Reviews of recent work

 Not what is lost, but what remains 

by Mark Fenech 

Artists have that wonderful gift of being able to reach down seemingly from the very heights of the universe and grasp even with the tips of their fingers those special parts of ordinary life that define who they are and where they belong. For them, making art is a kind of emotional GPS and the images they create form the landing pad upon which they are able to touchdown from the centrifugal orbit of life. That is what Sarah Dugan has done in her exhibition at Landslide Gallery, Wentworth Falls titled Homesickness. 

Homesickness is a curious title. It is a word that brings sadness, even loss, to mind. In fact, there is nothing melancholic about this exhibition. Instead, this visitor tuned into the joyful familiarity of the images to recall memories, moments, and places. It is like that smile that comes with the forlorn thought of wishing for something again. The title of the largest work in this exhibition, Penumbra, captures this feeling exactly, the notion that a memory is but an outer shadow of matter. Homesickness for Sarah Dugan is not what is lost but what remains. 

Penumbra, charcoal and darkroom tape on paper with video projection. 150 x 280cm 

These are elusive and layered concepts that are not easily grasped with the authenticity they command. At the same time, they are not impossibly complicated or necessarily cryptic. In fact, Dugan’s exhibition shows us that the experiences and emotions humans encounter with homesickness are ordinary and present. 

You could be excused for looking down at your feet momentarily when standing in front of Penumbra, a mural-size multi-form work of bush land. “Is that the crackling of leaves and the brushing of bush grass that I can hear?” I thought to myself. For Dugan it is a familiar landscape, captured in charcoal on paper over which images of trees swaying in the breeze are projected. The projection adds an additional sensory element; our eye is already on the move, past gnarled tree trunks, tattooed with laced insect tracks, beneath bows that reach across the drawing to drop their eucalyptus leaves on us. But the projection asks the viewer to consider sounds from the bush, though no sounds are heard, and the smell of the bush, though no perfume is there either. These are the sensations of memory, places that the mind and soul return to from experiences already lived. They are what we carry with us once we leave a place, in a physical sense, very much real but in a realm beyond that which is tangible. 

Technique is important to Dugan. She understands that memory requires a vehicle in which to manifest itself, a vessel that can bring sensations and experiences into real time. Her charcoal drawing demonstrates a multiplicity of mark making, delicate flicks, gestural dashes and faint touches that just breathe onto the paper. Some areas record moments that the charcoal twists in the fingers, firm and dark and just as quickly soft again. These effectively capture the knots on the gum trees and remind us just how powerful nature is, even in memory. 

Sarah Dugan explores the fuzzy edge of experience in several delicate lumen prints in Homesickness. Lumen printing is a cameraless photographic process of making images by placing objects as positives on top of expired photographic paper. Dugan then digitally scans the lumen print to make it permanent. This technique has enabled the artist to capture an image with fantastic delicacy, as in Bouganvillia. Dugan buried photographic paper under the foliage of a bouganvillia plant allowing filtered light to penetrate onto the emulsion of the paper. The semi-transparent pinks, mauves, and greens glow and hide amongst themselves, visually expanding and contracting it would seem. It is like she has captured a breath, a longing sigh of her homesickness. 

Bougainvillea, lumen print, digital pigment print. 47 x 34.8cm, edition of 2. 

Sarah Dugan also returns to place in Homesickness by using documentary images in a familiar and cinematic way. Vacant interiors like Tungra in shadows, the first photograph that welcomes her audience into the gallery space, are somehow not vacant at all. The 

Tungra in shadows, digital pigment print. 34.8 x 26cm. edition of 2 

broad, enclosed verandah of the homestead is beautifully lit through venetian blinds flooding the space with a soft umber glow. Well trodden wooden floorboards take the eye deep into the picture to glass louvres that balance the palette with wall of blue. Physically empty, the space is a memory full with the sounds and senses of all of those years gone by. 

Texture is a primary way that Dugan gives shape to her longing, and it takes a variety of forms in this exhibition. In Homecoming, one of the smaller photographs, Dugan again puts the viewer in close contact with texture, this time by providing a view of the vast landscape through a wire fly screen door. The ironwork is softened in focus and the checkered mesh can still be seen as we gaze beyond a pair of white iron gates, companions to one another in seems, to a singular tree. 

Homecoming, digital pigment print. 34.8 x 26cm. edition of 2. 

Dugan again relies on texture to be a portal of experience and memory in three images that combine charcoal drawing and digital photographic practices. The fog through the trees is one of these works, a mysterious monochrome of marks that float on the surface, none being tied to the earth and every mark reminiscent of the way one’s memories whisper to us. 

The truck I learned to drive in, digital pigment print. 47 x 34.8cm edition of 2 

There are also some cinematic portraits of Sarah Dugan’s family in Homesickness, though they do not overtake the other elements described in this review. A young boy looks out at us from a weary ute thrice his age in The truck I learned to drive in. It is a quiet image but convincingly conversational as the boy locks eyes with the photographer. They know each other and they share a comfortable presence together. It is another example of how this exhibition captures what remains, as opposed to what is lost, in that human experience called homesickness.