2012 Musical Geometry

Turner Galleries
3 February – 3 March 2012

Turner Galleries Press Release

Marion has an impressive CV, with this solo exhibition being her 47th, and her third with us in Perth. Her artworks can be found in over 40 international public collections and a further 22 corporate collections. Her work travels seamlessly between the boundaries of public installation, the confines of public collections and the homes of private collectors without losing integrity. This is a rare feat for any artist.

This exhibition, aptly titled Musical Geometry, consists of a range of paintings and sculptures. Time, space and motion are all themes that Marion’s work has explored for several years. She understands the compulsion for man to impose reason upon and to attempt to measure the unfathomable, abstract notions about our universe in order to better understand it. Underlying this is the concept of time as a human construct and the need to integrate it into the cyclical nature of our world, to use it to document the rhythms of change.

Marion’s masterful sculptural forms deal with these ideas, attempting to capture the cadences and motions of a continual exchange of universal energy. Tsukimi Worlds II is a series of large glass orbs that reference light and the lunar cycle. Floating on clear acrylic display stands these exquisite glass balls range in tone from translucent white to black, with the pieces between gently graduated from top to bottom, white to black. They are concisely embodied ‘worlds of matter’ contained within a single form.

Marion works masterfully with a variety of materials, in (Lunar) Ebb and flow 1 and 3 she has created luminous surfaces using duck egg shell, beeswax and polyurethane. These mesmerising wall pieces echo the ocean’s tidal energy and the moon’s reflection on rippling water. The undulating forms, one concave and the other convex, with their eggshell white surface and black versos, embody the negative and positive, the push and pull, of opposing forces.

Marion continues to explore her Strobe series of paintings, started in 2008, and this exhibition contains one of the largest to date, Persian Strobe 1, consisting of three large panels to create an artwork nearly four meters long and three high. Inspired by the intensity of colours and design in Persian (Iranian) mosaics, carpets and architecture these abstract paintings vibrate with colour. Acidic yellows and greens are banded alongside rich mauves and purples creating pulsating optical illusions of overlapping and interlacing shapes. These new Strobe paintings have more movement than those from previous years, a subliminal blip in the blurred horizontal lines of colours has become a richer pulse, evolving from a heart beat to the rhythm of music and architecture. Once again Marion is referencing not just the natural world, but the link between humans and their environment.

Accompanying the Persian Strobe paintings will be a selection of new Liquid Light paintings, created by painting both sides of the canvas, then painstakingly cutting narrow parallel strips into the surface that are then carefully twisted and pinned in place. The fished effect is astounding, with the painting seeming to morph and change colour as the viewer walks past. These too have evolved from previous years and are more complex and beautiful than ever before.