Amid the uncertainties and ongoing nature of the global pandemic our lives have been transformed in surprising and unimagined ways. For Melbourne-based artist Dani McKenzie the unexpected “force of change” afforded her the time and space to explore a new direction in her painting practice. In this exhibition titled Close to Home, McKenzie introduces new themes, a brighter colour palette, sharper focus, and a series of larger-scaled paintings, inspired by her newly felt sense of connection to local community, explorations of her surrounds, and taking her own photographs.
Dani McKenzie, Little Prince Wine, oil on linen, 138 × 199cm. Courtesy the artist and Olsen Gallery, Sydney
Vernacular photography plays a central role in providing subject for McKenzie’s painting practice. Intrigued by the narrative possibilities of photographic imagery and how it captures ordinary moments in the everyday, McKenzie explains that her curiosity “stems from the history and culture that has grown up around photography. I am interested in the ways photography has shaped our seeing over time, and the impact this has on our lives in terms of the way we store information, and our natural faculty for memory.”
Until recently, McKenzie worked from vintage and found photographs with a focus on the way images of the past excite memory, connect people to familiar time and place, create an air of nostalgia and romanticism, and draw the viewer towards intimate recollections of their own. “For this new body of work, I utilised the convenience of working from vernacular snapshots, but my focus has somewhat shifted. I see these works as being less about the photographs I am working from, and more about the experience of looking, and about painting,” she says.
Dani McKenzie, Stopping at the Deli, 2021, oil and acrylic on linen, 107 × 87cm. Courtesy the artist and Olsen Gallery, Sydney
Finding herself confined to both a five and ten kilometre radius during COVID-19 restrictions in 2021, unable to access her art studio and seeking respite from stay-at-home orders, McKenzie hit the pavement, and walking the streets of her neighbourhood was able to rediscover the built and natural world around her; its sights and sounds, vibrant hues, shifts in light and shadow, shapes, and patterns. Observing the strangely quietened world, McKenzie found a new sense of belonging and connection to place through serendipitous encounters with strangers she passed along the way, and from looking more intently at the landscape, the houses and shopfronts, down streets, and laneways, and through windows. Topographies perhaps obscured from the artist’s view during the everyday hustle and bustle of pre-COVID life.
From the photographs she took and the experiences retained in her memory, McKenzie made drawings and a series of small painting studies to create the larger works. “I experimented a lot with these. I wanted to make some very large works for this show, so I used the studies to test out different grounds, methods for underpainting, mark making, and for working out which parts of the photograph I could eliminate. Each image required a slightly different approach, but once I felt confident, I knew what I wanted to do; I really just dived right in,” she says.
“A small painting will draw you in close – like someone who speaks quietly, so you have to lean in to listen to them. A big painting swallows you whole, and so you tend to move back and forth when you look at it. Painting on this scale is very physical.” These paintings, “are a reflection on the ups and downs of life during COVID – little moments I witnessed whilst walking around my neighbourhood and felt like I could empathise with,” she says. “In a poetic sense, I think the idea of being close to home can be quite comforting. It was strange when the km radius lifted, how awkward and nervous I felt leaving my suburb for the first time. Life is very simple when the world gets small like that, and it took me a while to adjust when things returned to normal.”
Looking to the future, this series of works will echo our past, but for now, McKenzie’s new painterly meditations evoke a tranquil yet eerie sense of the present, familiar imaginings of a time when the entire world is changed, visions, experiences, and feelings we can all relate to.
Kirsty Francis is a Sydney-based arts writer.
Olsen Gallery
9 to 26 February 2022
Sydney
