SPOTLIGHT SESSION #1: TENSIONS AND TENDERNESS
Our opening night for TENSIONS AND TENDERNESS was marked by a Spotlight Session, where Robyn Fleet, Pippi Miller and Sha Ganjali shared insights into their practices with Amanda Billing. What emerged was a conversation about process, control and risk; all deeply embedded in their chosen mediums.
Robyn Fleet had an ongoing desire to paint a tree. Despite numerous attempts, the image often resisted, becoming contrived and unsatisfying. In the work titled Seek the Soil, she found resolution through letting go. Using a rag, she wiped and moved oil paint across the canvas until, almost by magic, a tree emerged in its truest and dearest form. The result resembles an old photograph pulled from an antique box. Foggy, dark, and somber, like a fading memory.
For Pippi Miller, control is both a challenge and a necessity. She approaches gouache with a strictness, building a framework within which colour can breathe and settle. Though gouache appears smooth and forgiving, it carries danger. Too much water, and the surface collapses. Within that tension, Miller achieves works of remarkable detail and precision. Her paintings are illustrative and narrative-driven, with every corner alive with story. They hover between reality and fever dream, populated by figures who seem caught between worlds.
Sha Ganjali enters her studio with nothing but a feeling. From there, she works with clay in a single sitting. This process may last two hours or stretch into sixteen. Each sculpture is a documentation of her present self on that particular day: a record of emotion, risk, and reflection. Her hand-built forms lean into imperfection and individuality; no two are alike. These works, become personified, bodily in form, mimicking slumps and poised poses. Together, they stand as a representations of vulnerability and strength, deeply human in their differences.
TENSIONS AND TENDERNESS brings together these three distinct practices; oil, gouache, and clay. Yet, what binds them is a shared openness to process. Each work is not simply an object, but a record of becoming, a trace of struggle, control, release, and emotion.