McGrath Booklet_16pg07-02 copy - James McGrath

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A gauze, maybe. A pall. A haze. Screens of vapour and mist: the finest gossamer and gorse – at
once, summer gauze and rough autumnal drape. And everywhere: gossamer screens, summer
haze and hazardous gaze. 1 The (absent) eye – what is eyed and what looks-back, the look of a
scene. The scene returns a look. Its what looks (like).
These screens shelter. They partition worlds apart, and keep them safe from survey, from
observation, from capture and closure. Worlds harboured in retreat and refuge, encrypted and
seen as through coarse sieve and pelt. Worlds preserved and spared – withheld and hid into
woven darkness. And yet this darkness shimmers and advances: like an advent of light, in the
midst of disconsolate gloom. 2 Shimmering, screens skin and form veils 3 – film, peel, scale and
dandruff. 4 Scattered filaments and particles of light, spread, shed – scintillas of evidence:
pulverised, atomised into mist, into atmosphere.
This red that is the bloat of seasons, the swell of memory, the name Adam: blood of the earth,
earth torn and welling up through crust and skin, (blooming) through atmosphere and mist, fine
rain and gossamer haze; “it hazes, it misles, or rains small rain,” thick and hawsey, cold sea-fog,
warm drip and dark – it rises, arrives. 5
What arrives? The past as passage. Arrival itself as remembering its provenance, matter
remembering its origins. 6
Michael Tawa
Sydney, June 2002
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1 Gossamer - ‘Fine spider-threads seen in fine weather,’ from
Middle English gossamer = goose-summer: ‘the time of the year when it
is most seen, viz. during St Martin’s summer’; German sommerfaden
= summer thread, goose-summer-film - ‘the name of exhalations
seen rising from the ground in hot weather… when the air is seen
on a warm day to undulate, and seems to rise as from hot embers.’
2 Screen - to shelter from observation, partition, coarse sieve;
a boundary, limit; Shelter: place of protection, refuge, retreat,
defence; to refrain, preserve, spare, withhold, contain; to sparkle; to
plait, weave, fabricate, plot, conceive.
3 Veil - sail, cloth, curtain, covering; originally, the ‘sail or propeller of a
ship’; to carry, bear along, vehicle; to break apart, separate, divide, bear fruit,
grow, increase; to entwine as a screen, to fence in, cover, protect, care for, join together;
hut, lair, pavilion, tabernacle - as `entwined with boughs’; to cover up, hide; to steal,
en-crypt; to spread thoroughly.
4 Skin - flay, skin, peel, scales, dandruff; to split, sever, rend; a rush or grass tie,
rope, chord, knot of thread or silk; from the etymological root *SKEI = shine; *SKHED,
*SKHEID, *SKHEIT = cleave, scatter, part, shed (skein, schism, schist, zest, shed,
sheath, schedule, scintillate).
5 Mist - from the etymological root *MEIGHWH = to darken.
6 - The idea of mind as `matter which remembers its origins,’ is from Jean-François
Lyotard, Matter and time, in Philosophy and Architecture. Journal of Philosophy and
the Visual Arts. Academy Group. St Martin's Press. London, 1990: 13-15.
Etymologies are drawn from W. W. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language. London: Oxford, 1978 (1879-1882); J. Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance
of the Bible. Riverside: Iowa Falls (undated); and Fabre D’Olivet, La Langue Hébraïque
Restituèe. Vevay: Delphica, L’Age D’Homme, 1985.

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page 6
interior / flower
Oil on canvas.
36in. x 42in.
2002
page 10-11
Dutchman’s
dream
Oil on canvas.
34in. x 100in.
2001
cover
3 folds / 3 seas
Giclee mounted
on 20mm Plexi.
40in. x 60in.
2002
page 8
Pozzo’s view
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
120cm x 200cm
2002
page 10-11
Dutchman’s
bloom #2
Oil on canvas.
34in. x 64in.
2001
page 6
red blooming /
blue falling
Oil on canvas.
42in. x 42in.
2002
page 10-11
Dutchman’s
bloom #1
Oil on canvas.
34in. x 100in.
2001
page 2
inside / outside
Oil on canvas.
42in. x 86in.
2002
page 9
Dutchscape
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
120cm x 185cm
2002
page 12
blossom and
fold
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
40 x 60in., 2001
page 7
Flowers and
landscape
Oil on canvas.
42in. x 42in.
2001
page 10-11
votum #4
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
75cm x 50cm
2002
page 3
Red drape
(Dutchman’s
vision #2)
Oil on canvas.
2001
page 10-11
votum #1
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
30cm x 50cm
2002
page 13
opening / fold
/ bloom
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
40 x 60in., 2001
page 7
Draftman’s Arch
Oil on canvas.
40in. x 73in.
2001
page 10-11
Dutchman’s
bloom #3
Oil on canvas.
34in. x 100in.
2001
page 5
falling folds
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
75cm x 50cm
2002
page 10-11
votum #2
Giclee mounted
on 12mm Plexi.
75cm x 50cm
2002
back cover
3 folds / 3 seas
Giclee mounted
on 20mm Plexi.
40in. x 60in.
2002
“Dutchscapes” a booklet of two shows in Sydney and New York. The works investigate the idea of Dutch
17th century “veiled reality”; the tension between representing something apparently real versus the reality of its
construction, as seen particularly in the cloud formations in the background of landscape paintings. The second concept
introduced in these exhibitions is the notion of the “ambiguous terrain”; the shifting visual dynamic between the surface
of the fold, and the mapping of the Netherlands topography, whereby fusing the identities of these 17th century icons with
one another. Perhaps the most intriguing notion Marshall McGrath introduces in his work is the dissection and inversion
of the relationship between the Major and the Minor 17th Century Dutch artists. The latter were compelled to artificially
confine their careers to specialized subjects, such as sea or town landscape, due to contemporary market and cultural
constraints. McGrath reorders the hierarchies of these artists’ specific genres (mythological, landscape, interiors and still
life), and blurs their pictorial boundaries as a poetic reconnection to the artists, thus releasing them from the 17th century
pictorial confines.
Born in Sydney in 1969, Marshall McGrath studied the techniques and principles of the 16th and 17th century masters
at the studio school of Patrick Betaudier in Paris. Before graduating as an architect he worked as a studio assistant to
Australia’s greatest expressionist painter, Arthur Boyd. While a lecturer in design and communications at New South
Wales University, he was awarded several prizes for architecture and art including the Australian Post-Graduate Award,
several design awards, and a residency in Paris. Over the last ten years he has exhibited in London, Paris, and Sydney.
He has produced highly acclaimed digital installations and videos commissioned by several Australian museums which
have subsequently been presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum, LA (2000). His work was also included in the Sydney
and New York film festivals (1999&2001).
selected exhibitions / screenings / installations:
2002 McGrath Galleries, New York, USA, “Dutchscape”
2001 DNA Gallery, New York, “tensum”, group show
2001 Michael Carr art gallery, Sydney, “Infra-red Baroque”
2001 Tugboat film and video series: “Tidal Vectors”, New York
2000 J. Paul Getty Museum & Laguna Art Museum
“Baroque and Modernity”, screening
2000 Museum of Sydney “Harbor/Metropolis”
Audio Visual installation “Tidal Vectors”
2000 Michael Carr Art Gallery, “Cusp”
1999 Sydney Film Festival, “Theatres of Anatomy,”
1996 Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Solo,
Artist:
James McGrath
info@james-mcgrath.com
www.james-mcgrath.com
New York Gallery:
McGrath Galleries
info@mcgrathgalleries.com
(212) 737 7396
Sydney Gallery:
Michael Carr Art Dealer
michaelcarr@ozemail.com.au
(02) 9327 3011
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