Paintings by Jon Cattapan, Sutton Gallery. Photos: Julie Clarke, 2010With night vision goggles attached to their helmets, a soldier's vision is enhanced to a point where they can literally see in complete darkness from amplified light sources as minute as distant stars. Image intensifiers used in the goggles utilize green phosphor because the human eye differentiates more shades of green than any other color. Many of the paintings in Jon Cattapan's Viridian Eye exhibition currently being shown at Sutton Gallery in Brunswick depict the predominance of green in night vision images as seen by Australian soldiers deployed to Gleno, Bacau, Maliana and Vekeki at Timor Leste.
Catapan, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial in 2008 under the 'official artist program' followed these soldiers and digitally recorded images captured by night vision, which he has turned into small and large-scale paintings.
Since the human body is depicted digitally in these images they evoke the notion of a virtual body or avatar, as well as being phantom bodies of energy ~ body trace just one aspect of the overall landscape.
Whilst I was viewing Cattapan's paintings I was reminded of the science fiction film The Matrix (Wachowski brothers, 1999), which tells of sentient machines that use the heat and electrical energy of human bodies so that they can survive, but more importantly I recalled the scene in which the green background is suddenly flooded with lines of energy that depict the matrix code which is the reality behind the illusion.
I really enjoyed Cattapan's paintings ~ the way he constructed different layers, foregrounding some things and back grounding others ~ the soldiers bodies as schematic ~ complex lines in a grid, whilst all the time, using more painterly strokes to reference the fluidity that underpins the human body and flow of life.
My criticism of this body of work is that the paintings are way too beautiful ~ they do not accurately depict the conflict that has occurred in East Timor. They do, however, reveal the way that the soldiers bodies are integrally interconnected with other bodies, machines and things ~ showing the relationship that the Australian peace keeping force has established with the Timorese.
My favourite painting is one that stands out because of its lack of viridian hue ~ it is a small painting, predominantly pink and orange ~ fleshy colors that bring us back to the human body~ more solid, easier to identify.
Jon Cattapan's exhibition is on until Saturday 24 July - go see it if you get a chance.
Addendum to this post: I've just read this morning's post about my dream last night and am wondering if it pre-empts my viewing of Jon's paintings? If it is, it is an interesting way my brain has processed and interpreted his past paintings.
Catapan, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial in 2008 under the 'official artist program' followed these soldiers and digitally recorded images captured by night vision, which he has turned into small and large-scale paintings.
Since the human body is depicted digitally in these images they evoke the notion of a virtual body or avatar, as well as being phantom bodies of energy ~ body trace just one aspect of the overall landscape.
Whilst I was viewing Cattapan's paintings I was reminded of the science fiction film The Matrix (Wachowski brothers, 1999), which tells of sentient machines that use the heat and electrical energy of human bodies so that they can survive, but more importantly I recalled the scene in which the green background is suddenly flooded with lines of energy that depict the matrix code which is the reality behind the illusion.
I really enjoyed Cattapan's paintings ~ the way he constructed different layers, foregrounding some things and back grounding others ~ the soldiers bodies as schematic ~ complex lines in a grid, whilst all the time, using more painterly strokes to reference the fluidity that underpins the human body and flow of life.
My criticism of this body of work is that the paintings are way too beautiful ~ they do not accurately depict the conflict that has occurred in East Timor. They do, however, reveal the way that the soldiers bodies are integrally interconnected with other bodies, machines and things ~ showing the relationship that the Australian peace keeping force has established with the Timorese.
My favourite painting is one that stands out because of its lack of viridian hue ~ it is a small painting, predominantly pink and orange ~ fleshy colors that bring us back to the human body~ more solid, easier to identify.
Jon Cattapan's exhibition is on until Saturday 24 July - go see it if you get a chance.
Addendum to this post: I've just read this morning's post about my dream last night and am wondering if it pre-empts my viewing of Jon's paintings? If it is, it is an interesting way my brain has processed and interpreted his past paintings.
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