Slipping sideways is to move outside, from the predictable into the unknown. Its an asymmetrical movement indicating uneasiness and discomfort, with a sense of impermanence and loss of control. The concept of slipping sideways encompasses the absurd, out of character, not normal, and free of directness.
More elderly women are becoming homeless who have never faced circumstances outside of their control before. This is a re-occurring theme in my work which involves memory and a sense of injustice since I started exhibiting in 1987. It allows for hybrid forms to go off at a tangent into something you don’t know what you are looking at. It is crossing a line with what society chooses not to see, and how it views women who don’t conform to its norms. The point is, it could be anyone, battling for visibility and wanting to be treated with humanity.
The essence is towards a unity of opposites even when the present is unpredictable and uncertain. This is about finding the extraordinary in something very ordinary, where something seen sparks the imagination and gives total freedom to paint exactly as we please.
This exhibition also depicts paintings from the Pilbara, where I saw Burrup Peninsula rock art (petroglyphs) being sacrificed for mining.
I see a commonality between our attitude to homelessness and our reluctance to control mining excesses.
I want to give form and feeling to concerns such as what it is like to live rootless, as a drifter without a home or connections, and to live in a landscape that we mythologise yet exploit.
Image: Poisoned rock, Dorothy Lipman, oil on linen, 61 x 76 cm.
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