The highest aim of creating these works is to offer the viewer an invitation to the realm of beauty beyond form.
Nerina Lascelles
A CONVERGENCE OF FIELDS
The art of Nerina Lascelles inhabits an otherworldly atmosphere in which forms and symbols have begun to soften and dissolve, and viewers find themselves conveyed into mysterious beyonds that emerge in the serene light of alluring distances.
Lascelles’ journey has followed the relationship between transcendence and art across a range of Eastern philosophical traditions within which visual art and poetry are used as aids to meditation: a practice that explains why we can read poetry by Zen poet Matsuo Basho as one might take bearings by consulting a navigational instrument.
If, for instance, on a walking tour over a mountain range, we fell ill and were compelled to convalesce at a wayside inn, our deeper thoughts and dreams may well carry on regardless. They would, we can only imagine, attain ever loftier heights, while penetrating ever further into imponderable distances.
Sick on a journey –
over parched fields
dreams wander on
Matsou Basho, 1694
It is the otherworldly vistas encountered on these latter expeditions that Lascelles has chosen as the principal subject for her art.
A DISSOLUTION OF DIVIDES
Tao and this world seem different
but in truth they are one and the same
Lao Tzu, c. 5th-century BC
Lascelles’ development has been informed as much by the formal study of art as it has by culturally focused field trips abroad – to China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal and Japan – with the challenge always being to attain a dissolution of divides by deploying techniques and mediums amenable to the visual arts. Through a discerning and intuitive selection of materials and an acquired mastery of fused layering techniques, Lascelles makes possible the necessary passage for receptive viewers.
The diverse materials, that can include encaustic wax, Chinese silk, Japanese Kimono embroidery, joss and washi paper, original screen print designs, as well as organic objects gleaned from the natural world, encourage a thoughtful and unimpeded exploration of form and symbol and an ease of movement across notional expanses of space and time, while the process of encaustic layering creates impressions highly conductive to meditation and introspection, as of consciousness entering a still lake’s reflective depths.
A QUALITY OF LIGHT
When the opposing forces unite within
Lao Tzu, c. 5th-century BC
While the prospect of transcendence is suggested by form and medium, it is ultimately conveyed through a quality of light: an otherworldly light altogether inseparable from darkness. Indeed, Lascelles achieves a captivating chiaroscuro in which light longs for darkness as darkness longs for light, and to assuage their mutual longing she has conspired to bring about a covert rendezvous.
So rather than overexposure or all-encompassing darkness, there is everywhere present a preternatural glow: a glow Tanizaki, in his inspired treatise In Praise of Shadows, would no doubt have favourably described as a 'pensive lustre', for even the opaque in Lascelles’ work serves as a clarifying lens for the soul.
As a consequence, Lascelles has overseen the emergence of an art that is as arresting by day as it is transporting by night, especially when a low and gentle illumination is brought to bear, thus imbuing brighter colours with living phosphorescence, while her looming planes of darkness burgeon with possibility.
The overall effect, which is invariably conveyed with subtlety, suggests the proximity of a finer field of consciousness, that flows through, and extends beyond, the mere forms of this world.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2021 Resonance, Eagles Nest Gallery, Aireys Inlet
2019 Transcend, Yering Station, Yarra Glen
2015 Karisome – Transience, Yering Station, Yarra Glen
2014 Yūgen, The Light Factory, Eltham
2013 Japonism, Long Gallery, Montsalvat, Eltham
2012 Oriental Infusion, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza
2012 Recent Works, BrownKortes, Kangaroo Ground
2011 Seizui, Long Gallery, Montsalvat, Eltham
2010 Sonzai – Existence, East and West Art, Kew
2010 Shinzui – Essence, Yering Station, Yarra Glen
2010 Mist, The Atrium Gallery, Australian High Commission, Singapore
2009 Kasumi – MIST, Beowulf Galleries, Woollahara
2009 In the Mist , Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground
2009 Sonzai – Existence, Convent Gallery, Dalesford
2008 Exhibition of New Works, Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground
2007 Kensho, Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground
2004 Exhibition of Paintings, Café Au Go Go, St Kilda
2001 Sadhana, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
1997 Honouring Tibet, Dilemma’s Gallery, North Melbourne
1995 Indigenous Influence, Labrys Gallery Space, Collingwood
1994 Recent Works, Labrys, Fitzroy
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2020 SheBuilt - Women in Art, North Melbourne
2019 Reverb, Post Office Gallery, Ballarat
2015 Alumination, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat
2014 Masterworks, Eltham College 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Eltham
2014 Eastern Inspirations, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza
2012 Artist’s Open Studios – 25th Anniversary, The Light Factory Gallery, Eltham
2011 Spring Exhibition, Architect’s Gallery, Richmond, London, UK
2011 April Exhibition, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza
2010 Group Exhibition, Tina Cooper Gallery, Eumundi, QLD, Australia
2010 Threads, Bright Space, St Kilda, Melbourne
2010 Untitled Group Exhibition, Contemporary Collectors, Singapore
2010 Women in the Arts Festival Exhibition, SCWO, Singapore
2009 Untitled Group Exhibiton, Galerie Bophavy, Noosa Heads, QLD, Australia
2009 Collector’s Exhibition, Contemporary Art Society, The Steps Gallery, Carlton
2008 Untitled Group Exhibition, Kazari Collector, Prahran
2006 The Nature of Things, Fitzroy Gallery, Fitzroy
2005 Nine X Five, Art Streams Gallery, Warrandyte
2005 Shrine, Fitzroy Gallery, Fitzroy
2004 Movement Within the People, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
2003 Visualising Pure Realms, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
2002 Meditative Paintings, Lovegrove’s Winery, Cottlesbridge
2001 Mama Serpentine - A cry in the Wilderness, Dudley House, Bendigo
2000 Meditative Thoughts, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
1999 Three, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
1998 Review, Eltham Art Space, Eltham
1998 Journey & Myth, Mair Street Gallery, Ballarat
1993 Post Graduate Exhibition, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat
Collections
Various Private Collections in Australia, UK, Italy, Singapore, America and Japan.
Education
2002 Diploma in Experiential Arts Therapies, MIECAT, Melbourne
2001 Diploma in Transpersonal Art Therapy, Ikon Institute, Melbourne
1993 Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts (Painting), Ballarat University, Victoria
1991 Bachelor of Arts / Visual Arts (Drawing), Ballarat University, Victoria
1988 TOP Visual Arts, RMIT, Melbourne