Anya Pesce

27 July - 29 August      Rupture

Link to artist's website

Anya Pesce says her art-work, Rupture,  evokes “the uncertainty and futility we are experiencing during the Covid 19 epidemic.”

She also explains its making process in detail. Since 2015, Rudi, who owns a plastic fabrication shop in Fairfield has welcomed Anya into his factory where she uses a machine that extrudes plexiglas, on this occasion beyond its limit. When the bubble burst, in a single uncontrolled action, the brittle sheet of plexiglas became flesh, with flaying lips, enticingly enclosing an orifice. It’s sexy. Like a sports car, a cocktail bar after dark and all the shiny advertising that preys on the biology of our brains, her art is visceral, with desirability that invites a new category – Pop Abstraction.

In conversation, Anya takes this idea further by describing the way her long education in art, at Meadow Bank TAFE, Charlie Sheard Studio School and the National Art School lead her from painting through installation art to the idea of making as opposed to fabricating, works in a single gestural action. And in that sense this work, Rupture would be the epitome of Anya’s work to date.

Reconciling the idea of spontaneous sexualized exuberance with Covid 19, is of course impossible, they preclude each other. But a meditation on it throws up questions about the nature of content in art-works: The content of a novel for example has little to do with the beauty of the printed page, however appealing it might be. In contrast the content of an abstract painting does not extend beyond an appreciation of its component parts however enticing it might be to impose symbolism on it. Needless to say it is difficult to read any art-work out side of the context of its making, its time and its culture, which unquestionably includes Covid19 at the moment.

-Tony Twigg

Rupture stands as a metaphor for the uncertainty and futility we are experiencing during this COVID-19 pandemic. When words are limited, emotions challenged and uncertainty prevails, a visual expression can instantly evoke a visceral response.

As an artist I obsessively search for new ideas, reimagining forms, shapes and colours to reinvent my work, while consistently using the same material, polymethyl methacrylate - acrylic.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, I embraced the stillness imposed on me during self-isolation, and was able to reflect on my existing practice to take the opportunity and experiment with new ideas and techniques.

To date my works have been made by my hand, manipulating the material with a predictable outcome. Rupture is the outcome of a shift in my practice which involves the use of machinery to determine the work.

In this technique, the material is heated and vacuum-suctioned via a template, which is simultaneously inflated and deflated with air, altering the surface. Mimicking breath, the material is challenged to the point of explosion, resulting in the work’s fractured surface.

Rupture resembles an open wound. In stark contrast to the forms typical of my practice, which are made with an impeccable surface. Here, a gaping hole exists, framed by shards of plastic that burst forward into the viewer’s space.

A tension exists due to the randomness of the fractured material framed by the external geometrical border.

-Anya Pesce