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MARCH 26 - 31, 2019
At first glance, it is not obvious where the works of Nyah Isabel Cornish and James Little meet. The slick, glossy repetition of Little’s minimal imagery coupled with Cornish’s eclectic, improvised abstractions, are full of contradictions. And yet their work is borne from a similar frame of mind - a way in which both artists view painting through its relationship to nature and the lens of new technology.
There is a clear link in Little’s work to nature. His repeating trope of the Australian native fern, though unnatural in its hues, speaks to our growing connection, or disconnection, to the natural experience in our mediated world. The colours he chooses create a visual sensation called “Chromostereopsis”. “Chromostereopsis” is the illusion caused by the lens in the human eye not being able to focus on depth due to certain contrasting colours paired together in a flat image. This sensation is lost once the camera lens has captured the same image, resulting in a flatter rendition on the screen. The viewer’s natural experience of Little’s painting is altered when viewed on a screen, much like our experience of the world is replaced by a constant stream of surrogate images of the real. Add to this Little’s industrial, Warhol-like repetition of the same image, and his paintings seem to reflect a current phenomenon where cultural authenticity is industrialised and false personal experience is masked by the appearance of authentic cultural value - think of a proud Instagram share of a “unique" IKEA bedroom.
Cornish uses nature less as subject matter but more so as a point of departure for her improvised journey in painting. You would not immediately recognise the reference as you do in the works of James Little. Her works indirectly reference still-life arrangement, images of plants she has collected and also other paintings of similar themes. Through her own style of combining random acts of gesture with carefully planned compositions, Cornish aims to dramatically slow the process of looking in a time where attention is a premium commodity and the act of scrolling through images appears to be accelerating. Her forms are arranged, edited and rearranged using very traditional painting techniques but also using the iPad as a tool to aid certain compositions at different stages of painting. The screen for her is more a tool to create and less of an experiential viewing hindrance. She uses the iPad to scrutinise slowly rather than consume at fast pace, much to the contradiction of our common use of the touch screen. Her resulting abstractions are at once familiar as they are awkward and strange. The complexity of her process forces us, the viewers, to slow our observation and investigate the image more closely, just as she does, changing our programmed viewing behaviour in the process . - Michael Staniak
James Little (b. 1988) has exhibited extensively in Melbourne and Sydney, including exhibitions at La Trobe Art institute, Artereal Gallery and Not Fair 2012, and was featured in Australian Art Collector magazine's "Emerging Artist" profile in 2012. He was one of the founders and directors of Nicholas Projects, a curated gallery space based in central Melbourne from 2015-2017.
Nyah Isabel Cornish (b. 1990) finished a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at RMIT University, Melbourne. She has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner Los Angeles and Galerie Rolando Anselmi Berlin, as well as been featured in group showings at Artissima Art Fair Turin, "In the depth of surface" exhibition in Milan, the Townhall Gallery Melbourne, Artereal Gallery Sydney and Not Fair 2014 Melbourne. This will be her first major exhibition of paintings in Melbourne.