John Lendis

Copyright  © 2004 Pollock Gallery

“sarah and jane”

22^nd february to 19^th march 2006

Using a theme based loosely on Lady Jane Franklin’s historical

journeys through Tasmania’s wilderness, “…Lendis seeks

the essential humanity of a woman transfigured by her contact with

something new and chaotic and wild.” Danielle Wood,

Award winning author of The Alphabet of Light and Dark

Click on an image for a larger view… for any information call or e-mail us

---

Annunciation Oil on canvas 112 x 152 cm
Above the Gordon Oil on canvas 107 x 152 cm
An Unreachable Recognition Oil on linen 122 x 168 cm
Dreaming of the Gordon Oil on canvas 112 x 137 cm
Jane at One Tree Island Oil on canvas 112 x 168 cm
The Heart of Exile Oil on linen 122 x 168 cm
Shelter From The Storm Oil on linen 112 x 152 cm
So Long In Exile Oil on linen 122 x 168 cm
The Horizons of Solitude Oil on canvas 112 x 152 cm
The Lamentation at Sarah Island Oil on linen 112 x 168 cm
The Desires of Solitude Oil on linen 122 x 168 cm
The River Oil on linen Diptych 120 x 204 cm
Tributary Oil on linen 112 x 112 cm
Detention Bend Oil on linen 120 x 180 cm

Jane and Christina at the Edge Oil on linen Diptych,46 x 112 cm
The Clearing Oil on linen on board 51 x 60 cm

The rain was thick as glass. For many days I had eaten, drunk, slept, walked, cased in glass. I felt like the relic of a saint. I felt like an Eastern curiosity. I stared out of the running walls of my prison, unable to move, unable to escape.

In the forest every solid thing was changing into its watery equivalent. Whatever I grasped for purchase – root branch, rock – slipped its hold. My fingers closed on nothing. The leaf–deep forest floor was a moving raft of brown water. The trees were water columns. In the liquid forest, I was the only solid thing and already my outline was beginning to blend with other outlines that were not me.

Jeanette Winterson, The Power Book,

My work has always been concerned with the uneasy relationship between the natural world and ourselves; this is a relationship historically ‘explained‘ by religious narratives. My concerns in the paintings produced for this exhibition lie partially with this interchangeability of religion and wilderness, and also with how these concerns are expressed in the historical traditions of Western art. Contemporary Western ideas of wilderness and traditional Western religious narratives slip easily into metaphors and contexts for each other, and provide key elements within all my work.

These paintings of Jane Franklin’s journey to Tasmania’s outcast Sarah Island in 1842 are not simply a depiction of a well known historical narrative; for me, Jane’s story becomes an imagining framework, a parameter that brings them into the realm of essential things.

As these paintings grew they became enmeshed with images from the Victorian era of Romantic poets and painters; men of Jane’s own time. Haunting women such as The Lady of Shallot, Ophelia and Lady MacBeth merged with scenes from Joseph Conrad’s’ Heart of Darkness. Familiar to me from my own childhood, Katherine Hepburn on The Eastern Queen, is fused in my memory with Aquire The Wrath of God. My own paintings came to represent abandonment to the unknown – the classical and mythological journey in search of the source or heart of the ‘other’, that is also the kernel of the self.

Any ambiguity within these works arises from my compulsion to pursue these concerns and their conflation with a similarly intense desire to ‘remake’ experience as beauty. The works in this exhibition evoke a colonial landscape that is also a site of dreams. Images of the legendary Lady Jane move between states of desire, embrace, fear and forgetting as she moves within and against the landscape, and as she tries to find herself and her place within a world that is neither past nor future, but exists only now – below our line of vision.

John Lendis.

October 2005

Curriculum Vitae

John (Andrew) Lendis

Education

1996 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons), Painting major. University of Tasmania

Currently completing an MFA, University of Tasmania

Selected solo exhibitions

2006 Sarah and Jane 2, Pollock Gallery, Richmond, Victoria

2005 Sarah and Jane, Salamanca Collection, Hobart

2005 Telling tales of Lady Jane,Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney

2004 Dreaming of The River, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney

2004 The River, The Salamanca Collection, Hobart

2003 Silent Spaces, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney

2002 South Wind, Autore Gallery, Melbourne

2002 Traffic, Bett Gallery, Hobart

2001 Trespass, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney

2000 Searching for the Moon, The Salamanca Collection, Hobart

2000 Observing Imagination, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney

Selected Group Exhibitions

2005 Solitude, Long Gallery, Hobart

2005 Novobirisk International Biennial, Novobirisk, Russia

2003 Ten Days on The Island Exhibition, Tasmania

2003 Novobirisk International Biennial, Novobirisk, Russia

2002 Synergy, CSIRO-Bett Gallery, Hobart

2001 Ten Days on The Island Exhibition, Tasmania

2000 Solitude, CAST-Carnegie Gallery, Hobart

Selected Reviews and Commentary

2004 Joerg Andersch, Review, The Mercury (30/10/04)

2004 Kane Young, ‘River Touches Tassie’s Roots’, The Mercury (29/10/04)

2004 Danielle Wood, 40 Degrees South (December 2004)

2004 Preview, The Sydney Morning Herald (May 04)

2004 Lisa Tonks, Art and Antiques in NSW (April/May 04)

2004 James Kerr, ‘In Touch’, The Mercury, (29/10/04)

2002 Peter Timms, ‘New Paintings by John Lendis’, The Australian (25/02/02)

2002 Helen Tyzack, ’ John Lendis: Traffic’, Eyeline Magazine (Autumn 04)

2000 Tim Cox, 15 minute interview, ABC Radio (March 2000)

2000 Joerg Andersch, ‘Spirituality at Centre of Search’ The Mercury (15/4/00)

2000 Bruce Montgomery, The Weekend Australian (19-20/2/00)

Awards and Grants

2004 National Association for Visual Artists – Grant

2004 Arts Tasmania - Grant

2002 Australian Postgraduate Research Award

2001 Arts Tasmania Grant (Joint)

2000 National Association for Visual Arts – Grant

1997 Arts Tasmania Wilderness Residency