Location | Wollongong City Gallery 2004 | Catalogue
Location is Tony Ameneiro's first solo exhibition at Wollongong City Gallery. Born in London to Spanish parents, Ameneiro
migrated to Australia 35 years ago and has since lived, among other places, in Stanwell Tops and the Southern Highlands
where he has resided for many years. The work in this exhibition, while strongly embedded with the pervasive qualities of the
local landscape, especially its flora, also carries the deep influences of Ameneiro's Spanish cultural roots. The physicality of
the immediate experience and the intangible gossamer of memory coalesce in Ameneiro's prints and drawings to describe
locations both real and imagined.
While this exhibition is drawn very much from the artist's experience, there are within it strong resonances for any who have
journeyed to far away places or have shared the dislocation of the migrant experience
We would like to thank Tony Ameneiro for his enthusiasm and commitment and trust that you will enjoy this small voyage
into his world.
John Monteleone - Deputy Director
A map has no vocabulary, no lexicon of precise meanings. It communicates in lines, hues, tones, coded symbols, and
empty spaces…Nor does a map have its own voice. It is many tongued, a chorus reciting centuries of accumulated
knowledge in echoed chants. A map provides no answers. It only suggests where to look: discover this, re-examine that,
put one thing in relation to another, orientate yourself, begin here…Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical
geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic
landscape of dreams.
Harvey, Miles. The Island of Lost Maps, Random House, New York, 2000. p.38
Distances exist only in the real world. In the imagination they are irrelevant. This body of works, the Location series by Tony Ameneiro of prints and drawings, work within the gap of real distance and the distances of the mind. In the works images and techniques are juxtaposed with a sense of order and precision. These images and techniques strongly symbolise Ameneiro's cultural heritage - born in London to Spanish parents and for the past 35 years living in Australia.
Until recently Tony Ameneiro lived and worked at Stanwell Tops and this exhibition represents a kind of "unfinished business"- the works are traces of thoughts and ideas fermented within its geographical bounds. In the Location series, drawing and printmaking convey the complexity and layering of culture and geography.
Ameneiro has chosen to directly reference two elements of his personal landscape that are indefinably linked to place. In the case of the cultural landscape of Spain it is a series of works by the idiosyncratic and typically Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran (1598 - 1664). In particular it references a series of paintings done for the Monastery of Nuestra Senora De La defension, Jerez de la Frontera in the province of Cadiz.
These paintings form a part of the visual and cultural heritage of Ameneiro. Both his parents grew up around the Monastery in Jerez and their families have lived there for generations. Interestingly, local folklore says that Zurbaran had used as models local townspeople and transformed them into figures of worship and adulation.
The other image central to understanding the Location series is of Doryanthes excelsa or the Gymea Lily. The Gymea Lily is an omnipresent visual element in the areas around the Illawarra, not unlike the Xanthorrea, the other remarkable and striking plant species in the area, the Gymea Lily was also extremely useful to the original inhabitants of the land, the Dharawal people. It was a useful food plant with the stalk and roots being edible, the spike was used to make spears and the flowers excreted a sweet honey-like substance.
In earlier works Ameneiro focused on the edges of places - a park edge with goal posts butted against the scrub and road edges cutting through the landscape of Stanwell Park, Helensburgh and Maddens Plain that sit butting up against the Royal National Park. The edge came to represent 'man vs nature', particularly apt for pictures of playing fields, and the Gymea Lily is the most recognisable symbol of this edge - their spectacular flower stalks shooting high from the base and the crimson flowers dramatic against the bush - the lily in flower is always a visual treat on the train journey from Wollongong to Central.
In the works from the Location series the Gymea Lily, so representative of this place, the Illawarra, and Zurbaran, an integral part of the personal cultural history of Ameneiro, are brought together, overlaid and compared. In the case of the images by Zurbaran they are drastically simplified and in a deliberate post-modern appropriation strategy (and a particularly Australian one), the images are photocopied from books and then using a release method the image is transferred to the matrix, in this case a lino block. This is then simplified again in a series of precise cuts turning the face, hands and symbols intosomething akin to a contour map. (On his studio walls are pinned a series of transparent photocopies of maps which the artist often overlays over images.) The tight lines within the linocuts closely resemble the contour lines that represent the escarpment of the northern Illawarra in a surveyor’s maps.
Ameneiro's depictions of the Gymea Lily are fairly abstracted renderings of the flower that has been cropped from a close up photo. The use of the etched line is again, as in the case of Zurbaran’s saints, a contour although this time far looser than the precise woodcuts. The line is both precise and frenetic – meandering lines pick out the separate petals and the etching conveys the architectural qualities of the flower bud.
Ameneiro then creates trial proofs of the prints and goes through the process of pairing prints. The pairing of images is seemingly random but each is carefully considered – often a shape, form or mark will correspond to one another in a purely aesthetic way. A line or mark may trigger a series of abstract associations within the pair. The images are then placed side by side as one editioned work. The linocut is closely cropped to the edge, and using chine collé is butted up close to the etching.
In the large drawing Location – Detail the images closely relate to the prints – again a seemingly random juxtaposition of images – but each carefully selected to fit alongside one another. Memory and location are reduced to purely visual terms. The drawing, more so than the images, emphasises the links between the images, and colour and form is homogenised.
There is also the interesting overlay of papers, pale Japanese tissue for the most part, combined with images, then backed on to a dark card highlighting the use of white pencil. The Japanese paper was originally sourced for the repair of rips in damaged artworks, which references Ameneiro’s ‘day job’ as a paper conservator.
The overlay here is fixed to a support, which allows the drawing to exist in its own space. The crayon with which images are drawn sits up flat on the surface, not permeating it like a print or watercolour. It shifts in focus as you move around it, from certain vantage points the image can disappear altogether and it is again a topographical description – the map – of an image.
Location gives viewers a chance to see into the working processes and personal history of one of the area’s finest artists. It also gives viewers the chance to see the possibilities of contemporary printmaking – the blurring of techniques and imagery combined with consummate skill in editioning and creativity.
More importantly Ameneiro renders geographical distance obsolete – the distance between Spain, the land of his parents
and the generations before them breathes down his neck in much the same way that the majestic expanses of the Royal
National Park slowly creep upon the land near Stanwell Tops.
Glenn Barkley - Curator, University of Wollongong Art Collection