On a studio visit India Mark is wearing a soft green plaid skirt, a connection to the modulated grids that bring an innovative reading to her continuing still life project. In the new work, painted plaid interacts with harmoniously presented objects and stretches out behind lenses of water. The artist uses a digital program to generate her own patterns as a reference, but it is their transcription onto the surface through underpainting that radiates and enlivens these grids.
A key shift in this exhibition is a heightened intensity in the hues. Mark was challenged by the possibilities of colour through her discovery of posters by Redback Graphix, an Australian political print collective from the 1980s. On viewing these, her application of colour has increased in saturation while remaining closely attuned, demonstrating a real comprehension of light effects as she knocks back intense cerulean blue or cadmium orange with titanium white.
There are no initial personal attachments to the subjects India Mark paints. They are forms that promote deep observation through various light and textural effects. It is through time spent looking that the artist considers the vessels attain some value. “Now I am very attached to them.” In the studio, a number of items sit on a high shelf, more a collection of apothecary cannisters than her previous still life subjects of tea cup and saucer. “This is my favourite,” she says as she picks up a simple metal container before balancing it on top of a flat based egg cup. “I’ve got a thing about stacking.” Compiling the objects removes the function and brings the composition back to formal relationships. Picking up a small brown box, she notes that cubes are tricky. I wonder how this quite simple object might be a challenge but it is an indicator of the time Mark spends really looking and transcribing. Her paintings seek an exact measure through equilibrium and the ruled line, then softened by bevelled corners. Objects reverberate along their edges as they interpret an underlying structure.
Goya Soda is the name of the show and is also a song by French group Christine and The Queens. The two words contrast the intensity of Goya’s painting and the pop sparkle of soda water. The song is also about looking, with lyrics that state, “Who came there to see, who is seen.” India Mark’s new work aligns with both the pushing together of contrasts and the act of looping observation. In the studio she says, “What am I looking at? How do I break that down and paint it?” It is this demonstration of deep attentiveness which is of real appeal in India Mark’s ongoing project.
- Melody Willis
