The works in this exhibition draw on my interaction with diverse religious traditions in Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Japan, Nepal, Britain and Australia. They represent my experience and interpretation of a variety of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and Christian ways of praying. The works also reflect aspects of the distinctive environments in which they were produced.
As a visual artist, my primary language is abstraction. Though reference to the real world can be seen, it is through the lens of abstraction that I seek to interpret some of the ways humans pray and, secondarily, express the different contexts of the experiences. I have made particular use of rhythm and mark-making as interpretive and expressive devices.
My time in Indonesia was particularly important. Thanks to generous support from Monash University, I was able to pursue a residency at the Bandung Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Art & Design. Muslim, Hindu and Christian colleagues were exceptionally generous, inviting me to take part in their personal prayer rituals. The artworks that came from these experiences seek to express something of the power and beauty of their ways of praying, from their formalised prayers to the spontaneous.
Similarly, wonderful time was spent in a Buddhist nunnery in Nepal, and visiting Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto temples in the mountains and forests of Taiwan, China and Japan. My own very personal prayer practises are shared here in such works as ‘Lamentation’, my quantified intercessory prayers for the massive loss of life in Palestine painted on a rubbing taken off a giant tree stump in Bunga, NSW; and ‘Zoom Prayers’, the process over the internet of daily prayers with my partner, during prolonged physical separation. I have greatly enjoyed making and thinking about these works, it is my hope that you enjoy them too.
Image credits: ‘Sholat’, Ella Whateley, European inks, reflective pigments & Indonesian secang pigment on Awagami paper, 706 x 118cm (detail). Photographer David Patston.
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