Text for Tristan Davies’ exhibition Morning of the world
November 2022
Laila Gallery, Sydney

by Madeline Simm

For Tristan

Anthropomorphic Colours

Each colour implies a character, a role, and a dynamic between them. A resemblance to a botanic grid. An orderly landscaped garden bed after rain. Corners stretch outwards away from a centre. A soft haze of brown powder frames cream and ivory clusters, black gaps hold in place intention. Symmetrical and balanced lacelike repetition simplifies a pairing of two pastel grids. Tessellated musk through a fog synonym. Teal blue-green film. A steamed lens obscures neon-yellow mirrored tiles. A smoke-filled room, disco ball, coloured lights.

Blue spectrums play beside two pink squares meeting. The centre point outstretches in rods supporting some intense cobalt. Ultramarine spheres hang in a standstill with faint black outlines. Diamond smoke. Triangles paired, a narrowing portal of lightened grey. Soft/hard edges of an upside-down mirror, balanced by a green fog obscurity. Symmetrical mind, steam muddles. Orderly optimism. Lime-green void, positive dream smog.

Line that is measured, considered. Headlights in rain on a wet surface. A staircase monument in endless subdued pigment. Dusk, hand marks. Calmly, light decelerates. Obscured colour presents windows in blue. Obstructed greys, a lilac/teal harmony. Stained glass made of ribbons. Angled softness. Balanced dice spots, brown dynamism. Green leisure flower pop-yellow, dancing out of its frame. The two eyes… two spheres, two diamonds. A combination of angles, forms, and universal order. Borrowed symbols. A gifted wattle cluster held in a deep Prussian blue grasp. A storm cloud veils sunshine inside the unrevealed process of building a space. How to convey loftiness in colour and form? An implied screen of vapour, two-tone and steady. Level-headed spontaneity shows an impartial contemplation, presents an upright order. Green, yellow, blue, grey, red, through a mist-filled haze dream.

https://laila.sydney/tristan-davies/

Text for Emily Ferretti’s exhibition Hitting the Nail
September 2022
Sumer Gallery, Auckland, Aotearoa

by Madeline Simm

Zinc blue stretch, aquamarine dream. How is it I can spin and be entirely still? My hands and each mark score arduously against the metal, warming my palm. Lifting weight though swimming lightly. A human imagination.

The brushing sound in a bizarre arrangement. The roof floats above without knowing. Consciously arranged, slowly pouring away, rip and hit, whirred. The personality of a handle. Only the new leaves move with the breeze when meeting. Sun-bleached floral bedsheet blind. Heat-treated to harden the steel. Wedges in wood. Shock-resistant grip impressions snap and gliding scraper. Playful assertion fits its way through remnants of my wrist and mind. A house painter as she descends a ladder. Forged domesticity and awakening.

Persisting anyway, big brush glide and scuff. The complication sits as I please and the saws see each other, standing upright. I’ve made something that looks back at me. Thought as drawing edge and ridges, organic synthetic manufactured freeform. Softness and shadow reflecting itself, the edge. Blades and armour, symmetrical swathe.

Blue-edged growth. My idea and the time bent into line, off-balance. The answer weaves itself in like some cryptic relative. The noise, hit, silence in the garden. Daylight shifting peach, scrape and glide. Sculpted hammer head. Anthropomorphic inkling. Fallen leaves suspend like a mosaiced path in my mind, holding hands with a solution. Daylight reveals a courtyard, its hedges below knee height.

Hit, knock with intention. Rhythm and light reveal themselves to me, alive and vibrant, reflecting. The form and its buzz are indistinguishable. Knotted trunk. Tools that extend my hand. The road beside me is coral in colour. Painting life as growing and changing shapes, active force. Unabashed cherry red, summer storm sky grey. Phthalo.

Mimicking contours tell their own fibs. Twigs extend and contract. Each movement is a sound recorded and becomes lines and marks in paint. She’s thinking through line. What is there holds the same strength as the thing that frames it, then holds up my thought. Presenting something upright then diverting it. A path, a trunk, a nail. Scoring a saw blade, metal sheen, bumpy bark. The paintings are the process, the rhyme, and a solution. Handled potential, handheld labour. A painting’s edges restrained, erased and delicate concrete glass. Life, immediacy, and a rose garden. Undoing in scrape and undone brush scuff. An emotional climate towards a subconscious telling.

https://sumer.nz/exhibitions/47-emily-ferretti-hitting-the-nail/overview/

Text for Julia Stewart’s exhibition Introspections
May 2022
Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, Melbourne

by Madeline Simm

Pairings and grouping often find themselves in Julia Stewart’s work, as in some of her earlier paintings where she explored this theme specifically. There’s also a calm and serene tempo that runs through her paintings, in her use of colour but also in her application of paint, depicting soft hazes and crisp lines. Our friendship reaches back a number of years and so it is with love that I recall our discussions of Richard Diebenkorn and his seated figure paintings, these and Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue album, ‘Maddi, I actually prefer it to her ballads,’ as she put it on. We sat together drawing to The Grass Is Blue once or twice. Diebenkorn is an applicable reference for this exhibition too, though most interesting when considering Julia’s own reflection in a mirror in Yellow, as she is both subject and observer, and not just one of these. She infiltrates the soft surface and is visually of the same importance as the chair, the vase and the doorway. Julia is in the work literally, and in spirit.

If you know Julia, her signature thoughtfulness and intent breathes through this series, and she brings us to see with affection the particular shifts in light around her home, through objects, around her living space, outside in the nearby environment of Melbourne’s inner west, and celebrates them for what they are. Introspections invites the viewer to think about light as it moves through the familiar: light that is always changing, renewing itself and its beauty. Like the sense of order in this work where little chaos seeps, Julia offers a respite from the aspects of reality which frazzle and tire us. She offers sites for contemplation and reflection through material and subject. Her observations are made familiar to us, too. The warmth and serenity that emulates in this work as colour and setting are extensions of Julia’s nature. I’m looking out my apartment window now at golden yellows, browns and greens of trees in a late afternoon Melbourne light… those are Julia tones.

Text for ‘Hannah Maskell: Double Violet Continued’.
February 2022
Stray Pages, Melbourne

by Madeline Simm

Star Gazing for Hannah Maskell

For now, lightness is a portal to move through and be transformed by. I reach over the front fence and notice the pots, a bare tree beside them. Braided lines combine as they do when hands are held. Branches meet in the centre for an exchange across the lawn and colour echoes. Time is passing, and eternal afternoon light shifts the conversation, collected fragments stored safely away like a rose-hued friendship.

The books make life and the artwork interchangeable in their essence, like light and stillness through this front garden. Mesh, net, layers create space. The sunlight on the windowsill recedes into nothing, though is yellow and has depth, both delicate and strong. A buttoned floral dress.

A pure space in icy blue is bearing faint marks. Brittle and drifting colour, new earrings. A chair to recline on when a woollen load reflects in the mirror and moves in a joyful dance, fixed to the line. Pink and lilac. I acknowledge the intricate feeling, it is delicate and lacelike. Star gazing. A pace of stillness, though evoking youth while the horizon weaves and shifts in a gold and brown blend, standing upright in my memory. Blinking lights, the sun through shadows reaches orange flowers, purple, red. Cotton shimmering.

Sitting on beanbags touches family memories, siblings, traits of our brothers. Continually, thoughts run into lines and then become enclosed in the squares they map. Eternal play finds itself to be ongoing and repeats. A grid that lingers—routine and play, producing arrangements and serendipity. I hold the shrunken knit. The edges are expansive though contain themselves. Patterned love. Colour as subject.

https://www.straypages.com/hannah-maskell-double-violet-continued

Exhibition Text for Angela Brennan’s ‘Like, tomorrow’.
February 2021
Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

by Madeline Simm

Like, tomorrow
Round and round, receding. I am passing a flowering bush. A red line clasps a sphere and there begins a story. Soft-edged shapes touch like dear friends connecting and conversing. Blue, pink, white, green, orange, red—they know what each other are thinking. And I know them. Sunbeams crystallise in a soft glow, always rippling and breathing. I’ll show you exactly as I see you, infinite glow. It’s beautiful. From Italy, the heart trees came to be, and they are feelings connected like branches holding brilliant jewels.

And the ring and the ball and the ground and the haze and the fluff and the float and the mist and the flow and the soak and the bleed and the glow, all know. Soft blocks stacked. Balance of life and light and rings that wrap around like an embrace, before I take the time to rationalise what it might all point towards. Upright flowers on stems, I pick them.

Some varying dimensions imply what is to come soon. The paintings change as the brush follows and leads, right up to edges which are important, though this is not new. No firm plan leaves room for chance, these branches bearing fruit and leaves like small galaxies. I see light pass through, and then I feel the light. Make a painting out of me. What is it to be? A total universe and it always has been, you see. A way of thinking on and on.

I notice the warm breeze; titanium white lines over deep blue as light across water is lifted and carried, breaking into cracks, continually moving. An apple floats above like an idea, and a figure reclines against the tree. This complexity is freeing and reminds you or I to see life for what it really is. Of course, love can come from the mind sometimes. You’ll know this soon. It’s quiet and loud altogether.

Grey line, red blob, zingy, fluffy, gold. One idea asks for the next and they start as feelings, now they are a space. Shakespeare came up with words like ‘bubble’ to amend gaps he found in language. This endless orbit evolves like she and life might, and the warm weather invites new leaves to unfurl. Thinking about the spiritual in the familiar, hearts hover over blue clouds. These sections have divides like each of the seasons, or how time maps the year into loose compartments. A desire to rush time and a desire to bring it to a halt.

The studio is melting into home and back onto itself. Life morphing into paintings and paintings into life, they relate to one another like neighbouring planets in a solar system. Building feelings up. Astrophysics, picnics. Words as parallel sit outside of logic as they too float and glow. Forms blossoming from paint and I am reminded of the telling of memories as they happen, it preserves their significance and clarity. Moved by the effervescence of a time, the place and our conversation.

The fog that keeps my words at bay is a sieve and the colours move through it. Here you might find a delight in a great sense of care, it’s a profound magic—care. The frangipani flowers in the front garden are a similar sandy yellow to the weather boards of the house on my street. Beautiful planets; a great, humbling mystery.

I now see as Angela does. ‘Pluto has a heart on it’. Drawn lines between ideas like charting stars. The paintings talk to one another when you aren’t looking. Marks and gestures arrive here themselves, they float in and are vital. The imagined transforms into the perceived when embedded into the weave, for good. Panels of green, blue, white hold a particular weight and arrange their own gravity—surfaces are eternal space and eternal renewal. Hearts and planets. I’ll come back to that, like, tomorrow.

Exhibition Text for ‘Walking across a square in a green dress’.
29 January - 31 January 2021
5 Gallery, West Melbourne

by Ari Rashid

(Green)
Grass flowing through wind.
Vibrant colours circling
A colour of calm

(Dress)
Wind dancing flowers
Flow of the breeze pushing
Freedom and lightness

(Square)
Squares like it’s class time
Time running buy like athletes
A stop to movement

(Life)
The times are lucky
Animals circling life
A wonderful place

Ari Rashid is currently completing year eight at Princes Hill Secondary College.

Exhibition Text for Augusta Vinall Richardson’s ‘How do you wish for a lifetime of happiness?’
23 January - 20 February 2021
Discordia Gallery, Melbourne

by Madeline Simm

A containment inside the garage: how do you wish for a lifetime of happiness?

(To Gussie),

Graph paper possesses its own inherent beauty before it’s even touched. The bricks tell me what to do. I sit here taking turns looking between each of the four walls, forgetting that I even have a door or that I’m here and thinking. Drawings are the plan and the outcome.

The sculpture sits proud and peaceful and the idea moves away on its own accord. The work can never fall apart, thoughts are robust ships and the anchors were left on some island. Materials and order. Safety in curriculum holds me against the towel and it’s coarser than I knew. Prescribed formula to solve problems like how to live, or how ask questions. I was hoping you’d bring the answers—we deliver questions instead. Harsh thoughts tumble into a soft cotton ball floating and turning into light, its far less intimidating up close.

Things, joined—when I say ‘things’ I am referring to objects and not a complex situation, as in when people say a remark like ‘life happens’. Then what am I doing beyond cutting an idea into small pieces? Building it again, and it’s just how I wanted it to be! Finished. Laughter really is a wonderful thing. Nothing is defined and all is abstracted until I am looking at the ‘thing’ and it’s looking back at me. I am like a parent, but not in charge. I am outside of it, an ant with a grain of sugar on its back.

You can bite the sky from time to time, universal ideas which don’t really belong to anyone. I can feel that, weighing down it’s a heavy little thing and it shines, now. When I rub off my fingerprints it doesn’t matter because the thing itself is a fingerprint. I love the way I know what is going to unfold and the paper is strong. Accidents until they’re not.

Prescribed methods of thinking helps you to notice you’re more interested in the how, and not the why. Following a formula rather than following one’s nose. Tactility is important because it’s a grip on reality, it plants a person in the moment and there exists an opportunity for admiration. Like paper, if I spend too much time by myself I’ll fold in and have to start again.

In the garage. You know? Just as I was about to slide the chair back and stand up the idea came to me, though I won’t mention capitalism—there’s no point. Standing in front of a drawing I became distracted, can I somehow get closer to God? Pat Larter is at a dance party in my garage.

Elusive and impermanent, nothing! The plants are happy when they’re simply looked at, they feel cared for. Physically I’m problem solving by understanding structure and steel as structure, already that is everyday life. Long lasting work, everlasting love. Labour bears a tangible thing, those forms taken from drawings. Contained and confined. Even time does that to you.

Somehow there’s an emotional element in the otherwise cold and detached form, sort of mirrored by the way metal turns warm against your body. Time and connection are funny. That smear means more than you can imagine, I won’t move it. Metal wire can be so light to contain birds or so thick as to hold up the world. It can be that strong, now just think about that for a moment: thirty floors high up into the sky. Blink and you can make a skyscraper disappear. It’s not a destructive thought, it’s a magic one. Maze as metaphor.

I am afraid to admit I don’t know what I am trying to believe in, so I build it instead. A garage is meant for housing items that are important and useful, but not the same which are kept at one’s bedside (not the ones you would be happy to see as you fall asleep). Kiss the day goodbye and it’s gone. A garage is a worksite as the dust builds and materials move, bend. You go in there one person and come out another. And the tools and dust are slightly rearranged. I loved my brother’s obsession with my grandfather’s garage. A half-finished letterbox with our surname on it.

A safe haven where a person can arrange objects of attachment without knowing why. You wouldn’t invite guests to join you in your garage for a meal, would you? Maybe.

Showing a material in its brightest, best light. Preparing it for some final, beautiful iteration of itself. How can anyone be so confused as though beauty isn’t everywhere? I suppose it’s not unlike a collaboration with the material. Between you and something difficult to manipulate. That is the butterfly that just landed and the pond is a clear blue…

I am not leaving anywhere but I am arriving at many places simultaneously. We know that. There are 193 nations and that’s not much to split us up by. You see, we’re at the same party just in separate rooms. People are like metal and inside sits a complex vortex—wow. The train station is always in a state of flux. Even when there’s nobody there I care about it so much. I care about it all. The journey out of here. The departure is an arrival at one end.

Problem solving tastes less like a dinner and more like a time of day. What is it I am trying to spell out? Building something that is intended to last echoes what is trying to be said, and it does this ongoingly. I look around me, the object keeps me here in this one place. I don’t need much, I realise.

A lifetime of happiness. A clear belief in a material as it listens to what you tell it to be, and perhaps that’s what it already is and why it shines. It’s just metallic passion. What? Control of something physical, a line initially, that’s all it is and that doesn’t induce fear, does it? I return to my thoughts of floating above myself and watch with curiosity.

One big gesture of improvisation, keep it. Too much fire in your life is no good. You want to be far enough away that you can see it for its beauty. Other people’s opinions are not given to you as gifts and your instinct is both true and worthwhile. A lot is impermanent; imagine an object of beauty made to last, and in this instance, it will.

(Love, Maddi).

Exhibition Text for Elynor Smithwick’s ‘I Haven’t Seen The Moon Tonight’
27 August - 10 September 2020
Otomys Contemporary (online)

by Madeline Simm

There is loose cutlery moving around in my bag as I walk, reminding me of the drawer in my house I keep it in. I find myself taking note just so it is possible to let go when the time is right—the thought. An event is happening soon, the only attendant being me. I participate to have positive encounters and as soon as it becomes not positive, if it does, then I can leave. 

I dart away from preparing my meal in my mind and am lost in dreaming. A new purpose exists all of a sudden, realised on the walk I took today when I saw the tree. No real control over the order of each step I take, but it’s nice that way. I feel a care in my hands, up my arms when I hug my friend, my dog. If I could see the feeling it would be smaller-than-life butterflies leaving through each of my ten fingertips, and all in one year.

New territory I find myself in feels just as familiar as before. Perhaps the gap that exists from not understanding is the crack that the seed can germinate in. Remembering the last day out of order on the next day, so that each thing that happens shifts meaning. Outside the moon is still there although right now I can’t see it. Please know that just because you are tired doesn’t mean I don’t love you. As the sun is going down it marks the beginning of something and not the end.

I am acting without questioning the outcome or consequences, just as along the shoreline everything breaks and nothing breaks at once. I have a truth and it does exist. Different specks of thoughts dissipate in every direction and connect with everyone else around. Inside me somewhere I stay balanced, as the dog is barking.

Exhibition Text for ‘Light of a Clear Blue Morning’
26 February - 29 February 2020
Book Coffee Print Work.Shop, Melbourne

trapezium poem
by Jemi Gale

a tiny gifted cat blanket
replica abstract painting textile print
created from discomfort
over and over

side by side, everyone seems to step back
name every single thing that surrounds you in your life
have you ever had a thought in your life?

transparent bodies leave fabric hanging in space: trying to be good
or negative space
or what’s visible
or a group of individuals in space and how much impact each one of them is allowed to have
or making movement through connection

I refuse to make a sentence
but I might try

someone from the past is controlling my hands
what they manufacture
I have to get it out
of the inside of the ground
a door
upside down and meaningless

a secret duality
of collected patterns and painters
a line in-between
multiple choice
and the hesitation involved in struggling with decision making

what colour is this emotion?
I destroy the bargello weave of my uniform with my own fingernails
it can be different

Exhibition Text for ‘Studies For Quilts’
10 April - 10 May 2019
Cathedral Cabinet, Nicholas Building Melbourne

by Emma Nixon

Utilizing the process of patchwork as a starting point for generating abstract painting, Madeline Simm’s Studies for Quilts, embraces the connection between painting an image onto board and piecing it out of material.

Once sewn together, fabrics of different weights, textures and patterns react to each other in unpredictable ways. Simm’s objective is to capture the character of these awkward forms in paintings. It is her fondness and inclination towards the irregular that allows for her painted lines to curve, her colours to bleed into one another and the corners of her shapes to meet slightly mismatched. 

A painterly lilac line sides up to a wonky beige rectangle, and it is this unlikely pairing that strikes an unexpected intimacy amongst the pink and pastel hues. Imaginings of monochrome fabrics, creased over time are realized in paintings with looser brush strokes, mirroring the materiality of the fabric quilt. Deep green leaves hang in the corner of a painting - preferencing the decorative, resourceful side of patchwork over the abstract. Borders contain the images, like the edges of quilts, they signal that the artwork is complete.

An unfinished quilt hangs on the right of the window like a touchstone or a template. Its’ structural base of connected squares solidifies Simm’s consistent methodology regardless of medium. The bright orange stitches embedded in the denim mimic brush strokes - allowing the relationship between patchwork and painting to be explored in reverse. 

Hung here as a tight knit cluster, united as one, the textured colours and imperfect shapes playfully bounce off one another. But as you continue to look, certain brushstrokes and colour pairings catch your eye, and each individual work continues to give you more and more.