Rose Nolan
Rose Nolan’s work invites us to read between the lines as she revels in repetition.
Image credit: Rose Nolan, Not So Sure this Works, 2005, hand hooked floor rug, 285 x 255 cm. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery © Rose Nolan
Rose, I would love to talk specifically about your relationship to words and text. Your works offer a visual explication of language and its complexity, yet text was not always such a dominant part of your practice. How did text become part of your work and when? What was the catalyst for this shift?
In retrospect, it wasn’t a particular moment or dramatic shift – for example, my very early hessian banners incorporated letters from the Russian cyrillic alphabet as formal, graphic devices, alongside other geometric shapes. Gradually, language as a material form made its way into my practice in a similar way to using found or recycled materials to create works. It’s just a different type of material that displays both formal and linguistic qualities that I may want to incorporate. In this way, form and content are enmeshed where construction is both process and metaphor. Letters are combined into words, and words into banners, sculptures and wall works.
You use ‘found text’ – I love this idea of readymade language. We live in a time with an abundance of words, but also in an era of fake news, where language is increasingly manipulated and almost weaponised. I’m thinking too of how we use words in a ‘throw away’ sense. How do you choose your words, pardon the pun?
The reason why I think of language as a type of readymade is that it already exists in the world as part of a circulating system. And yes, the way language and meaning are changing and being manipulated is actually dangerous in some circumstances. My creative act is to simply separate words or phrases from the stream of continuous talk, and to assign them a fresh existence and new static form. Over the years, I’ve captured words, phrases, paragraphs from many sources in my notebook, waiting for the right opportunity to bring them into play. It might be a phrase I’ve overheard that has a particular tone and rhythm, or a word that I’d like to reproduce graphically. Mostly, I’m interested in slowing down the viewer’s experience when engaging with an artwork, to open up the possibility for multiple interpretations by delaying readability. My intention is to invite the viewer into a new space of play, allowing for slippage between reading and seeing to happen. For me, success is when someone takes a long time to work out what the word or phrase might be; or never works it out, they just see the red and white geometric forms. That makes me very happy.
Your work is connected to an interest in Russian Constructivism and political posturing and banners. Does your
practice have a political agenda or is it playing with these tropes?
I’m not sure I would locate Russian Constructivism and political posturing in the same sentence to connect my interests. The aesthetic forms associated with Russian Constructivism – and its combining of a utilitarian approach to art, design and architecture with utopian, revolutionary, social beliefs – was, for me, inspirational. The legacy and authority of this art history continues to provide content for my work, but I don’t intend for my work to have a political agenda. It’s perhaps the opposite, in that my works often make a point of deflating any political or dogmatic affirmations. In a playful reversal, I use largescale wall works, banners or the placard, usually associated with words of protest and public proclamation, to introduce language that is less emphatic in address, that is private, personal, self-questioning and sometimes uncomfortable.
Similarly, since the 1990s you have created a distinct aesthetic with your use of red and white. Red is the colour of alarm and urgency, but also hope. I’m thinking here of its uses in the medicinal sense and of how we see Red Cross flags as a symbol of sanctuary in war zones. This colour way is immediately recognisable, but it is also analogous with the aesthetics of the Russian Constructivist movement. What informed your adoption of this palette?
It’s interesting because the simple yet dynamic combination of red and white has many associations, some we want to recognise and others that we may not. In addition to significant Modernist and revolutionary associations, red and white also have different sonic registers in terms of noise and silence, loud and soft. The colours are also reflective of a shifting back-and-forth dynamic in my work, between purity and its opposite. The use of this reduced palette was informed by particular materials that I was using to create my White Trash cardboard constructed works in the mid 1990s. The constructions were already formally complex, so I decided to honour the ‘found’ colour of the white cardboard, rather than apply other colours. In reality, the austerity and purity of the white monochrome is the foundation for most of my works, and then it’s a matter of applying the colour red to bring definition and contrast to create form and space. It’s a limitation that I’ve continued to place on the work, but at the same time it provides freedom from needing to consider the potency of other colours, which I’m not sure I could handle.
The works are also physically complex, and painstakingly made by hand using a repetitive gesture or action that speaks to purpose. Can you tell me about this aspect of your work?
I have a category within my practice that I call HOMEWORK – it includes works that are often made in my domestic-sized studio space, which focus on low-tech labour and craft processes, for example stitching and hand-hooked floor rugs. I’m interested in exploring the material form of the artwork itself, bringing attention to my own physicality within the work, whereby the process of making becomes part of the content for the viewer to engage with. This has expanded more recently to using similar labour-intensive processes to build largescale works from a repeated geometric form, such as cut hessian circles. Through repetition there’s an amplification, almost to the point of being ridiculous or absurd. The work becomes embedded with the latent energy and effort achieved through this repeated gesture and handmade approach. In this way, the methods of construction have the potential to disrupt expectation and to engender complex readings.
Your works also shift between scale, from intimate works to large banners that I would imagine are difficult to negotiate in terms of making. How do you decide on scale? Does some text lend itself to largeness more than others, or do you sometimes adopt a smaller scale for
‘big’ words?
There is a shifting dynamic of expansion and contraction that operates across my practice related to energy, voice and the play of contradictions. Between public and private, humility and heroics, ambition and anxiety, homage and irreverence. Thinking about scale is intrinsic to this dynamic and this in turn influences the way in which works, particularly largescale works, are fabricated. In these instances, the excitement or tension lies in the construction of a monumental work based on a fragile, improvised materiality, and the projection into public space of private and domestic forms. With largescale painted wall works, the expanded scale allows for the definition of letters to dissolve into a group of red geometric shapes. Or conversely, a tiny cardboard text-based work may encourage the viewer to ‘stand tall’ while it lies in a heap on the floor.
Recently, you have taken on public art commissions. Tell me about how you adapt your work for this purpose?
It’s taken me a while to consider whether I wanted to adapt my work to a more public context. It’s not straightforward for me, and the placing of text-based work in the public realm can be problematic. If it is, I actually think this is a sign that the work has been successful. Collaborating on our own house, the Hello House, with OOF! Architecture here in Melbourne provided an opportunity to see what might be possible, and required, to locate a work at street level incorporated into the fabric of a building. I’m interested in architecture and design and I’ve worked within a local government environment, so this has helped me to navigate a way through, to understand the language of these public art projects. I quite like the way in which you have to respond to a particular set of problems – site, context, budget, histories, community – to find a solution. After that’s it requires patience and the ability to stay the course to get the best outcome.
Is there a memory or event from childhood that you think may have resonance in any of the works you make?
There’s probably one memory that comes to mind. I have a large extended family. Growing up, we spent the summer holidays together sharing a beach house on the Bellarine Peninsula, here in Victoria. The house was very basic, with rooms added on over the years as the family grew, so I remember that for a while all the women slept together on an enclosed verandah. At night a large homemade curtain would be pulled across the space for privacy and to separate the beds from the passage. It created a temporary room within a room, like a large cubby house. I loved this tentative means of demarcation and separation. I often smile and wonder if the experience of that large flimsy curtain has informed my tunnel/tent and curtain works of recent years.
Rose Nolan is exhibiting as part of Know My Name at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra from November 14, 2020 to July 4, 2021.
Rose Nolan is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Hamish McKay, Wellington.
nga.gov.au
annaschwartzgallery.com
hamishmckay.co.nz
