Julia Roche: When our eyes adjust
Mar 23, 2024 to Jun 23, 2024
Image: Julia Roche. From the series 'When our eyes adjust'
About
For When our eyes adjust, Julia Roche presents a new body of work on canvas and paper, created both in the night, and of the night. Working on her family property Wooroola, on Wiradjuri Country for the past six years, Roche has developed a signature painting style that bears witness to the emotive and sublime qualities of the environment. Her canvases are exposed to the elements, first through working plein-air, then through drying time outside or in the repurposed woolshed-studio. The understory of the painting records the wind, the mist, the insects—it holds in its marks the environment in which she works. Guided by this weathered composition, Roche’s hand tells the overstory of the tree lines, dams, valleys and hills.
Roche builds on this signature style in When our eyes adjust, working with a new immediacy; creating the conditions for her embodied knowledge of the land, and her materials, to form a bold retelling. Working at night changes what Roche can see of the land she is painting, but it is not limiting—instead it is focusing. The low light focuses the senses, the memory. It focuses her material knowledge; the way the oils will move on the canvas, how one colour will seep into another. The moon lights the land anew, and Roche’s hand traces these outlines of the land.
There is grit, and tension in these works. There is a confidence that only comes from an in-depth consideration of this place over an extended period. Roche is challenging herself to work at night, and it is changing how she sees in the day. She is asserting her relationship to this place through each painting, and each painting is changing how she understands this place. When we engage with the places we call home with this kind of critical attention, we challenge what we see, what we know. We learn to rely on all our senses to better understand where we are. Our eyes continue to adjust.
For all sales enquiries, please visit Defiance Gallery
This exhibition is supported by CreateNSW
