Approach
LookSee:
five contemporary painters
Curated by Sarah Bond & Natasha Bullock
Monash Gallery of Art, Clayton, 2001
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For
something to exist in space it must first move through time.
Lily Hibberd's work is concerned with the dynamics and interplay
of spatial and temporal relations and the capacity of paint
to engage as cinema does with psychological space. Inspired
by Alfred Hitchcock's film Rebecca, Hibberd's work Approach
2001 is based on the final dramatic sequence when the male
protagonist Maxim approaches his burining mansion estate. Approach
comprises seven panels depicting a house burning in the distance.
With the movement across each panel the house becomes closer
and more finite in its definition. The pictorial size of the
subject, however, remains the same even though the panels dramatically
decrease in size so that the shifts across them can be read
metaphorically like a lens of a camera periodically tightening
its focus: each movement depicts a change in time and spatial
orientation.
The
spectator is involved in the unfolding of this narrative-type
sequence, in its scale, structure, pictorial size and mutable
perspectives. These elements mirror cinematic devices that entice
the viewer into considering comparisons and repetitions amid
passing moments in time (or in this case between the canvas
or frames before and after). As the images visually amass the
viewer is ultimately enfolded in a drama, enacted by the bright
seductive colour of the work, by the very nature of the subject
matter and in the work's clear undulating manipulation of space
- where physical, psychological and perceptual space(s) collide.
Extract catalogue essay, LookSee: five contemporary painters
Natasha Bullock © 2001
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