Exhibition Review: A View from the edge - Living Water by Paula Irene Payne

Logan Art Gallery 2024 By Crisia Constantine

A View from the edge - Living Water is Paula Irene Payne’s exhibition at The Logan Art Gallery in Gallery One. Payne’s exhibition opens alongside the AGNSW touring showcase of Brett Whiteley: Inside the Studio. A rare opportunity to glimpse into his studio methods and trace his enduring fascination with the colour blue, featuring the iconic deep ultramarine in the balcony 2 (1975) and Self-portrait in the studio (1976). Payne’s works developed partly as an homage to Whitley who influenced her early career, and she presents a compelling selection of artworks that further the pervading blue chromatics.

Spanning over three decades, Payne’s artistic practice reflects concerns of an environmental focus. Her painted works raise awareness of climate change, dramatic weather events, sustainability, resource extraction, and endangered species. Through a variety of painting techniques, architectural and technical drawings, gestural mark making, aeronautical and naval charts, and cartographic details, Payne captures natural histories and narratives of the sea and country. 

A View from the edge - Living Water investigates the notion of navigable water bodies and the way in which they inform connections between individuals. Payne focuses on waterways, wetlands, and their evolution. The works range from abstract depictions of water movements to semi-abstract and graphic approaches of littoral and intertidal zones with beguiling strips of land, silts and sediments carried by the tides.

As I enter Gallery One, I observe The Pause (2022) on the far wall that represents a fictitious seascape of wide scale, in warm and cool blue hues that is both commanding and soothing. Gently bordered by earthy tints, the blue field of scumbled paint captures the changing nature of water and its constant adapting to the environment. Repetitive white patterns of fine linear marks traverse the canvas in swathes. Through the manipulation of different layers of translucent and opaque colour Payne creates a depth beyond the surface. Laboriously applied vertical lines convey a tension of unresolved chronologies. The white lines resemble tally marks used to inscribe units of time, but Payne doesn’t include horizontal lines running across clusters to complete her tracing of days. In the absence of an ultimate record of the passing of time, The Pause becomes an archive of uncertainties.  

On the right wall Algae Bloom (2024) and The Farm (2024), another two large-scaled canvases sustain the immersive viewing experience. The human figure continues to be visually absent from the scenery, but nevertheless leaves an impression upon it. Blanched iterative motifs and geometric shapes tellingly overlay the colour fields, registering the human impact on the marine realm. 

Algae Bloom tackles the ecological effects of algae. Rising temperatures and pollution have implications as algal blooms prevent sunlight transmission and consequently, oxygen formation. Smooth, dark expanses of colour are anxious entry points that depict the underwater ‘dead zones’ where sea life cannot survive. Green and blue tones further delineate space, depth and shadow within the image. With the dripping and pouring of paint, Payne articulates linked tensions of loss and grief. 

The Farm incites the viewer to reflect upon their role in environmental protection with an investigative approach to salmon farming off the coast of Tasmania. The implied visual fragility of the water’s edge is expressed with seamless weavings of hues of blue and green. The fusing of brief expressive linear marks and the diagrammatic circular farming nets communicate and question change.

On the left Wall maritime life is viewed in Living Waters - Navigating the Tasman Sea (2023) featuring the deep waters and wild edges of the Tasmania Peninsula with surrounding dolerite cliffs and sea life while approaching Tasman Island. In contrast to The Farm, the diptych seizes the richness of natural sea life between the tides. With scatterings of gestural  paint Payne captures the unruly character of the Tasman Sea and with intricate, transparent linear renderings creates a sense of organic life in marks and inscriptions on a Prussian blue ocean.

Payne engages physically with her artworks by combining traditional easel painting with more free approaches and techniques of paint pouring and continuous rotation of canvases moving from a vertical view to a flat plane. Her artistic choice is ergonomically challenging, implying an innate response of the manoeuvring body. Constrictions of the flesh are carried by brush strokes and the interplay of fluid and opaque layers. 

Yet Payne works with full agency and manipulates perspectives and angles. She spatialises the medium of painting, ‘tipping’ elements of the landscapes towards the audience and enmeshing them in the process of looking. Almost vertiginous, Sink Hole (2024) escapes the ridged confines of linear standpoint, and furthers the immersive viewing event. 

In A View from the edge - Living Water, Payne posits the audience at the centre of the paintings. The act of seeing becomes an active experience and a locus of ethical interrogation.