Exhibition: Resonance and Wonder

Painting and Songs - Paula MacArthur & Tine Louise Kortermand

Opens Saturday 13 May, 2 – 5pm

Refreshments provided, free parking, everyone welcome

Exhibition continues until 3 June
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 3pm and by appointment

Resonance and Wonder is an exhibition of paintings and songs and brings together the work of two artists. Painter Paula Mac Arthur, and Tine Louise Kortermand working in sound and music. 

Paula MacArthur first met Danish artist, Tine Louise Kortermand when they shared an exhibition space in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2016. The resonance of objects connects them.
In Brooklyn, Tine created her Resound songs on the spot in response to problems and worries that visitors shared with her; using an object – a toy camera, a xylophone & even hair – offered by each participant as a starting point to create sound and act as inspiration for each song. The tongue in cheek idea was that each song would provide some kind of magical solution or relief to these problems in a kind of pseudo therapeutic way.

Paula offered Tine a pencil & shared a current concern, put on the turquoise headphones, closed her eyes, listened to Tine’s haunting voice and felt an extraordinary, physical response which for her highlights the potential power and intimacy of objects. Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is an experience characterised by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine.  ASMR signifies the subjective experience of ‘low-grade euphoria’ characterised by a combination of positive feelings, and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin. It is most commonly triggered by specific acoustic, visual and digital media stimuli, and less commonly by intentional & ‘attentional’ control.
Paula selects the objects she paints for the personal resonance they have. These objects, which she uses as the starting point for her paintings, are often found in museums. As such, they are already loaded with the ‘Resonance and wonder’ (Resonance and wonder, Stephen Greenblatt, 2009) bestowed upon them by the original maker, the museum curator and by their perceived financial, historical and aesthetic value. Sometimes objects are found closer to home & included in this exhibition are paintings inspired by objects found in the Rijksmuseum alongside works based on the headboard of her carved wooden bed. For Paula, these objects resonate on a deep personal level, yet communicate universally, they trigger memories and emotional responses relating intimate relationships from childhood to the present day. She sees them as contemporary ‘momento-mori’; artworks designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life. These are details of objects of significance, loaded with history, value & power. Enlarged, an arabesque detail becomes a surging monolithic growth, which is recognisable but unnameable. Tiny, exquisite details are enlarged, edited & the form described in dissolving paint; beauty and riches become slippery things as the surface becomes both seductive and repellent. The illusion becomes paint; it both defines and denies the subject and these objects of desire decay in front of our eyes.
The gestures and trails of running paint are however, from a distance, invisible and Paula’s paintings appear quite photographic. The subject dissolves as the viewer approaches to take a closer look and the focus moves from the subject, to the materiality of the painting process. MacArthur works to replicate the form with both viscous and diluted colour, by allowing it to slip and merge the painterly forms become as mutable as the contradictory responses the subjects trigger.