Claudia Damichi’s current paintings are exquisitely detailed and decorative domestic interiors, executed in a vivid techni-colour palette. While her paintings primarily appear playful and embody a theatrical sensibility, they also present an imaginative retreat from the isolation the artist felt on relocating to Tasmania.
Damichi, who has exhibited extensively throughout Australia, will for the first time curate an exhibition “You Give Good Colour” in September this year, and will also present a solo show in May 2013. ARTIST PROFILE spoke to Damichi from her Hobart studio.
Interview by Ali Noble.
You originally started out exploring abstraction as a painter, how did you evolve towards your current work that is representational?
It was like my early abstract work kind of dried up for me in terms of content. I felt like I needed to make work that was literally about something, something that was more personal and idiosyncratic in a way. But of course when I look at that earlier work, now I can clearly see the relationship to my current work, particularly the use of pattern and repetition and my interest in illusionary space.
Your painterly immersion in precisely hyper-decorated domestic interiors is fascinating in the context of living in Tasmania for the last 5 years, a place where most people firstly think of ‘the great outdoors’, whereas you seem to be creating a great indoors. Can you expand on this?
The shift in my work from abstraction to semi-realism coincided with the move to Tasmania. This was also timed with the birth of our first daughter. Somehow these three events have formed a kind of triangular paradigm within my work, each affecting and feeding into the other. Not long after moving here, without knowing anybody, and having to admit I wasn’t particularly the ‘outdoors type’, I found myself feeling intensely isolated. By nature being an artist is a fairly solitary existence, but motherhood also draws your world inward, particularly babies. Somehow the effect of these personal factors on my work was to drive me to make these completely, artificial, kooky, colourful, fantastical interiors! My imaginary escape perhaps?
In terms of process I understand that you are somewhat of a perfectionist, is it true that you have abandoned nearly finished canvases on more than a few occasions ? What compels you to start again, as I imagine this would be a frustrating decision to make.
This urge to destroy work is something I wrestle with constantly, and am currently trying to stop. But old habits die hard. Often an image is so clear in my mind that the output always falls short of this fantastically imagined scene. In many ways it is this unobtainable image that drives me to abandon work and start again. The potential of that next new ‘better’ work is always so exciting. In an attempt to stop re-doing works over and over, I have recently started making studies in gouache on paper. The immediacy of the process, as well as the option it gives me to cut out and collage the ‘good’ bits together has been extremely positive.
The functional objects are anthropomorphized and quite acrobatic in your paintings! Are your chairs speaking to each other when the humans leave the room?
Its funny, my husband is a puppet theatre director. Essentially he is focused on the idea of poetry in animating, or bringing to life inanimate things. Obviously we talk about these ideas a lot! and this has found its way into my recent work. I was already making work that placed everyday objects in rather staged and suggestive relationships but my recent work has taken this even further where I have pushed the objects into arrangements that are so physical that they start to imbue an almost human quality. It is such a funny trick of perception really, and the potential to speak of the quirks of the human condition is what really excites me about this.
Your approach to scale and composition appears theatrical or staged, what is the intention behind this?
I like the idea that something is not what it first appears, and the ‘staged’ quality to my compositions emphasises this. It is not my intension to paint realistic still life’s or interiors. I am much more interested in the world of make believe.
Your palette is bold and electric, has colour always played a large role in your work?
I would say colour is really the first and last thing I think about in my work. It’s the fun bit! I often think that my sense of colour is at odds with the content. But I like that. My palate of clashing and colliding hues has an almost hallucinatory effect and often gives the work an extra level of tension.
You have a solo show with Sophie Gannon in May 2013, but have taken on a curatorial role for an exhibition at the same gallery called “You Give Good Colour” in September 2012. Can you expand a little on this exhibition, and also how it relates to your own practise?
I must admit, I’ve wanted to curate this show for a long time now. It’s something that’s been swirling around in the back of my mind for ages. The exhibition brings together seven artists alongside myself who use colour in a heightened and focused way. Quite simply colour as outcome. When an artist curates, I think it is always essentially an extension of his or her own practice. Kind of like expression by association, well this is true in my case. Interestingly, all the artists I’ve selected for the show work within the framework of abstraction, some hard-edged, some organic, but all are non-figurative. I don’t know what to make of this really, except to acknowledge that I do think I approach my own work from the perspective of an abstractionist. There is a reductive quality to my form and composition that is in keeping with abstract modes.
And lastly, can you share what artists might be influencing you at the moment, or have made a significant impact in the past?
Where do I begin? David Hockney always and forever. He is such an amazing colourist, and I love how he takes the everyday things and places of his life to create these incredibly wonderful pictures. It sort of makes me realise its not necessarily what you paint, but how you do it that counts. He can make a painting of an ashtray look poetic… how does he do it? Other artists that are often also floating around in my subconscious are Peter Halley, Sonia Delaunay, and lately I’ve had a reinvigorated passion for Picasso. Currently I’m also looking at Ikebana, this is the ‘art’ of Japanese flower arrangement. I am really interested in the possibilities of the forms. Some of them are amazing, almost unbelievable. I am making paintings at the moment that use this idea of nature brought inside then tortured and twisted into these almost sculptural fantasies.
By Ali Noble, published in Artist Profile 2012
Claudia Damichi is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne.
EXHIBITION
You Give Good Colour
25th September - 20th October 2012
Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne.