Winsome art

The UP College of Fine Arts in Diliman, Quezon City, presents the works of Australian artist Winsome Jobling in a week-long exhibition at the Corredor due to open on November 29. Entitled Recent Paper Works, the exhibit features Jobling’s works on paper. The exhibit closes with a lecture of Jobling at the UPCFA auditorium on December 6.

Jobling’s huge installations and sculptural forms extend the traditional notions of paper-making.

A hard-working and committed artist, Jobling works primarily with paper. She has been experimenting with the art of paper making for over 20 years. Her art practice is strongly linked to the natural bounty of the tropical environment–locating and often nurturing challenging traditional notions of paper as disposable and small in scale. She often suspends these large works, almost human in scale, in three-dimensional space.

One well-known body of work, Dress Ups, consists of oversized dresses, patterned with watermarks and stencils. Reminiscent of childhood when all clothes seemed oversized, Jobling’s monumental garments dwarfed viewers yet remained fragile and translucent, challenging traditional notions of paper as disposable and small in scale. She often suspends these large works, almost human in scale, in three-dimensional space.

The work is made from banana fiber which produces a rich creamy paper of great strength and translucency. It also has a fragile and a sensuous quality. In her more recent work, Jobling has further explored translucency and watermarking where the image is inherent in the paper rather than applied on it.

According to Australian art critic Emma Davies, "Jobling’s paper works are a tangible expression of the environment. Her work has developed from depicting the landscape using paper, to letting the paper speak of the landscape from which it is drawn. She allows the distinct seasonal changes experienced in the Top End to determine the physical qualities of the paper produced."

The exhibit at the UPCFA is part of the Kawing project in partnership with the 24HR Art-Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, Australia and The Asialink Centre at the University of Melbourne.

Asialink and 24HR Art have a particular interest in Filipino artists and see contemporary Filipino culture as dynamic and rich. Asialink initiates and organizes exhibitions of contemporary Australian art to tour to various countries of the Asian region.

Kawing is a region-to-region project in which a group of Northern Territory artists are selected to travel to regional centers in the country in late 2001 and early 2002 and accompany individual exhibitions of their work to Cebu, Baguio, Puerto Princesa and Davao and stay with these for one month.

During their stay, the artists are expected to make new work in response to their experience in the Philippines in collaboration with local artists. They will also have the opportunity to network and meet Filipino artists, research Filipino culture and develop some of their own work in a cross-cultural environment. Jobling intends to work at the Duntog Foundation near Baguio and at Ag-agat and has also been invited to exhibit in Isabela, Northern Luzon. She is also slated to conduct a workshop in Tiaong, Quezon.

Aside from Jobling, other artist participants – who are all professionals and are able to produce work of high aesthetic and conceptual standards – selected by curator Cath Bowdler, director of 24HR Art are: Jacki Fleet, Techy Masero and Dennis Bezzantis.

Jacki Fleet is a well-established Darwin painter who has engaged in detailed investigations into the dichotomies of landscape/country in the Top End. Through several bodies of work that have centered around the motif of the flying ant, she has ever refined her vision. Jackie will travel to Cebu in January 2002 to work at Gallery Luna, an exciting artist-run space there, as well as with the local Mardi Gras.

Techy Masero’s works have been instantly recognizable as an integral part of numerous festivals and community events in the Territory over the last ten years. She works primarily in cane and other natural materials. She is concerned with mythologies of place and has interwoven her own conceptual concerns into the many large public commissions she has undertaken. Techy wants to create a monumental, ephemeral outdoor sculpture on a beach near Puerto Princesa, Palawan and will work in collaboration with artists at Galeri Kanarikutan, a space which, like Techy’s work, is entirely made of indigenous materials.

Dennis Bezzantis is an emerging artist with extensive connections in Sarawak, Malaysia. Dennis’s sculptural installations are based on the around notions of weaving, both physically and metaphorically, as in inter-cultural meshing. His interest in combining traditions of Celtic weaving with those of Malaysian indigenous traditions conceptually underpins his work. He will work with the internationally established artist, Bert Monterona in Davao with the possibility of exhibiting at the University art space there.