HELEN S. TIERNAN - COLONIAL WALLPAPERS - MANTLE OF PERCEPTION

 HELEN S. TIERNAN
COLONIAL WALLPAPERS - MANTLE OF PERCEPTION,  2017
180 x 300 cm (pentaptych)
Oil on canvas
 
PROVENANCE
Lake Tyers, VIC
Direct from the Artist, Canberra ACTCooee Art Gallery, Sydney NSW 
 
STORY
Helen S.Tiernanā€™s spectacular panoramic work, titled Colonial Wallpapers - Mantle of Perception re-contextualises the history of European-Aboriginal first encounter, proposing alternate nuanced narratives of colonisation. Her starting point is personal memory and photographic and printed recordings of early colonial artists such as Joseph Lycett, Augustus Earle and John Eyre, Eugene Von Guerard quoting images of European settlement and first arrival upon which the histories of national identity were constructed. While people and place are selectively documented, so too are the bricks and mortar of columned, classical and contemporary architecture that confirmed for the invaders, their success of conquest. However it is with these symbols of power that Tiernan makes her pass at history, subtly undermining the entitlement claims of the invaders to the vast expanses of continent by asking ā€�who are the successful claimants?ā€™. She artfully renders such symbols as Melbourneā€™s Exhibition Buildings and Brighton bath houses, the Sydney Opera House and Fort Macquarie with an insistent insubstantiality. They are miniaturised and precariously placed in a seemingly endless landscape ā€�created by Ancestorsā€™ and textured by a deeply Indigenously implicated, yet almost invisible patterned overlay of manufactured lace. - Extract from essay on page 6 of the exhibition catalogue written by Marie Geissler PhD candidate, University of Wollongong
 
EXHIBITED
Transculturation: Sublime and Surreal Encounters of First Contact in the Antipodes, May 2017, Coo-ee Art GalleryActivist Expressionism - Artist Talk, March 2017, Cooee Art Gallery