C103
Review
Emma
Louise Johnston: Scape
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Emma Louise Johnston: Land Mark Series 2,
mixed media on cotton;
courtesy the artist
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Emma Louise Johnston's new work divides
easily into two series in the Belltable exhibition area. The
first includes a series of six snowscapes printed on cotton.
These scenes of rural Pennsylvania evoke the crispness of
a cold bright day, while the presence of a functional-looking
factory lends the air an eerie quality reminiscent of a Twin
Peaks still. Dark tyre marks drag the snow in some of
the prints and link the eye with the clumsy appearance of
an industrial truck in another. The marks interrupt the whiteness,
as though the truck wheels have been drawing in the snow.
These marks are abstracted in a companion series on the opposite
wall, emphasising the painterly gestures of movement. The
pulled lines of straights and curves make the pairs seem to
bleed into one another while setting up a seriously playful
dialogue with the original snow scenes. The tyre tracks in
the snow scenes could be a metaphor for the industrialisation
of nature, but they are celebrated as yet another part of
nature by de-contextualising them in the abstractions.
The second series in the show is
less complete as a body of work but full of potential. These
are flat, almost monochromatic paintings, so flat in fact
that Johnston has painted them directly onto the walls. Tiny
figures float lonesomely in these vacuous grounds without
connection to each other; some teeter off the edge. The backdrops
are sand-coloured and the loosely painted figures seem to
have been taken from beach photos. Painted in tones of brown,
they almost merge with their environment. However, their brightly
coloured swimming trunks of petrol blue, acid green and tangy
yellow allow them to become sirens in their song of the deserted
in the desert.
Treasa O'Brien is an artist
and freelance writer; she also works as the Administrator
of Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.
Emma Louise Johnston: Scape,
Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, January/February 2003
