Liminal View, 2018-2019

Reflecting on the last 20 years of my life and work one theme is constant: upheaval, transition and drastic change. Recently returned to Australia, unpacking and restarting again confronted the artist with artefacts from the disparate places lived, roles performed and even various personas assumed. The silks, linen, and cottons are previous textile artworks, some made 20 years ago. The index cards are notes from doctoral research undertaken in West Africa. The canvases and boards are paintings that enjoyed previous lives here in Australia.

The process involved in making this body of work (cutting, tearing) mimics the violence and evokes the grief involved in such radical transitions as well as re-enacting God’s repeated generosity in creating beauty from destruction. Prescience is impossible except that God will again make something beautiful from the pieces. They are thus also acts of faith, trusting the coming beauty of being made new.

Each of these works carries vestiges of these past experiences as well as a powerful reminder that deconstruction is necessary for re-creation and courage needs clear reminiscence.

Dark & Light, 2019

120cm x 100cm

Acrylic, bleach and found linen on canvas.

The intersection of light and dark, is the essence of pattern. This becomes a metaphor for the juncture between expectation and surprise; violence and harmony. The processes of dyeing and bleaching, cutting away and re-composing echo this metaphor in a perpetual dance which, in faith, moves towards perfect balance.

Light & Dark, 2018.

120cm x 100cm

Acrylic & bleached linen on canvas.

These two works were the first I completed from this collection, as I literally attacked a piece of linen cloth I'd been keeping for some future project for about 20 years. It was time to move on!

They are the positive and negative of each other, and together represent looking at the same thing from opposite perspectives.

Shimmer, 2019.

91cm x 90cm

Acrylic, found cotton, natural dyes, gold and metal leaf on board.

The circle is a powerful symbol of whole-ness, restoration, healing and rebirth. In the midst of yet again feeling uprooted and dissembled, this work is a prayer of hope anticipating another re-making.

Presence, 2019

60cm x 60cm

Acrylic, natural dyes on found cotton, copper and gold metal leaf on board.

The upward pointing triangle is a personal symbol of a present, benevolent God. The work invites his loving presence in the midst of turmoil. It was charming serendipity that the metallic leaf shines brighter in the gaps.

Rise to Whole, 2019

60cm x 60cm

Acrylic, natural dyes on found cotton and gold metal leaf on board.

The moon is another symbol of renewal and rebirth to wholeness. The very slight asymmetry of this composition evokes the moon’s gentle path to restoration and is a small prayer of hope for my own re-making.

F±rom 2010 until 2018, my work had been among a nomadic pastoralist people who traverse the arid southern edges of the Sahara desert. Many years before had also been spent in preparation for this service. I completed my doctoral research in this context, documenting indigenous teaching and learning and other cultural phenomenon, with the intention that it would inform my future praxis. This process required me to adopt a new identity within a new culture, whilst anticipating a different future role and identity.However, political events have made this impossible. At the time of making this collection, we did not know where this would be.

Cutting up notes from my doctoral research was a cathartic process because I felt, in some ways, that all my previous work for this particular cultural context was for nothing and no longer of worth for the future role I had envisaged.

The triangular pattern used in the main section of Papillon is mostly used in wood carvings in Burkina Faso, and is sometimes called the ‘papillon’ (butterfly) motif. It is used by several ethnic groups who use masks, but not the people among whom I worked. They do not make or use masks at all. They traditionally prefer patterns made of rectangular blocks rather than triangles.

Papillon, 2019.

100cm x 120cm

Acrylic, graphite, ink and paper on canvas.

Rearranging these index card fragments into hybrid form that evokes typical African textiles, but that draws upon traditional wood carving motifs from cultures I had no experience of is a reminder that even if things turn out in radically unexpected ways, there is beauty wherever you look, if you choose to see it. By doing so I

For Yet Another Dance, 2019.

90cm x 90cm

Acrylic, ink and paper on canvas.

The mask motif in For Yet Another Dance is not from the group with whom I worked either. This drawing is based on owl masks from the Bwa (Bobo) people who have a playfully antagonistic relationship with them.

By rearranging notes from ethnographic research on a specific culture into a dancing mask from another (antithetical) e

Emergence, 2019

100cm x 150cm

Acrylic, graphite, ink and paper on canvas.

Emergence is a textile-like form made of dissected note cards arranged in patterns traditionally found in carved objects and masks from West Africa. The cloth appears to be tearing apart, but in this void something new emerges. The negative space is, therefore, simultaneously catastrophic and optimistic. The whole composition i

Threshold, 2019.

120cm x 90cm.

Acrylic, ink and paper on canvas.

There is a horizon line in this work, but it is very hard to see. Crossing it can be confusing, and disorienting. Moving about in this space of ambiguity is difficult and sometimes painful. Only when you reach the other side can you know that you have crossed the threshold. Or, is it that every time you cross one threshold you are immed

Bleed Through, 2019

46cm x 49cm

Acrylic on batik-dyed cotton and silk.

An assemblage of disparate discarded artefacts from the past, again covered over with another painted pattern still manage to colour and shape the present and the future.

Peter T McCarthy

Liminal View, 2018-2019

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"Creating cosmos from chaos." —M. L'Engle