CIELO / SKY | Caoife Power 25.02.23-27.02.23
CIELO/ SKY is a series of paintings that each share their own impressions of the sky that linger long after its initial experience has removed itself. As Goethe notes, ’If anyone looks at the sun (they) may retain the image in (their) eyes for several days.’ So how do we grasp this experience?
‘Cielo’ in Spanish speaks of atmosphere, translating the English ’sky’ to a space in the air that colours it. These paintings perform a translation of words in an embodied choreography. Neither absent or present, they consider where the sky begins and ends.
Acknowledging the world outside is much greater than us, the paintings remind us to look up.
Caoife Power (b.Eire) is a Naarm based artist whose practice looks at process based making, colour and abstraction. Drawing from research into the body, both through movement and as queer/ feminist/ invisible illness/ reflective. Creatively she observes the many ways artmaking can find multiple forms of translation of the world around us. Caoife has B. Arts (English) and Fine Arts (First Class Honours) and has exhibited interstate across Australia. She recently exhibited at Seventh ARI, created Bus Projects ‘Out of Bounds’ podcast series and has an upcoming solo at BLINDSIDE ARI. This exhibition is supported by her selection as a 2022 Art-Science Engagement Initiative artist through Melbourne University
Photography Natalie Edge
Crossing, 2023 Oil on canvas 102 x 102 cm
Black soil red mountain, 2023 Oil on canvas 76 x 102 cm
I climbed a mountain!, 2023 Oil on canvas 123 x 123 cm
Upside, 2023 Oil on canvas 76 x 102 cm
Looking glass, 2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas 83 x 122 cm
Cloud cover, 2023 Oil on canvas 76 x 102 cm
Sunrise, 2023 Oil on canvas 123 x 123 cm
CIELO/SKY, 2023 Oil on canvas 76 x 102 cm
Mint grass over flood plains (secret stars), 2023 Oil on canvas 76 x 102 cm
For the last year I have been collaborating with Geographer Elena Tjandra who studies the embodied effects of mining, specifically in Mexico. Initially she sent me a series of field recordings from her time in Oaxaca. All in Spanish, she asked me if I wanted them translated but I chose not to. As someone who doesn’t speak this language, it enabled me to listen to the whole atmosphere of the space: sounds of chickens, nuances in the voices, the wind etc. as locals conversed with Elena about their experience of living near the mine.
As I painted I played the recordings and listened, sometimes remixed with my own intuitive dancing. The translation of sound onto canvas was articulated in layers of my colour and mark making.
Over this time I kept coming back to references of the sky. In Elena’s paper she quotes: ‘the sky is changing’ ‘you can’t see the sky’ ‘silver mountain’ ‘it works while we sleep’. Cielo in Spanish is sky. It speaks of atmospheres. In Spanish open-cut or surface mining is ‘mina a Cielo abierto’ which literally means ‘open sky mine’.
For this exhibition I consider the way paintings translate an experience of the sky, once it is absent from our initial view. Elena’s research discusses the importance of recognising both the absence and presence when viewing. Elena states: ‘...presence and absence may be grasped simultaneously, such as through grief for a present future, and presence may allude to a strong sense of absence...’
I realise that paintings have an intimate relationship with these ideas. Understanding the interchangeability of absence and presence, painting offers a rest in the present moment of everyday life. It links with our collective embodied presence as I paint, and you watch.
Colour in its purest form comes from light, which is inevitably drawn from the sun. As this collaborative project draws to its close, I want to finish with colour as a way of looking up. Rather than attempting to rationalise, I want to create a way of speaking about open spaces and the feeling of being outside where the light is always changing. For this exhibition, I want each of the works to find their sky.
- Caoife Power
Caoife Power (left) and Elena Tjandra (right) photographed by Natalie Edge Photography
