30 Jan André de Vanny | The Diving Tree | Curatorial+Co.

In his debut solo exhibition, André de Vanny presents a body of work that draws deeply from his childhood spent on Dja Dja Wurrung Country/Central Victoria, where the landscape left an indelible mark on his artistic practice. Through a physical and embodied approach to painting, each canvas becomes a reflection of de Vanny’s intimate relationship in the Goldfields region, particularly the arid terrain of the bushland surrounding Lake Eppalock.

Working from a palette of earth tones and deep tertiary hues, de Vanny seeks to reveal the poetic language of colour. In place of the parched earth, straw grass and ironbark trees of the Victorian bush, we see burnt ochre, sap greens, russet coppers and dark umber, reimagined in contemporary abstract form.

Whilst his subject matter draws upon the illusive qualities of memory and place, his process-based approach embeds a tangible sense of time and history into the work. Starting with large un-stretched sheets of heavy gauge canvas, de Vanny builds multiple layers of colour by staining, folding and drying the works over several months. This allows the natural evaporation process to push pigments across the canvas, generating organic marks that become held within the weave. By working outdoors, dragging, sanding and scoring the surface, he seeks to reveal the subtle vulnerabilities of the canvas, offering up the materials of fine art to the elemental forces of nature.

De Vanny says, “When I was a kid, and the lake was full, it seemed like those summers would never end. We’d spend all day in the water, holding our breath and somersaulting, or swimming out to a makeshift pontoon tethered to an old dead gum. This was our diving tree, from which we’d leap into the water below. The lake was so full it would swallow the roads we drove in on. Water charged over the dam wall and thundered down the concrete spillway into the Campaspe River, which fed the region for miles around. As the years passed, the mood of the landscape shifted. Drought set in and the region grew dry.

“The diving tree became our watermark, by which we’d measure the fullness of the lake as it rose and fell. These spells of drought grew longer and longer until the lake vanished for a decade, and the diving tree stood alone in that empty lakebed – a relic of our childhood and the abundance of its promise. It was then that my connection to the land deepened as I found beauty in the dry remnants of a landscape in flux. It was haunting and sublime, this vast empty vessel that wore the scars of erosion and the history of the water it had held.

“These works speak as much to the vibrant optimism of youth as to the melancholic beauty of a barren landscape longing for renewal. It’s a meditation on cycles of growth, determination and resilience. I’m searching for a kind of sublime beauty that is borne out of hardship. I’m interested in creating works that have been weathered or scarred in some way and have emerged even more robust and beautiful for it. Perhaps it’s a way of making sense of the past, revisiting the landscape of my youth, which holds both dark and golden hours.”

Video: Emily Eden