated intermittently by glimpses through to the other side to create that which Spiller calls ‘view corridors’ through the structure.
Through this process of engagement the work recalls Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series, but the association is fleeting. Spiller’s selection of colours belie the stoic formalism that attended Albers’ investigations. Here lilac, highlighter yellow, cerulean and bottle green veil the space in sunny hues more reminiscent of fairy floss and ice-cream cake than the strictures of Bauhaus formalism; an impression only heightened by the artist’s choice of tulle as her medium.
A further point of difference with Albers’ optical colour studies is also that which imbues Spiller’s Transformer Room with dynamism: while for Albers, the optical interactions of colours affected a perception of depth that moved beyond the surface of his paintings such that the palest hues seemed almost to float or recede against their more vivid backgrounds, here an inverse effect is achieved: pushing and pulling three dimensional space uneasily into the flattened space of the frame.
In this sense the work can be likened to a cinematic or photographic rendering of space in which fore-, mid- and background jostle for position across the screen (or photograph’s) surface. Indeed, Spiller entitled a previous incarnation of The Transformer Room for Dear Patti Smith gallery ‘Viewfinder’ in seeming reference to this effect. The surprising spatial and perceptual shifts contained in the work contrast with the apparent simplicity of form and lightness of touch Spiller employs. The gesture here is airy but the optical effects pronounced.
Perception and sensory immersion are at the heart of Spiller’s concerns here in an effort to focus the viewer’s attentions on the particularities of site. Once a power hub for the adjacent railway lines before being subject to years of neglect and vandalism, Spiller heightens lingering traces of these divergent chapters of the Substation’s history through an economy of means.
The cutout forms replicate the dimensions of the brickworks elaborating the building’s interior spaces while aligning the gaps left by them draws attention to remnants of infrastructure from the gallery’s former industrial life. The title refers to the site’s history by riffing on the dual meaning of a transformer, both as a modifier (here, of perception) and as an electrical device. Likewise, lurid blue and red graffiti adorning the pillared scaffolding of the Transformer Room (leftover from a time when the Substation stood abandoned) is emphasized by overlaying it with mauve in vibrant contrast. This scaffolding is formed of the remains of an alcove presumably used to house large-scale industrial machinery, now long absent, but invoked by Spiller’s structure – a ‘transformative machine’, she explains, ‘for looking’.
This veiling and unveiling of the building’s substrate accords with Spiller’s aim for the Transformer Room to heighten perception. Unveiling has long stood as a metaphor for enlightenment; the act representing a symbolic shedding of illusions. In an unnamed sonnet, 19th century English poet Shelley wrote “Lift not the painted veil which those who live/ Call life”[1]. Similarly, in Buddhism, Sufism and Hinduism and also in Plato’s famous allegory of the cave it is suggested that our sensate experience of the material world is a mere veil of the true or highest form of reality. Invoking this rich symbolic tradition, Spiller’s Transformer Room ‘enlightens’ us to the nature of perception. The half-seen world that surrounds us – that which we usually filter out – is glimpsed a little more clearly through the gaps in Spiller's veil like flashes of insight that lead to a greater focus.
Brooke Babington, 2013