CATALOGUE ESSAY written by HAMISH SAWYER for 'AMONGST' 2021
Bridie Gillman spent part of her childhood in Jakarta and has regularly returned to Indonesia over the past decade to exhibit, undertake residencies and produce work. The artist has made several trips to Yogyakarta (or Jogja) in particular, known as the country’s cultural capital and home to many of its leading contemporary artists. The city’s old town, with its unique mix of traditional Javanese and colonial Dutch architecture, bustling laneways and lack of high-rise buildings stands in marked contrast to the heavily urbanized capital. Life happens there largely at street level.
On previous visits to Jogja, Gillman has documented her wanderings around the old town, taking photographs of quotidian details that catch her eye: bright blue plastic chairs at an outdoor café; an orange water bucket in front of a concrete wall covered in lurid graffiti; an emerald green quilt drying in the sunshine. What unites their seemingly disparate content is Gillman’s nuanced appreciation of colour. These images form the source material for the artist’s new exhibition of paintings and ceramics, entitled Amongst.
Gillman’s abstract paintings are perhaps best described as colour studies that evoke memories of a particular place or object for the artist. The artist carefully selects images from her digital archive to work from. Rather than trying to recreate them in a figurative style however, she has developed her own vocabulary of abstract forms and colour:
“These remembered experiences are translated through layers of colour and considered brushstrokes, building an emotional sense of this place, rather than a purely visual representation of the site”. (1)
It is often a single detail from the source image, such as a ceramic tile or a watering can, which informs the spectrum of colour Gillman will use on a particular canvas. Shoes off, cold tiles underfoot 2021 is dominated by not one, but multiple shades of green, from chartreuse to cyan and every tone in between. Some stray sections of midnight blue and burgundy are also visible but the painting is essentially a composition of contrasting, and sometimes competing, passages of green.
The colour palette is the only predetermined part of Gillman’s otherwise intuitive process. The artist works on clear-primed linen, using diluted pigment to create atmospheric washes, gradually building up to more robust layers of oil paint. Waiting 2021 is made up of blue, green and pink segments of varying intensity and size. These individual parts are in turn made up of vertical and horizontal brushstrokes that have become a trademark of Gillman’s oeuvre. The viewer’s eye is led around the canvas by the painterly gestures, which, combined with glimpses of bare canvas, assert the work’s materiality.
It is impossible to look at these paintings without thinking about the legacy of abstract expressionism. They were remnants from a local factory 2021, with its murky palette of olive green, duck-egg blue, grey and flesh pink is reminiscent of Willem de Kooning’s famed Women series. A more relevant comparison however, might be Helen Frankenthaler’s masterpiece Flood 1967, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In it, Frankenthaler manipulates thinned oil paint across the canvas to merely suggest a landscape, rather than representing one.
Gillman is deeply aware of (male) art historical forebears such as de Kooning and their problematic treatment of women; but feels a greater affinity with female painters like Frankenthaler, who received considerably less acknowledgement for their contribution to the trajectory of modernism than their male peers, until decades later:
“I love Frankenthaler's work - the way she abstracts the landscape and her abstracted responses to colour and form in the works of painters like Manet. On….Howard Hodgkin, I particularly liked his Absent Friends exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2017, I guess I'm interested in artists who abstract reality.” (2)
Hodgkin (1932 – 2017) was a gay, male British artist from the generation after de Kooning et al. He was a master colourist, whose abstract compositions drew upon the artist’s own life, yet actively resisted a biographical reading. In Absent Friends 2000-01 (the work which gave the aforementioned exhibition its title), concentric bands of black and brown paint frame a series of flesh-toned stripes, which reveal a sliver of vibrant turquoise at the painting’s core. As well as their sophisticated and unconventional use of colour, Hodgkin’s paintings are characterised by dynamic brushwork that resonates with Gillman’s handling of pigment.
As John Elderfield observed, “Hodgkin’s paintings invite looking at, not looking for.” (3) The same can be said of Gillman’s canvases. Their abstracted content requires the viewer to engage with the work on its merits as a painting; rather than seek to excavate some hidden meaning or message.
For Amongst, Gillman is showing a group of ceramics alongside her paintings, a notable development in her practice. These objects are the result of experimentation and increased time in the studio last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gillman hand built the forms in clay, loosely basing them on domestic objects found in her photographs from Jogja, including paw-paws, a basket for carrying fruit, pipes and found detritus. The objects were then fired in a kiln, before the artist applied coloured glazes to their surfaces.
Gillman’s ceramics are not facsimiles, nor do they serve any functional purpose as vessels. Instead, they extend the potentialities of colour and abstraction for communicating experiences and emotions connected to place, into a third dimension. The ceramic works represent a new iteration of the artist’s ongoing project allowing the viewer to apprehend her paintings in a more complex and meaningful way.
Elderfield, John “Passages: Howard Hodgkin” Artforum International, New York, Vol. 56 Iss. 1 (Sept 2017): 93.
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ARTIST STATEMENT — 'Amongst'
My practice is informed by ideas of place, and the ways in which experiences and memories shape our perspective of a site.
Amongst is a reflection on time spent in Yogyakarta over the years. Each painting and sculpture relates to a specific observation or experience of this place. Orange satin billowing roadside; tables and chairs of an empty warung/restaurant; a purple jumper that hung on the line for weeks; and colourful plastic objects, everywhere.
These moments have been distilled in paint through colour and abstract response. As memories of a place often shift over time, with details fading and colours changing, I welcome the distortion that occurs in the process of remembering, and further, in the process of making.
The ceramic sculptures are informed by the same process. Beginning with a specific observed item, the object morphs during the making process. They become an abstracted form based in reality, yet are unconcerned with being representational.
Bridie Gillman, May 2021
Reminiscent of the early 20th century action painters, Bridie Gillman’s mark-making is an intuitive response to the memories and emotions evoked from her cross-cultural experiences. Initially inspired by her childhood in Indonesia, the now Brisbane-based artist’s practice has evolved to consider more broadly concepts of place, reactions to the environments through which she has travelled, her connection to land as a non-indigenous Australian and the intangibility of memory.
Spontaneous and physical, Gillman’s compositions capture the tension between reminiscence and experience, wanderlust and belonging, combining instinctive use of colour and gesture with literal, poetic titles that hint at sentiments beyond.
Bridie Gillman is an alumna of Queensland College of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2013. In 2019 she was a finalist of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, winner of the Moreton Bay Art Award and finalist in the Fisher's Ghost Award at Campbelltown Art Centre. She is a past finalist of the Redland Art Award, the MAMA National Photography Prize, Murray Art Museum Albury, and PRIZENOPRIZE, Gold Coast (all 2016), as well as the 2013 GAS Graduate Art Show, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally including the Museum of Brisbane, Metro Arts, Brisbane, The Walls, Gold Coast, Blindside, Melbourne and Run Amok, George Town, Malaysia and she has undertaken residencies at Rimbun Dahan, George Town, Malaysia, in 2015 and Ketjil Bergerak, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2014.
Carrie McCarthy
Bridie Gillman
Lives and works in Queensland
EDUCATION
2013
Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours (Class 1), Queensland College of Art, Australia
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
'The Bend', Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
'Ground Work', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2023
'Watching Walls', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2022
'Wash over me', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
'Quiet of day', Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
2021
'Unreliable Memories', Artereal Gallery, Sydney
'Amongst', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2020
'A Space Between Walls', Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
'With the Sun in My Eyes', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2019
'Before the leaves turn', SCAPE at Studio 125 Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand
'Wide Eyed', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2017
'After', Innerspace Contemporary Art, Brisbane
'Overnight', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2016
'From here', Spiro | Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane
'You and I, we've got the same blood running through us', Cut Thumb, Brisbane
2015
'Round Island Tour', Run Amok Gallery, George Town, Malaysia
'Makeshift Monuments', A-CH Gallery, Brisbane
'Moonbird', Gallery Ten, Hobart
2014
'Translations', The Hold Artspace, Brisbane
2013
'Baggage Claim', Witchmeat ARI, Brisbane
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
'How to Swim', curated by Sally Anderson, EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2023
'Mengingat 25 Tahun Reformasi', collaboration with Woven Kolektif, Cemeti Institute, Yogyakarta
'Responsive Forms', Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
We are thrilled to congratulate Bridie Gillman on being selected as a finalist in the 2024 John Leslie Art Prize with her painting ‘Hanging, holding.’
The $20,000 Acquisitive Prize is named after John Leslie OBE (1919—2016), Patron of the Gippsland Art Gallery and celebrates landscape painting by Australian artists.
Bridie’s work will be on exhibition amongst the other finalists from 7 September to 24 November at the Gippsland Art Gallery, in Sale, Victoria.
Image courtesy Louis Lim
IMAGE
‘Hanging, holding.’ 2024 oil on canvas 137 x 198cm
Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist for the The Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize for her work 'Night Lines'.
Celebrating excellence and innovation in the watercolour medium, this non-acquisitive prize offers a winning of $20,000 generously donated by Elaine Bermingham.
Selected finalists will be exhibited at QCA Galleries, located within Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design at South Bank, Brisbane from 30 November 2023 - 11 January 2024.
Bridie Gillman is a finalist in the 2023 Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize for her work 'Quiet, after the storm' (2023).
The inaugural Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize is a major acquisitive prize of $25,000, that seeks to explore our reciprocal and inextricable relationship with the environment through contemporary art.
Selected artworks provide unique perspectives on industrialised landscapes, the forces of extreme weather events, our relationship to domestic gardens, ecological concerns and speculative solutions, ruminations on the beauty and power of nature, and much more.
Image details;
'Quiet, after the storm' 2022 Oil on linen, glazed ceramics and soundscape various dimensions
The finalists’ exhibition, is held at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 23 September to 12 November 2023
Bridie Gillman completed a residency at Córtex Frontal, for a 6 week placement in an 18th century building located in Arraiolos, Alentejo, Southern Portugal, in April 2023.
Córtex Frontal is a multidisciplinary cultural project created in 2016 by the Cultural Association Córtexcult, in Arraiolos, Évora, Alentejo. The artists in residence program aims to provide the time and space to develop a project, fostering the sharing of experiences between artists and the community.
Bridie's new body of work directly inspired by her time spent at Córtex Frontal will be exhibited in her upcoming show, Watching Walls at Edwina Corlette Gallery 4 October - 24 October 2023.
Córtex Frontal is part of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Networks RPAC.
Bridie Gillman has been been selected as one of six finalists in the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is now in its 21st year and is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30 years. It was created from an endowment by Mrs Beryl Whiteley in 1999. The inspiration was the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, the artist Brett Whiteley, as a result of winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship in 1959 at the age of 20.
BRISBANE ART DESIGN FESTIVAL 2019 is where art, design and the city of Brisbane collide over a 17-day festival of dynamic exhibitions, performances, talks, art tours, workshops and open studios. BAD showcases more than 150 Brisbane artists, from emerging talents who are carving their mark locally, to trailblazers who are redefining creativity on the international stage.
Bridie Gillman collaborated with Brisbane designer Alexander Loterztain to make the work Breath as part of the festival held at Museum of Brisbane. Image: Jono Searle courtesy Museum of Brisbane.
The Moreton Bay Regional Art Award is an annual acquisitive exhibition proudly sponsored by the Moreton Bay Council. This year the Art Award offered an acquisitive prize of $8000, four category prizes of $2000 each, and two supplementary $1000 prizes for a Local Artist and a People's Choice Award.
Judged by Megan Williams, Manager of the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, Bridie Gillman was awarded the overall winner with her work 'Some sort of growth' 2018.
Megan Williams commented: 'The artist's sense of the materiality of paint, the play of colour, darkness and light make it a very strong and visually arresting painting. The colours reference the natural environment and you get a sense of the artists awe and love of nature, however, its abstract quality resists clear and direct communication. It is a work to become immersed in, to sit with, and to contemplate.'
Bridie Gillman's work as featured in Casula Powerhouse's 'Looking Here, Looking North'Exhibition has been reviewed in Art Asia Pacific Magazine.
SOO-MIN SHIM writes:
'At the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, a video portrays the interior of a restaurant, its walls decorated with Australian-flag bunting, and kitsch Australiana tea towels and posters, positioning us inside an ostensibly Australian establishment. It is revealed in subsequent shots of the staff, clientele, and the beach outside, however, that this is in fact a tourist spot in Bali. Bridie Gillman’s video work Bali State of Mind (2017–18) ruminates on the unequal power dynamic between Australia and Indonesia, the latter being economically reliant on tourism and subject to the objectifying tourist gaze that comes with over one million Australians visiting annually.
Still image from BRIDIE GILLMAN’s Bali State of Mind, 2017–18, two-channel video installation: 17 min 40 sec.
Gillman is one of seven artists included in the exhibition “Looking Here Looking North” by members of Woven, a collective with “continuing personal connections to Indonesia.” While Gillman’s work is subtly political, the exhibition holistically was striking in its ability to reach beyond essentialist identity politics, reconfiguring what it means to be part of the Indonesian diaspora by speaking to universal themes of memory, place and belonging.
“Looking Here Looking North” is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, until March 17, 2019
looking here looking north is an exhibition by Woven, a collective of artists who each have continuing personal connections to Indonesia. Themes of identity, memory and cross-cultural experience are explored through performance, painting, installation, photography, video and sculpture.
Featuring work by: Kartika Suharto-Martin, Ida Lawrence, Mashara Wachjudy, Bridie Gillman, Sofiyah Ruqayah, Alfira O’Sullivan and Leyla Stevens.
looking here looking north is presented alongside an exhibition by artist Frances Larder and an exhibition of video works by Jumaadi as part of a suite of exhibitions showcasing perspectives on Indonesia.
CASULA POWERHOUSE ARTS CENTRE 12 JANUARY - 17 MARCH 2019
John Aslanidis, Belem Lett and Bridie Gillman are finalists in the 2018 Fisher's Ghost Award through Campbelltown Arts Centre.
The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award coincides with Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over 10 days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.
The Open section of the Art Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown Art Centre permanent collection and is awarded prize-money of $20,000. In the past it has been awarded to some of Australia’s most respected Contemporary artists including Elisabeth Cummings, Khaled Sabsabi, Justene Williams, Marion Borgelt, Raquel Ormella and Philip Wolfhagen.
Jo Hoban from the Design Files recently caught up with Bridie Gillman in her Brisbane studio, to discover the inspiration behind her work: cross-cultural experiences – from a childhood growing up in Indonesia, to residencies abroad and trips across Australia. Her bold, striking compositions convey moody landscapes, exploring both emotional and physical terrain.
