There are lots of great pieces of art all around the house but this
Grace Gamage makes me purr inside. To begin with I felt a need to 'install' it - put it on a wall or special shelf somewhere somehow. It did not take long to change my mind. During the art school fundraising exhibition/auction it fell off the wall and was damaged. Then some person who wasn't Grace or me put masking tape on the back to fix it. That was the first clue that it wasn't destined for a wall.
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Grace Gamage Untiled (Horse Paradise) 2011 pictured with; top left: diamond skate, right: anonymous skip art: blue target, drawing materials, artist barbie, lower right : anonymous skip art: miniature monochromes |
It sat on my desk and still sits on my desk. I don't think it's going anywhere else. It is held together by sticky tape. It has a little horse. It sheds glitter. I need to see it hourly daily.
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| Grace Gamage Untitled; Jewel Detail |
Somehow it evokes a feverish sense of production and/or the brewing of a particular creativity spell. It is a small shrine featuring an inkjet fresco of pink rubber gloves in a gem garden, heart confetti and a small plastic horse strapped to palm trees resting on a pasture of green glitter. There is a crook-shaped dried plant hovering over the horse all frail against the glowing neon orange inner-walls. The green, red and purple jewel drooping from the apex bounces off the orange and pink: simultaneously violently clashing with them and drawing them all together.
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| Grace Gamage Untitled: Rose Detail |
The clash of colours, the wilting dried plant, the anonymous un-sanctioned masking tape repair, the sticky-tape construction... are all outrageous. Which is wonderful. It produces a sense of liberating frailty, echoed by the constant shedding of glitter.
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| Grace Gamage Untitled: Horse Detail |
The piece is appealing to me for many reasons but the inclusion of the small horse makes it even better. In 2008 there was an article I read that defined an artist in terms of their ability to draw horses. Since then artworks with horses have become especially fascinating to me. Partly because of the ridiculousness of the definition but increasingly because of the many and varied implications (i.e. use, feminist things etc) of conjuring up imagery of those particular animals.
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| Grace Gamage Untitled: Paradise Detail |
There are some subtle thematic motifs that can be read into the piece. These may be unintentional, but because of the inspired, feverishly constructed aesthetic of the shrine, perhaps a poetic reading merely adds to the mysterious nature of the piece? On the right outer wall are images of wilderness paradise reaching out to the hand of God. On the left outer wall is the carefully arranged rose motif - the rose being one of the most highly manipulated plants. It's as though the wilderness paradise is pitted against careful cultivation with the poor horse strapped between the two, cowering below enormous pink rubber gloves.
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| Grace Gamage Untitled: Hand of God |
At the same time, a binary seems completely impossible in such a vividly coloured, reflective and wildly constructed thing. It is one. The little grotto offers itself as an outside but also offers it's interior. It is both inside and outside itself. It both welcomes associations with other objects by appearing open and shuns them by being self-contained. It does not need a wall to stand behind it. It is it's own world.
