LACUNA

26 April – 6 May 2018

Hannah Nowlan, is an emerging artist based in Black Rock, Victoria. She is considerably influenced by growing up amongst the surf culture of Victoria’s coastline, and her practice attempts to communicate relaxed and therapeutic atmospheres of Australia’s vast natural landscapes.

Her most recent series, ‘LACUNA’, has become a powerful tool to process some of the most important experiences of her life. In these works, Hannah has embarked on examining themes of grief, death, loss, powerlessness, as well as birth, search and escape. She has developed a uniquely primitive language through her paintings that speak directly of person and place. The paintings within this collection, employ gaping expanses of colour in attempt to create vast atmospheres and fields of consciousness that one can lose themselves within.

The definition of the word, LACUNA’, references intellectual and physical gaps, cavities and missing links. On the cusp Lacuna, sounds like a resort or a paradise-like oasis where one might go to escape. It is all of this and more. LACUNA’ as a title is bound by loss yet broad in scope. This show holds a sense of presence; warmth in substance yet vast and deserted. At its essence, LACUNA’, is what fills us or consumes us after loss, after-life.

“With strong appreciation for craftsmanship and authenticity, I see my practice as entering a field that blurs the boundary between object and image, landscape and home, fable and reality. I draw upon simple surface transformations within my paintings to absorb energy and make sense of both experience and space. These elements are processed through the form of taking photographs and creating considered drawings and compositions of landscape”.

~ Hannah Nowlan

This body of work visits an after-life of sorts, emulating that of the night sky and atmosphere as a metaphor for the unknown and our cavity of understanding. Like a motionless pause or limbo these works give space for breath, respite and slumber. Serendipitously the rare lunar display of a ‘Super Blue Blood Moon’ played an integral role in shaping this body of work. This exhibition bestows themes of heaven and hell, deep seas, dark skies, infernos and blood moons. With an alluring yet vague awareness in the dark, each artwork uncovers the shadow eclipsed by light.