For over three decades, Sydney-based artist, writer, and teacher Elizabeth Pulie has been “making art about art” with a philosophical approach and conceptual practice, challenging the criticalities of “what art is”. Since 1988, Pulie’s critical provocations have developed into three major projects: Decorative Painting, 1988–1989, Relational Art, 2002–2006, and End of Art, 2012–ongoing.
In collaboration with curator James Gatt, Pulie brings a voluminous portion of her entire body of work to the walls of UNSW Galleries, Sydney, in the first survey exhibition of her arts practice. Titled Elizabeth Pulie: #117 (Survey), the outstanding showcase unifies the artist’s self-assigned conceptual projects as “one work”.
Elizabeth Pulie, Decorated Wall (One hundred and twenty-five to One hundred and forty-nine) (detail), 1995, installation view: UNSW Galleries. Photograph: Daniel Boud. Courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney and UNSW Galleries, Sydney
In the gallery foyer, three artwork panels introduce each of Pulie’s projects. Moving to the spacious gallery adjacent, the Decorative Painting project emblazons the stark white gallery walls with an eye-catching burst of colour and motif rendered in expertly applied brushwork. Inspired by floral emblem, art deco, folk art, ornamental designs and other stylised repetitions, the small and large paintings, and a multi-panelled collage on the back wall (inspired by Pulie’s travels to Versailles), explore the idea of decoration as a piece of art. Pulie’s philosophical rationale for this project was to disrupt the art world environment with the highly decorative aesthetics of the work. These beautiful paintings are a visual delight. But “Is it art?”
At the gallery, Gatt said, “Liz perceives this project as a failure because the art world readily absorbs these paintings.” Then in response to this revelation, he confides, “I’m not so convinced that it was a failure, I think that if you are working in a way that is affirming something that you are critiquing in the artworld, and it gets absorbed by it, then it illustrates the art world’s willingness to recycle those things. So, in the end I think Liz’s project was quite successful. I think it will still make people question the nature of art.”
From left: Elizabeth Pulie: #1 (Ealdwif), 2012; #11 (Exhale), 2012; #12 (Inhale), 2012; #36 (The Female Form II), 2013; #39, 2013 and #81 (The Matrix Revisited), installation view: UNSW Galleries. Photograph: Daniel Boud. Courtesy the artist, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney and UNSW Galleries, Sydney
The next room is divided into two parts to accommodate a salon-style hang, an arrangement of small ancillary works made between 1997–2012. These represent personal and creative expressions free from any project-based limitations. Among them are painted works illustrated with various new and recurring motifs, the female form, a few forgotten paintings, a beaded wall sculpture.
The other side resembles a theatre stage-set where a three-part framework introduces the Relational Art project, which in the simplest of terms maintains focus on the social and political nuances of being an artist, being human.
Wall Painting for Mac, 2022, a new work made for the artist’s son, provides a backdrop for the installation of a kitchen table, two chairs and copies of just one of the written components developed, as part of Pulie’s practice – an anthology of both her own and co-produced artist interviews, reviews, conference papers, and other essays from 2002–2020, which you can take a seat and read on the spot or purchase from the gallery.
Elizabeth Pulie, #120 (Wall Painting for Mac), 2022, installation view: UNSW Galleries. Photograph: Daniel Boud. Courtesy the artist, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney and UNSW Galleries, Sydney
The space is animated with the recorded voices of the artist and curator engaged in conversation about the Relational Art project. The table itself plays a significant role in this project, for it was at this very table in her kitchen that many social, political, and art-based discussions took place. During the years of the development of the Relational Art project, Pulie presented over 50 exhibitions in the Front Room gallery in her house in Chippendale and, with her peer, artist Sarah Goffman, founded the Sydney Ladies Arts Club.
In the final space, spotlights cast a luminous glow over Pulie’s makings in the End of Art project. Upon entering the darkened room, a dynamic shift in theme, materiality, scale, and technique is immediately evident across new explorations utilising textiles, sewing, embroidery, paintings on hessian, sculpture, and video.
In contrast to the omission of any deliberate meaning in the Decorative Painting series, the End of Art works are more overtly contextualised through personal experiences, first-wave feminism, social and political movements, histories, and academic text and research. The implied meaning of the End of Art is juxtaposed with symbolic gestures of the beginnings of life: blooming flowers, vaginas, faces, breath, eggs, and spirituality.
Kirsty Francis is a Sydney-based arts writer.
UNSW Galleries
15 January to 10 April 2022
Sydney
