30 OCT - 10 NOV 2019

HANNAH NOWLAN

T UNDRA

Returning for her second solo show with Saint Cloche, following a sell-out show last year, Hannah Nowlan is quickly establishing herself as an emerging artist to watch.

Meditations on afterlife, death, duality, mythology and spirituality, Hannah’s paintings are offered up in a state of reverence and letting go. Much like the raw, exposed linen she loves to work with, Hannah’s paintings render an introspective view into her often shifting, refracted and sensitive state of being.

With TUNDRA, Hannah continues to process important experiences of her life through her work, unearthing personal shadows as a method of healing. Inspired by an organic, paired-back and exposed set of materials; she saturates personal narratives with ancient symbolism.

Low, cool temperatures, ghostly and barren, TUNDRA is between the worlds of life and death; a purgatory of vast wilderness within one’s psyche and soul. There’s a sense of being frozen in motion, slow, far from reality and in infinite space with no clear path in sight. Spectral shapes appear to converge, undulate and conspire into realms of figure and fable.

The dark themes of the work are cleansed and eased by an understated palette; restraint on colour and instead focussing on the sincerity of material and texture – as well as the ephemeral nature of shadows and spirits.

Photographed and displayed, like objects, the works function as physical entities; creating links between grief, spirit, landscape and family. The viewer can project and enter spaces within the paintings, like entering a portal or crossing a threshold.

Looking into the role symbolism plays within her life, Hannah directs the viewer to moments of introspection, meditation and self-acquisition.

Hannah has studied the arts at various institutions and was a finalist in the Incinerator Art for Social Change Award (2015) and participated in a two-month international Artist Residency at the University of Lisbon, Portugal (2016). Hannah is presently a finalist in the Fishers Ghost Art Award 2019. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions and her work is held in various private collections in Australia and internationally. She has featured in several art publications and magazines and currently lives and works in Black Rock, Victoria.

“Creating paintings for me, is an antidote to the granular states of life. The brevity and unpredictable aspects of the human condition can be broken down in my studio and in my mind. Painting allows me this therapy to dissect emotion in a safe, internal environment, before letting it all go like a temple offering.

TUNDRA feels incredibly stripped back and honest. A refraction of my work that looks closely to archetypal imagery and archaic symbols to find a stable place within the mind’s wilderness. I’m imagining a plane; tundra, field, desert, ocean. There is form and texture along with vastness, and almost no defining features within the landscape. It can be hard to differentiate between symbols. There are moments of clarity followed by hazy clouds of ambiguity.”

– Hannah Nowlan

Tundra Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

Lion with a serpents tail Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

Silent and spectral Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

Pontus Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

Woman arching overall Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

The raven calling my name Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 910mm x 1225mm x 56mm $3,450

Fish growing wings Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 1225mm x 910mm x 56mm $3,450

Forging spirits Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

Carved from madness Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

Authored by the sun Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

Like a stone Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

Magical and mercurial Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

Sacred snake, bodiless moon Oil on Italian Linen, Framed in Tasmanian Blackwood 800mm x 800mm x 56mm $2,400

SAINT CLOCHE 37 MACDONALD STREET PADDINGTON NSW

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Photographs by Suzi Appel