When it comes to large and bold works in the current exhibition Assemble, Veronica Caven Aldous certainly takes the cake! The 3 works that she has on show are just under 2 metres wide and draw the viewer into a different world of colour.
Below is what Veronica has to say about her art practice.
"Spanning more than 30 years, I have worked in diverse media in the past but am enjoying the simplicity of current methodologies that I describe as fundamentally play. I use my hands, in gloves, without implements, with the canvas lying down on the ground or a table. In contrast sometimes I also use manufactured colourful Perspex in some pieces.
Last year I was involved in a process of breaking up and looking at various aspects of the habits I had in my process. I also read widely and through this and realised that in some sense my painting is about the history of painting due to my art education background. I also became clearly aware of the planar or “field” aspect of my work as I have at various times in the past. Then I began not only interrupting the field with geometrics but also dividing up the field with spaces/gaps and then stripes.
My work is about layers. This acknowledges that I always feel that I am a different person each time I meet my work. I am aware of the constant changing nature of life so my work is to do with a personal sense of ease with the constant flux nature of possibilities. Also my work is about opposites co-existing. I create a field and then marks that have a relationship with the field. This represents for me the difference between transcendent experience and the intellect of the mind. The marks give a focus and create a play, interruption or tension in the field. The field and marks unify as the surface of the artwork. The terms play, transcendent experiences and the “field” came out as a language to describe where I find myself at present.
Past influences have clearly been Tapies, Helen Frankenthaler, Rothko, Miro, Kandinsky, Cy Twombly, Robert Ryman, Roger Kemp, John Neeson (printmaker), the historical, spiritual and planar nature of Australian Indigenous and Asian art, involvement with The Women’s Art Forum in Melbourne in the late 70’s and early 80’s, traveling and living overseas in particular in Europe and India. This year I am doing an MVA at the Melbourne University art school, Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts, on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Other artists of interest include: Lesley Dumbrell, Rosslynd Piggot, Lindy Lee, Dale Frank, John Nixon, Bridget Riley, Yves Klein, the abstract 2D work of Gerhard Richter, Emmel Fontana, Barnett Newman, Robert Owen, John Baldessari, Agnes Martin, Beuys and Steiner, Katharina Grosse, Ya Yoi Deki, Lecia Dole Recio, Gunter Umberg, Angela Brennan, Peter Halley, ADS Donaldson, Markus Dobelli, Jane Lee, the Sydney Non-Objectives… Painting is alive and well.
I support Greenfleet planting of native forests to offset the use of materials used in my art making."
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