Janice Fieldsend

June 11 - July 14   FunkyTown : Discotheque Series 2017

   

Janice Fieldsend. FunkyTown, 2017. Acrylic on foiled wallpaper. 226 x 198 cm

For this work, Janice has supplied some texts that echo the emotions she tries to capture with this work on paper:  The best clothes, the best moves, the best hair…..  Soul Train youtube video   Papa was a Rolling Stone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g7KawdsVSQ

I was watching a video of George Michael dancing on stage in Rio de Janeiro 1991. He could do anything, be anything.

Figure out how to put satisfying marks onto a slippery surface. Subtle private marks, not big gestures. Nothing about imparting any wisdom to the world.

Janice Fieldsend. FunkyTown, 2017. Acrylic on foiled wallpaper. 226 x 198 cm

….I wish there could be a club in a plain-looking suburb where you could walk through the door on a Friday night and find a funk paradise - everyone you have ever liked or loved or slept with or rejected or been rejected by, adorable people you’ve never met, strangers looking into each other’s faces and bursting out laughing, detectives and journos in suits struttin’ with their elbows out, whole gangs of Asian students,dignified old Jewish couples, backpackers from every land, lonely boys and bored teenage girls rushing out onto the floor. All crippling thoughts of cool would explode and vanish, and everything would be forgiven, everything redeemed. 

Helen Garner 

                                                                                                          Sydney Morning Herald 3rd November 2012

Is painting the good object? 

Leave some things unanswered.     

                                                                                                                      

Janice Fieldsend is an artist I have collaborated with and from that experience, I witnessed first hand her acute sensitivity to the aesthetics of materials.  This sensibility has given humble materials, often cast-offs, a transformative journey, and often resulting in an eye catching art work.

This work has the same effect on me.  A humble foiled wall paper, perhaps salvaged from the Reverse Garbage, has manifested as the support for blobs of colourful acrylic paint.  Janice has not painted since her early twenties.  For this project, she has decided to return to painting, and in her own words, she wants to make 'mediocre' paintings that involve taking risks that she didn't have the courage to do in her early career as an artist.  To this effect, she has also shifted from her usual palettes of earth-rust-black colour scheme to brighter primary colours.

As her accompanied texts suggest, Janice's use of the humble bronze wall paper has assigned it to the centre of focus in the light box on Botany Road.  It exudes indulgence and preciousness.  The lights from the traffic reflect on the bronze wall paper, adding shimmers to discotheque effect.  The use of this ordinary material turned glamorous when covered with blobs of seductive primary colours.  Anything ordinary has the potential for 'good' and 'happiness'.

Anie Nheu

Caretaker of Slot