Art: Theresa Byrnes' Revolution Revolve at Rogue Space
By Martin Newman on Mar 19, 09 02:44 PM in Art
Until April 1 2009
Spinning coins, rolled and dropped onto paper, dripped through ink and watercolours - here Theresa Byrnes in her latest show extends her investigations of ordinary objects and their relation to paint and visual imagery.
The New York-based Australian performance artist and painter methodically wheels around her big watercolor paper circle made of circles, tossing and placing pennies, dollars, yen, lira, pesos.
From Byrnes's two recent performance art pieces, a simulated oil spill, Trace, then a meditation on what constitutes consciousness, Theresa Tree, to her latest paintings with circles, Byrnes deals in large abstractions, she has dubbed Abstract Realism.
Life cycles, repetition, the shape of cells, of money, of water droplets, or paint, are explored. Her key subjects in Revolution Revolve are breasts - a nod to Earth mother devotionals.
Works such as Spooky Boobs, Mother Monster, or Boob Spiral, top, use the same technique - abstract assemblages, tie dye on paper.
Byrnes says: "It is the form we are first familiar with, from birth, our mother's breast."
The Wish Ponds, large disks, address the title of the show, Revolution Revolve, evoking, as her works often do, geologic scenes; seas, rivers, bio-zones, the ice caps.
Layers and layers of circle shapes and finally coins of all sizes and countries make up the larger circle, overlapping, just touching, enveloping.
In Bubble Bomb, 2008, right, lakes and fractal ink creations are formed, and make patterns around the coins cast over the surface.
Theresa adds: "It is our duty...to contemplate and be hyperconscious of our patterns of behavior and belief. Life is to revolve, to repeat - but it is also to evolve, breakthrough & explode.
"We are headed towards a revolution, a great turning of the world.
"In tossing the paper disks and than coins I became aware of the wish. I contemplate the coin, the planet and the maternal inside the physicality of painting, throwing to the wind, to chance, hoping for change and transcendence.
"The paradigm is dramatically shifting, to think within the boundaries of ownership and sale is narrow. The great circle is moving toward another way of existing, for what is a coin but a fickle disk."