Yel­low Mono­chrome (Japan)

In ear­ly 2015, I began pro­duc­ing a group of yel­low mono­chromes, which focus on the con­stituent ele­ments of paint­ing— sur­face (plane) and frame (line). These works com­prise a vari­ety of paint­ed sur­faces (hessian/​masonite/​glass/​MDF) com­bined with a range of styles of wood­en frames, the frames being inte­gral to the paint­ing, not added lat­er. The sur­faces in these works are yel­low, while the frames vary from yel­low to black or white.

Soon after, I trav­elled to Japan with these works at the front of my mind. In Tokyo, I went walk­ing each morn­ing in the gar­dens of the Mei­ji Shin­to Shrine and noticed instances of plane and line being used in the land­scape, such as in the fences and walls made from strap­ping bam­boo poles togeth­er. The yel­low­ish colour of the bam­boo con­nect­ed in my mind with the yel­low I had been using in my mono­chrome paint­ings. I thought to use bam­boo as a mate­r­i­al to con­struct both the sur­face and frame of paint­ings, con­tin­u­ing the yel­low project but being more spe­cif­ic to my expe­ri­ence in Japan. The Japan paint­ings have thus become a sub­sec­tion of the ​‘Exper­i­men­tal Paint­ing Work­shop (EPW)’ yel­low paintings.

I vis­it­ed Kyoto to see the gold­en and sil­ver pavil­ions set in beau­ti­ful Japan­ese gar­dens where I saw bam­boo used in the same man­ner. At the sil­ver pavil­ion, I noticed short lengths of thick bam­boo were joined togeth­er on a square plane to cov­er drain holes in the gar­den. The scale called to mind that of a small paint­ing and rein­forced my inter­est in doing paint­ings like this on my return.Travelling to Uno to vis­it the near­by islands of Naoshi­ma and Teshi­ma, I was struck by the bam­boo for­est on the hills. On the rur­al island of Teshi­ma, I went to a beach near Kara­to Port and washed up on the shore were some bits of full and split bam­boo and var­i­ous pieces of ceram­ic tile, which I picked up and brought home to Melbourne.

The first of the Japan paint­ings used var­nished bam­boo glued to can­vas and paint­ed yel­low. After that, oth­er items from Japan, ceram­ic tiles, pot­tery, chop­sticks, bam­boo mats and coins were incor­po­rat­ed into the paint­ings. These are con­struct­ed paint­ings with a strong mate­r­i­al basis and work­ing direct­ly with intu­ition and the mate­ri­als themselves.

John Nixon, March 2016