Beneficial Rays
The Art Gallery of Ballarat
Australia
2024
The title of the exhibition, Benny’s, is an abbreviated take on the phrase ‘beneficial rays’, which underscores the importance of light and colour; both of which act as vehicles for emotional and spatial awareness within my practice.
In 2023 I spent a month in Greece as an artist in residence at Skopelos Foundation for The Arts. Here I worked to develop a staining technique using gouache and acrylic paint; at first working quickly to apply washes, then slowly to allow the layers to soak into the raw canvas.
Returning to Melbourne, I used the same technique to paint a specific moment from memory, in order to create a large-scale triptych that repeats and distills the moment three times across each canvas; to be ‘read’ from left to right then absorbed as a whole.
For opening night, I asked my friend Felix Wilson to speak. Felix is an artist living and working on Dja Dja Warrung Land on the goldfields of Central Victoria. His making practise is mainly concerened with aspects of landscape. After completeing a practise-based PhD in 2019 which focused on photographic images, he has developed a focus on working with stone to make work and further his research interests.
This is the transcript of his beautiful speech, from the Art Gallery of Ballarat,
13 December, 2024:
"I first encountered Evie's work on Tumblr, many years ago, around 2011 maybe. I bought some of the superb little zines she was making then. I was living in Hobart and it was only much later that we were introduced. She was a kind of legendary figure in my mind in those days, she seemed very young and almost mystical in her dedication to painting.
Guy Davenport said 'art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world! Attention is something of a commodity now, interchangeable along digital data points, but as long as we're human it will be the basis of our culture. Where we pay attention, the qualities we bring to it, how it aligns with the environment we live amongst and the aspirations we decide on collectively for it are the bloom of our offering to the future. Social media as distraction is real enough, but we can cultivate ourselves and choose the attention we offer the world in spite of whatever systems we become entangled in.
Evie and I had a short Summer season in Berlin a few years ago, we used to swim in the lakes and look at art, talk about Wolfgang Tillmans. At Grunewald there was an ice cream van that would announce it's arrival by playing a jangly Bob Marley song through it's rooftop speaker as it drove down the forest track. Some things trace outlines in your mind that you see other things through later, even though you don't realise at the time. Like sunlight on the ground of a forest glade.
I think were much closer to our distant ancestors than we like to believe, in spite of all the technical apparatus we've compiled and surrounded ourselves with. The enchanted world hasn't vanished, our magical thinking and prayerful attention is just too often focussed on the material or financial and farther from a place of concern and nurture for the spirit than perhaps it has ever been. I don't want to get all doomer about where we are though, changes are afoot as always, oceanic tides shift one way and then another in response to the cosmic forces which push and pull at our world.
Anyway, attention and Evie's show. What a pleasure to be offered something like this work to channel our attention. What comes to mind is the light through stained glass windows, an aid to attending to the mystery of life in a way that honours the human, a recognition of the power of the embodied energy of the sun and the grace we're capable of. Have we all felt our bodies glow while basking in the warmth of sunlight and the feeling of awakening some deep gratitude for living?
Painting can still give us that, like the sound of a bell rung it can still summon us to wonder.
- Felix Wilson
Installation View
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
2050 x 3900mm
Installation View
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
2050 x 3900mm
Installation View
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
2050 x 3900mm
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
1440 x 2050mm
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
1240 x 2050mm
Gouache and acrylic paint on canvas
1220 x 2050mm
Watercolour on paper [framed]
190 x 340mm
BENNY’S - Beneficial Rays.
The Art Gallery of Ballarat