My Painting ‘A Rose Connection’ has been selected as a finalist in the Calleen Art Award at Cowra Regional Gallery, NSW. The annual Calleen Art Award was established in 1977 as an acquisitive art prize by Mrs. Patricia Fagan OAM to encourage originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts, and is made possible by the generous support of the Calleen Trust.
‘ A Rose Connection’, oil on linen , 112cm x 112cm, 2024.
Honored to be mentioned by Art Advisor Mark Hughes in The Australian Financial Review Magazine published on February 2nd 2024.
under the: Life &Luxury Arts & Culture Section
Article written by : Ronald Mizen Senior Reporter
My still life painting ‘Sensory Perception’ was selected as a finalist in 2024 Muswellbrook Art Prize. The Muswellbrook Art Prize aims to foster the interest in and understanding of art in the Upper Hunter Valley and to help promote and encourage Australian artist’s and their work. The Muswellbrook Art Prize is the second-richest art prize in South East Asia.
‘Sensory Perception’
oil on linen, 112cmx 112cm, 2024.
6th September - 3rd October 2023
My still life paintings explore the perception of light through objects in space. The interplay of light travelling through objects both translucent and opaque creates unique patterns of shadows and reflections, which play an integral part in each of my compositions. The shadows are the essence of the objects themselves and connect them individually to each other, while the reflections symbolize the duality of reality; the world we see is not always the same as the world that truly exists. The shadows serve as a connection between the physical and the spiritual.
This duality of the physical and spiritual worlds is further explored in my interior paintings, in which windows and doorways act as a portal between the two. Each composition joins the reality of the interior spaces I have physically occupied and connected with, (in this case the home of the late renowned Australian artist Sir Arthur Boyd) in a montage of landscapes both perceived and imagined, overlapped and intertwined.
Peta Minnici 2023
Install Images by Louis Lim
Honored to be featured in the book ‘The Clayton Utz Art Partnership 2017- 2022’ .
Published in Conjunction with Clayton Utz, 3:33 Art Projects, and Bandicoot Publishing Pty Ltd, Alexandria, NSW, Australia. Editors: Bruce Cooper, Kon Gouriotis and Max Germanos. Contributing writer: Dr. Judith Pugh.
Photograph by Scott Ehler/ Clayton Utz.
photograph by Carl Warner.
Photograph by Carl Warner
photograph by Carl Warner
photograph by Carl Warner
Photograph by Carl Warner
very honored to have my painting “The Artist’s Retreat” acquired by the Macquarie Group Collection. The Macquarie Group Collection acquires art by emerging Australian artists, in all media, around the theme of The Land and its Psyche.
The Artist’s Retreat, 60cm x 66cm, oil on linen, 2020.
In Kaleidoscope, the precision that is so often evoked by geometry is dissolved in a collision between object and surface. Throughout Peta Minnici’s paintings, in the split between shapes, segmented into shadow, each point and line are an intersection, a refraction in relationality. ‘Glass Connection’ inscribes the site of a convergence, where the slim curve of an object morphs into the mirrored length of its pursuer. Each line is a slippage, the coming into company with another, a meeting coated in a pearly iridescence, cornered into the curves of glassware, plunging into sunken shadows. In tracing each curvature, our attempt to dislocate each object into a singularity is interceded by the impressions each outline imparts upon its company. There is no surface without submergence. Any pretext of solidity is distorted by an underwater surge, clouded by the shadows that soak through their designated objects into watery light, wavering and rippling surface into space through their projection.
In ‘Murano’, the doubling of materiality into immateriality, of object into shadow, marks a relentless embodiment of emergence or re-emergence. In looking, I envision my finger gliding around the darkened rim of each glass, cold and smooth in its circularity. The reflections conjured upon the pale sheen of wall are unsettled by my intrusive movement. In Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein personifies ‘A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS’ as
‘A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.’ 1 This portrayal that Stein writes into an uneasy being, glass as a fusion of translucence with substance, speaks to the
function of the kaleidoscope itself, acting as a testimony to what Minnici’s paintings envision – the repeating of reflection, the collision that erupts as object merges with optic. Each thin coating of paint invokes a shadowy familiar figure crafted from the glass that stands unfazed at the wound inflicted – an interruption of static symmetry, each shadow spreads and seeps, its indecisive shape as slippery as memory.
Upon encountering the inflamed warmth that stains a glass chalice in ‘Cranberry and Carafe’, its chasm bleeding red, I’m reminded of ‘the last words of Sarah Good, who was murdered in the Salem witch trials’, quoted in Ellena Savage’s essay collection Blueberries.
‘If you take away my life, I’ll give you blood to drink’. 2
There is no stillness to this still life. In the glass vessel Minnici crafts, the red that stains its interior congeals. We witness vivid colour deepen in consuming and being consumed by the space that surrounds and inflates it. Like the liquid that embodies Good’s assertive caution, the life-giving red circulates. Molten, it oozes into a seemingly contained space, stretching as it swallows the contours of linen, soaked in the heady mixture of the shadows it imparts.
To characterise Minnici’s elusive practice demands us to envisage a formation of memory. When I look at ‘Sunday Bubbles’, I hear a deepening resonance, the reverberating thrum that thumps through Mitski’s music video for Washing Machine Heart.3 As the camera pushes inwards in the video, sunken in the heavy trance of black and white, Mitksi emerges from the shadows, her arm resting on a pedestal. As her hand sweeps up her body, her arm juts out pointedly, framed by shadows enforced by the slim neck of a vase beside her. As the camera inches closer, the vase is made absent, only its shadow remains. Like the lines of Mitski’s figure, that lend a corporeal flesh to these dislodged contours, the spectral silhouettes that linger throughout Minnici’s paintings, memorialise the objects that craft them into being, their memory made material. The undulating curves of glass crowded together in ‘Sunday Bubbles’ are corporealized, thickened by the interplay between light and shadow. Translucent, but never vacant, the glass distorts the polished surface of the setting, mirroring their materiality into a memory exuded by the movement of space. Kaleidoscope sculpts shape into an invocation – a haunting that makes material how objects and the space they inhabit realise one another. Reflection is revealed as a recollection that never stills, a kaleidoscopic mirroring that envisions each body existing within, and throughout the fragments inflicted by the other.
Benedicte McGowen, 2022
Footnotes:
1. Stein, Gertrude. “Objects”. In Tender Buttons – Objects, Food, Rooms. 1914. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1997). 3.
2. Savage, Ellena. “Yellow City”. In Blueberries. (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company. 2020).
3. Mitski. “Washing Machine Heart.” November 9, 2018. mitski mitski. Directed by Zia Anger. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vjkh-acmTE.
Installation at Chalk Horse Gallery Photograph credit: Brett East @docqment
Installation at Chalk Horse Gallery Photograph Credit: Brett East @docqment
Installation at Chalk Horse Gallery, photograph taken by: Brett East @docqment
Time is often imperceptible, but in presence of Peta Minnici’s work, we feel it. Paintings imbued with a restful stillness sit beside black and white drawings charged with movement and vibration. The past is present, and the present unfolds and obscures before us.
In Marking Time, Minnici welcomes us into her painted world of vintage interiors. Here one encounters ornate mahogany furniture, crystal glassware, an old milkshake glass and milk bottle, porcelain bowls, cane chairs, and a radiator. There are many indicators of the past but no clear discernible signs of the day. Only one vague exception is offered in the work ‘Life Stilled’ where an object resembling a plastic bottle hinted at by the small blue disk on top is found – this however is ambiguous.
Minnici’s rooms possess a dense fervour, though an absence is perceivable. The dustless reflections of the tabletops, polished timber floors, arrangements of blooming flowers, and scattered books on the side table give the impression that someone was just there. Other times the spaces appear as though they’ve been deserted for decades and preserved somehow. They inspire a pensive engagement and Minnici’s own curiosity is from where many of the images emerge. Some interiors she gleaned by peering through a window from the outside. The brushwork itself is gentle and contemplative in its touch. The paintings have a tenderness, an amber glow warms them. Light inhabits space where people do not and floods the empty vessels in the still life arrangements, brightening the cool blue hues of the thick glass. The outlines and shadows of the forms are softened and we are inclined to consider them with attentiveness, with the same repose they reflect.
When considering the ink drawings at first glance, I imagine a hand run above the paper, distorting and pulling the image, like a magic spell or wind tugging on the branches of a tree. Like a photograph taken with subjects in motion, Minnici’s drawings make us aware of location in relation to someone existing in, and moving through it. I am reminded of Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako whose pictures unite past and present, documenting psychological and material traces of the passage of time. We see this in Miyako’s portraits of her mother’s used lipstick standing against a faded background, or in her depiction of the shadow of a figure on an empty street at night. While stylistically different to Miyako’s aesthetic, a similar melancholic intimacy and spectral beauty pervades Minnici’s work. Though unlike the immediacy of capturing an image through photography, Minnici’s meticulous ink dotting is a process tied up with the actual observation of time itself. Each dot may represent a second, half a second, or longer; each impression is a marker of time, marking time. Some dots make slight contact and only skim the page; others are pressed firmer, locked onto the surface. Certain seconds seem weightier, fuller, more entrenched; others are barely perceived. In each work, the dotted lines take on a specific rhythmic formula. Lines move in a vertical direction in ‘Looking into the Past’ and ‘Looking into the Past’; in ‘Solitary Confinement’ they run horizontal, propelling our eye across the paper; in ‘Quarantined’ they travel from the outer corners inwards, creating a vortex, pulling us into their world. They resemble black and white photographs being exposed in the darkroom. ‘Last Day of the Roses’ appears as though it has been faintly shocked by light, an image frozen in time while materialising. The drawings have an expanding presence, like they are opening up.
Where there is light, there’s shadow, and in Minnici’s work, shadow clashes with light to elucidate but also mystify. In ‘Looking into the Past’ a face is woven into the landscape, obfuscating foreground and background. I wonder whether the figure is hovering above or coming through from behind. Is it the imprint of a memory, an imagining, a dream, an echo of a person who was there? Curiosity takes over… and a thought arises… had Minnici been looking through a window when the image was first captured, never stepping into the actual space but present as a shadow? Shadow embeds psychology into place. I think of the black and white films by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and how Minnici’s drawings bear semblance to them. Light bursts through the windows of vacant rooms and leaves quiver against an old brick building as they do in Bergman’s 1961 film Through a Glass Darkly. In this film the rooms also hold an emotional charge; they breathe. Lonesome landscapes, the recurrent hospital bed in the series, and the shadowy impression of a face in ‘Looking into the Past’ contain the existential beauty and despair portrayed in Bergman’s cinematic masterpiece Persona (1966).
Minnici’s works linger. I sit with them, gazing into the centre of each. At first, they take me away from home, away to another place, another time. But after a little while, they draw my attention inwards, and bring me further back. Back to a centre, a personal one, and so I sit with them for a while longer and rest in this solitary moment.
Elle Charalambu, 2021
(Below) Installation images of ‘Marking Time’ at Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney.
Photographs taken by : Simon Hewson
Solo Exhibition at May Space Gallery, Sydney July 1- 18th 2020
My current body of work was inspired by my month long residency at Bundanon, estate of the late artists’, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd. My proposal was to continue my exploration of perception through a series of paintings and drawings, based on its interiors and landscapes. Arriving late in the afternoon and unable to gain access to the locked homestead, I began peering through windows and photographing all I could see, eager for inspiration. As a result, I experienced a paradigm shift. I inadvertently discovered that the glass allowed me to capture both the interior and the surrounding landscape in the one frame, as a play on reflections, with the mountains and trees fusing seamlessly with the architectural features of the interior. My drawings, based on window reflections, are formed intuitively over time using a technique of mark making, creating a blurring of focus and a slowing of viewing time, whilst in my paintings I aim to undo photographic representation by reducing the image into a series of shapes combined with the use of small brush strokes of tone and colour.
The Kedumba Drawing Collection was started in 1990 and embodies and reflects all the elements of outstanding drawing created in Australia over more than 50 years and has acquired almost two hundred drawings.
I was fortunate enough to have my work “ Looking In, Seeing Out - Bundanon” acquired for this collection
The subject of my work depicts
myself almost as a voyeur peering from the outside through the glass windows of the The Bundanon Homestead during my recent residency. Capturing both inside and the surrounding landscape in the one frame, as a play on reflections, allows the internal foyer and staircase to fuse seamlessly with the mountains and trees. My technique of mark making, formed intuitively over time, evokes the fragility of remembering by creating a blurring of focus and the slowing of viewing time. The drawn line also relates to the concept of memory consisting of a mass of marks designated into what we have seen, heard and felt.
The Dobell Drawing Prize was originally held annually at the Art Gallery of NSW, initiated by the Gallery and the Trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation. The Prize aims to encourage excellence in drawing and draughtsmanship among Australian Artists. This year my drawing “ Dusk Hill End was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 50 finalists to go on exhibition at the National Art School in Sydney.
About my Drawing “ Dusk Hill End”
The subject depicted in my work illustrate an internal
thought process that is based on personal memory and focuses on an implied journey through time, i.e. Drawing at Hill End in the late afternoon . Although the drawing is based on a photograph, my aim was to deconstruct the representation portrayed, into vertical lines of tone, turning the photographic image into a series of atmospheric sensations which are reminiscent of a memory. I transcribe the image onto paper with a graphite pencil, enlarging the scale of the image then apply the tonal variations through a hatching technique of small vertical lines with black pen. My technique creates a blurring of focus and emphasises the tonal structure of each image through the loss of edges. In this work the drawn mark evokes the fragility of remembering, as the mark making creates a movement causing it to move from a past to a present. The drawn line also relates to the concept of memory consisting of a mass of marks that are designated into what we have seen, heard and felt.
May Space Gallery 20 March to 6 April
My current body of work explores recollection, depicting still life objects, people and places evoking and also preserving a memory of a time in the past. By painting from personal objects and photographs I aim to undo the photographic representation of each subject into small brush strokes of tone and colour, imbuing each image with a sensation associated with recollection of a memory and also symbolic in that each mark creates a recording of what I have seen, heard and felt.
My subject matter was inspired by the recent loss of someone who figured prominently in my life and the narrative that jointly connected us with each object. I would like to think that my paintings capture nostalgia with wistful affection and sometimes cynical humour without being too melancholy.
Debutants : Peta Minnici Written by Victoria Hynes
15th January 2019 Issue 87
Peta Minnici has been a stand out student whilst completing her Master of Fine Arts at the National Art School over the past several years. In 2015, she won The John Olsen Award for Figure Drawing, as well as the Parkers Fine Art Award for Painting, both held at NAS. In 2017 she was also a finalist for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and has participated in group shows with Sydney’s Dominik Mersch Gallery, Manly Art Gallery and GAFFA Gallery. With a forthcoming solo exhibition at Sydney’s May Space in 2019, her subtle yet emotive artworks are sure to garner even more attention. Minnici’s tonal still life and figurative compositions evoke a pensive nostalgia akin to a faded photo album . Embracing the traditional medium of drawing, she employs the painstaking method of hatching to build up evocative images that shift between abstraction and realism. In a parallel series of watercolour and oil paintings, she slowly builds up her images with layers of translucent paint. Often drawn from private photographs, her works become a subjective recording of personal memories and past events. Describing her current practice, the artist remarks: “ I aim to undo the photographic representation of each subject into small brush strokes of tone and colour, imbuing each image with a sensation associated with memory. It’s also symbolic in that each mark creates a recording of what I have seen, heard and felt. I like to think that my paintings capture nostalgia with wistful affection and sometimes cynical humor - without being too melancholy.” - written by Victoria Hynes
GAFFA GALLERY:
PETA MINNICI AND REENA NAIDU. CURATED BY RACHAEL HELMORE
February 15 - February 26 2018
‘In the quiet’ explores the possibilities of memory, slow-making and contemplation.
‘In the Quiet’ brings together the work of Reena Naidu and Peta Minnici. Whether layering ink on tapa cloth or tiny pen strokes on paper, each artist builds up their surfaces slowly through a measured and reflective time of making. In a space where it’s usually just them, their thoughts and their materials, Naidu and Minnici invite us to sit with them and explore the possibilities of memory, slow-making and contemplation.
Both Naidu and Minnici are graduates of the National Art School. Currently completing their Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing respectively, they continue to live and work in Sydney.
The National Art School Postgraduate Exhibition offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience the very best of emerging contemporary art. Twenty-seven Master of Fine Art students will exhibit work of exceptional quality, imagination and technical skill. The exhibition is free, with much of the work for sale – including ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, photomedia and sculpture.
Installation of drawings at the 2017 NAS Post Graduate Exhibition.
MAY SPACE
November 7 - November 25 2017
Most works of art start with a simple line, whether that be for a preparatory sketch or giving form to an idea. The field of drawing is therefore one brimming with possibilities, innovation, and cross-pollination. "Out of Line" will pay homage to the fundamental nature of drawing, whilst also aiming to see these lines jump off the page, defy expectations and merge with other fields. This group exhibition will provide a survey of how drawing-based practices comprise a variety of aesthetics, mediums and technologies.
Featuring Margaret Ackland, Rodney James Alexander, Kim Anderson, Lorraine Biggs, Matt Chun, Todd Fuller, Nicci Haynes, Rachael Helmore, Chris Humphries, Melinda Le Guay, Alun R. Jones, Noel McKenna, Peta Minnici, Trudy Moore, Mylyn Nguyen, Catherine O’Donnell, Indigo O’Rourke, Anastasia Parmson, Anna Richardson, Edgar Schilter, Paul White, and Ainsley Wilcock.
