CDU ART GALLERY EXHIBITS ART BY MARINA STROCCHI
The exhibition Marina Strocchi: a survey, 1991−2015 is a gaze into the wondrous art of Marina Strocchi and her musings on life in the Red Centre and Top End, and other places in between. Her paintings and prints are laden with iconic motifs of jabiru, fish, windmills, boats, buffalo, feral cats, donkeys, desert oaks, ghost gums, spinifex, mangroves and mulga.
Over the past 24 years, since Marina Strocchi arrived in the Northern Territory, she has created evocative and playful renderings of landscapes, natural forms and post-colonial industry. This engaging, lively and expressive exhibition is the culmination of her artistry.
The CDU Art Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition, curated by Joanna Barrkman. The exhibition features works of art, created by Strocchi, on loan from the Araluen Art Collection, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and numerous private collections.
As a budding artist, Marina enrolled in a BA Visual Arts at the Graphic Design School, Swinburne Technical College, Melbourne, where she studied screen-printing and developed a passion for life drawing in 1979 onwards. According to Marina, the study of screen printing taught her to ‘… reduce things to simple lines and to use just one or two colours…I really developed a way of bringing imagery and narrative together, through the use of linear lines, patterns, colour and structure, positives and negatives … and I still do that.’
Strocchi moved to Haasts Bluff in central Australia during 1992 to establish the Ikuntji Women’s Centre. She ‘… could not believe how beautiful the landscape was ... I just wanted to capture its light and the individual changes from morning to evening … it was mesmerising.’ Marina sketched the mountain ranges: Tarrawarra, Mereenie, Haasts Bluff and Mt Ziel, all works which are featured in the exhibition. ‘There were a lot of rock formations and natural changes in the landscape that were curious.’ These landscapes are modest in scale, and yet they capture the expanse and magnitude of the landscape. They document Strocchi’s transition to a more painterly style, which she explains is ‘… about the brush work, the colour, the structure, the dynamic of the surface work.’
Other themes depicted in Strocchi’s art include traces of post-colonial activity and industry, such as mining, fishing, farming and grazing, are situated within the broader landscape of the Territory. Her predilection for tractors, windmills, railway tracks and trains are plentiful in her art, and are melded with organic forms of mangroves, rocks, boab trees and vines. She assembles these elements and shapes into visual rhythms and then imbues them with colour, texture and narrative. ‘Primarily, I start with the paint and the colour and the surface and the texture. The narrative is drawn from the subject matter … there is a layer of narrative that just comes in … that is whimsical, fanciful, light.’
Marina Strocchi undertook an artist-in-residence at Northern Editions in 2007. She enjoyed the collaborative environment as she worked with internationally recognised master print-makers. During her two-week residency, Marina created more than 13 lithographs and etchings. During an earlier visit to Northern Editions in 2006, Marina created Mystery train and Woolly butts. Mystery train was later selected as the branding imagery for the University’s Northern Institute, a social policy research hub.
Marina Strocchi: a survey, 1991-2015 is open to the public at CDU Art Gallery, Wed – Fri 10am – 4pm and Saturday 10am -2pm until 19 February 2016.
Joanna Barrkman is the curator of the CDU Art Collection and Art Gallery. Her most recent exhibition Textiles of Timor: Island in the Woven Sea was presented at the Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, 2014, and co-curated with Roy W. Hamilton. Joanna and Roy co-edited the accompanying scholarly publication, by the same title, published by UCLA Press.
