Hobie Porter : Contemporary Landscape Artist

THE NEW ARCADIA

23 July – 3 September 2011
Opening 22 July, 5.30 for 6pm
Lismore Regional Gallery, 131 Molesworth st, Lismore

Panel Discussion: Finding Arcadia Now
Thursday 11 Aug 6.30 – 8.30pm
Lismore Regional Gallery, 131 Molesworth st, Lismore
Hobie Porter, Shelagh Morgan and Kelly Hussey-Smith discuss their work and some of the cultural and environmental landscapes that inform notions of arcadia.

Hobie Porter
In search of Arcadia
Oil on polyester canvas
43x43cm
2011

The New Arcadia brings together artists responding to arcadian aesthesicism and the picturesque. It throws light on an idealised depiction of landscape, but with visible disruption. This is the old world butting up against the new as the artists attempt to locate where arcadia is now.

The idea of arcadia is one that has long been dealt with in Western art. The classical arcadia, explored by artists such as Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), presented an unspoiled wilderness, where any implied human presence was harmonious. The word arcadia was derived from the mountainous Greek province of the same name, which dates to antiquity. Arcadia is therefore embedded with notions of looking back to a paradise enjoyed but lost through the heavy touch of progress and the human hand. It defines nature as transcendent, bountiful and ancient beyond our reckoning.

Although we share an awe for environments primordial and pristine, our relationship with the bountiful landscape can be explained through the alternative definition of the word: ‘to direct, graze, grow, harvest’. These two meanings collide in the pastoral landscape explored by Western European artists, notably John Constable (1776-1837), and the painters of the French Barbizon school (1830-1870) who presented a picturesque world which sought to be ‘better than nature itself’. Our present civilisation has achieved an unparalleled point of domination over nature and the ‘improved landscape’ is now a loaded term. Most arcadias have already been touched; the idea of a yet-to-be discovered environ seems as fanciful a notion in our times as it would have been to perceive nature as a limited resource in the days of colonial settlement. In an era of competing interests, today’s arcadia evokes notions of both beauty and compromise.

In countries such as Australia, America and New Zealand, where a human discovery and influence brought rapid change to the landscape over a short period, implied human impact is amplified. It is out of this context that The New Arcadia unravels.

Artists: Hobie Porter (Uki NSW), Amber Wallis (Syd), Jake Walker (Melb), Jan Davis (Tullera NSW), Siri Hayes (Melbourne), Joan Ross (Syd), Kendal Murray (Syd), Danie Mellor (Canberra), Sarah Smuts-Kennedy (Auckland NZ), Kit Wise (Melb), Shelagh Morgan (Eureka NSW), Grant Stevens (Bris and Los Angeles), Judith Van Heeren (Mornington Peninsula VIC), Sam Leach (Melb), Kelly Hussey-Smith (Bris), Fiona Lowry (Syd)

Documentation

Queensland: Lorraine Pilgrim

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