TOM NICHOLSON: THE APPROACH
The project attempts to re-animate a colonial image, to re-cast its imaginary projections into
a new set of meanings.
Evening shadows encompasses several processes: gathering together the many, many painted
copies of H.J. Johnstone’s Evening shadows, backwater of the Murray, South Australia 1880 scattered
around Adelaide and amassing them in a salon hang into the gallery traditionally occupied by his
painting; an extended drawing process, attempting to re-create in a multi-panel charcoal drawing
the negative of the lost photograph on which Johnstone’s painting was (arguably) based (Johnstone
was a leading commercial photographer in Melbourne and painted Evening shadows in London); and
extensive historical research in Barmah, Victoria, and archives in Melbourne working towards a
video work describing the 1939 Cummeragunja walk-off and its history; and a poster-based work ‘
advertising’ the walk-off, which people are invited to display in their front windows or front
gardens (like election propaganda), creating a massive dispersed ephemeral work which is public in
character but grounded in the domestic.
The project attempts to re-animate a colonial image, to re-cast its imaginary projections
into a new set of meanings. This re-animation is a reverse archaeological process, re-creating the
painting’s source negative through drawing and also ‘excavating’ another (later) event from within
the painting’s allegorical narrative.
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TOM NICHOLSON
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