Alice Wilson & Aliki Braine
16.01.24 – 21.01.24
(image: Alice Wilson & Aliki Braine at LAF 2024, photography by Andy Keate)
Alice Wilson & Aliki Braine
The Fact of the Matter / Landscape Dreaming
Alice Wilson
The Barrier Systems
This series of wall–based works are titled numerically, each preceded by the initials B.S. The BS stands for Barrier System, a nod to the artist's relationship with painting. As with larger installations, Wilson collects material to form a palette of both colour and content, the component parts of each painting can dictate the image or in some instances the photographic image is chosen, and the timber and plaster then assembled and filled around it. The notion of the paintings being barriers relates to the artist's connection to the language of painting, these works becoming the most formal connection to the wall, a connection that Wilson has had trouble letting go of – the constructed image and its physical manipulation made evident through the use of assemblage. Her practice negotiates an ongoing push and pull on and off the wall. These works present the most formal connection to the wall and to a positioned way of viewing. All marks of the making and previous life of the timber are left visible, a record of the journey of the matter to be made sense of in the form of a painting.
Aliki Braine
Into the Woods (Shredded) & Borrowed Landscapes
Aliki Braine's interest lies in landscape – how land is transformed into image and framed by historical precedents. Her photographs acknowledge their material nature – making visible the edges of their negative, their rigorous compositions, their celluloid origins. Into the Woods are prints made from negatives which were cut into strips using a paper shredder. These negative strips were then placed on the darkroom enlarger and made into a print. The repetitive pattern and rough edges of the negative strips echo the nature of man–made woodlands – planted in serried rows to be cut down and pulped …
Borrowed Landscapes are prints made from cut negatives shaped to mimic the incidental landscape views framed in the background windows of 15th and 16th century portraits and religious images. The term 'borrowed landscape' is derived from traditional East Asian garden design where naturally occurring background features are incorporated into a garden scheme.