Sue Lovegrove: Vanishing #352

Sue Lovegrove Vanishing #352

Oil and resin on canvas 130 x 180cm

Sue Lovegrove was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1962.¹ She graduated from the ANU (Canberra) with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) in 1990 and completed her PhD, also at ANU in 2002 with a focus on indigenous perceptions of picturial and cultural space in painting through the experience of everyday life. ² Based now in south eastern Tasmania, her practice has been crucially shaped by her engagement with the geography of Australia, interpreting geological, microbial and botanical forms and layers into beautiful and evocative works.^.3 She is a prominent artist and her work has been purchased by national public and corporate institutions such as Canberra Museum and Gallery, ANU, Parliament House Art Collection and National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and, the National Gallery of Victoria and Macquarie Bank, in Melbourne^.4

Vanishing #352, procured by the University of Canberra in 2007, is one of a series painted as a result of the 2003 Australian Antarctic Division Fellowship and continues her practice of observing the myriad of layers in sea and ice landscapes.⁵   The series captures the ceaseless, abstract and fleeting sequence of ice formation, cracking, melting and refreezing with the ever present backdrop of stark white. ⁶

“II was imagining an experience of a minimal white landscape, hoping to find out what it was really like to be completely surrounded by and lose oneself in the empty whiteness of air and ice. There were moments when I sensed this emptiness, but the part of the trip that I responded to the most was the three to four day period on the ship between crossing the Antarctic convergence, (the mobile interface where the cold Antarctic seas meet and mix with the warmer Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans) and arriving at the dense pack ice of the Petersen Bank near Casey'. ⁷

In these paintings I have tried to recreate the elusive and transient phenomena of the sea ice, the endless cycle of melting, cracking and refreezing, combined with a personal desire for a symbolic return to an immense whiteness.”⁸

References

^{1  Bett Gallery , 'Sue Lovegrove' Bett Gallery, Accesse 8 April 2022, https://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/36-sue-lovegrove/overview/}

^{2   Beaver Galleries, 'Sue Lovegrove',  Beaver Galleries Canberra, Accessed 8 April 2022, https://www.beavergalleries.com.au/artist/sue-lovegrove/}

^{3 Sue Lovegove,  'About' Sue Lovegrove webpage, accessed 8 April 2022, https://suelovegrove.com.au/About~32}

^{4 Ibid}

^{5 Note  Helen Maxwell  Gallery, 'Vanishing , Sue Lovegrove, ' Artist's File Curator's Cabinet.}

^{6 Ibid}

^{7 Sue Lovegrove,  'Vanishing 205-2006', Accessed 8 April 2022,  https://suelovegrove.com.au/Vanishing-2005-2006~286}

^{8 Note Helen Maxwell , Artist's File, Curator's Cabinet.}