Abstract
Anyone who has ever pondered a violin-playing monkey or a snail battling a knight in the margins of a medieval manuscript will be intrigued by artist Nicola Gower Wallis’ subterranean wombat, scavenging Tasmanian devil or garden beetle dining by candlelight in her fabulous work, Dinnertime.
As Nicola says, ‘I have never considered myself a student of realism. I've never quite reached the pinnacle of drawing a really good horse or managed to draw a convincingly straight line. And perhaps it was then, in commiserating with a wonky looking cat, that my attachment to medieval art really began.’
‘These works are an embrace of the wonky, the slight wrongness that comes from a story being retold too many times, the fuzziness of shapes seen at dusk in the wintertime, all washed out by the window of a house glowing brightly.’
As with so many animals in marginalia, Nicola’s slightly ‘wonky’ wildlife are shown here engaging in recognisable human activities. As befits the title of our cover artwork, they are celebrating dinnertime.
Dinnertime presents a quintessential Australian domestic scene, albeit with a touch whimsy. The human family are enjoying a relaxed meal at twilight, but there are also possums perched precariously on an old rug serving as a tablecloth, tucking into delicacies on the tin roof, while magpies circle overhead looking for lost bounty. Look closely for the intricately detailed animal life, dining in style in the family’s garden.
It was Nicola’s daily routine that led her to appreciate, as she says, ‘the endless and frenetic story lines of the local flora and fauna play[ing] out around me. It is only in beginning to record these comings and goings that I have begun to realise that every patch of grass is holding a secret, hidden world of its own, if only you look closely enough.’
Explains Nicola, ‘It’s only been recently, so preoccupied with attempting to express my own stories within a single frame, that I have truly come to appreciate the forms and techniques behind those ancient paintings and tapestries. How succinctly they express a narrative, so stylishly removed from the constraints of the true and factual.’
Nicola Gower Wallis was the 2020 winner of Bett Gallery’s Graduate Award, judged in collaboration with the Tasmanian College of the Arts. Several exhibitions of Nicola’s work have since been held.
Dinnertime
Gouache on paper (2023)
90 x 119 cm Cover image courtesy of the artist and Bett Gallery
© Nicola Gower Wallis