“What happens when one’s language is not heard? Or heard, but not recognized? When one’s speech carries within it holes of silences: hesitations, pauses, caesuras, stutters, and apprehensions?”1 Sharp & Kelly: Unmake / make / denouer / nouer Exhibition at Factory 49 Paris Pop Up 122 rue Amelot, Paris 75011, March 30 – April 23, 2016
Lost language, unreadable texts and the gaps and holes of silences within a matrix of Lisa Sharp / Wendy Kelly unmake / make / dénouer / nouer improvised language – these things found visual expression, unexpected solace and an increasing synchronicity, in this exhibition by Sharp (that’s me) and Kelly (that’s Wendy) Factory 49 Paris Pop Up Vernissage à 18h le mercredi 30 mars 2016 122 rue Amelot, Paris 75011 in Paris earlier this year. du jeudi au samedi de 3h à 19h au samedi 23 avril 2016
Lisa Sharp, Weft Painting
Sharp, Weft Painting (detail) & Kelly, Graphite Night Wendy Kelly, Graphite Night
So there I was, in Paris, aiming to establish myself as a painter. I had completed art www.lisa-sharp.tumblr.com www.factory49.blogspot.com school and was speaking in another language about my works, my self and my ideas. www.wendykelly.com.au French is not my native language, but one that I had once learnt and lived with, so it is at once foreign and familiar to me, yet always, fluency eludes me. When I wasn’t standing in the gallery communicating with a visitor – a communication marked by my stuttering, pausing and searching for intelligibility, I was using the gallery space to make a work with the language of painting. As a painter I was painting Painting, using as my verbs its vocabulary - traditional materials, familiar form and history - to make its noun. Whether speaking painting or making painting, my communication was a search for fluency, carrying within it the holes of silences, hesitations, pauses, caesuras, stutters and apprehensions, aspects that I see taking form in the works in the exhibition. Looking closely at the works of Sharp and Kelly, I saw the holes of silences. The uneven gaps where wax had failed to adhere, paper had torn or edges didn’t quite meet. I noticed the small hesitations of shuddering lines, and there // there was the caesura, felt as a pause between the rhythms of repeated actions. A soft stuttering as layers dried then cracked open. Colour was muted to a monochromatic plane, covering but not concealing what lay beneath. Underneath a ground layer of language, glimpsed beneath the cracks, holes and striations, a silent and unreadable structure.